#Save the planet

[jenfoundabug]

California slender salamander (Batrachoseps attenuatus) in a redwood forest. Santa Cruz Mountains, California, US

[im-not-just-physical]

please have a minute of silence-

-for all the animals that are on the red list of endangered species, those that are considered extinct and those that are only a few living survivors away from extinction.

the least we can do for them is to pay tribute to them, think about how we can help them and try to do whatever we can to help our close animal friends, relatives, cousins, siblings and even the strangest animals we could never meet.

Spread awareness, respect mother nature and fight against those who are trying to destroy our world for the sake of property, money and terror.

shout-out to all our extinct comrades and those who are fighting to survive

[studio-ghibli-miyazaki-hayao]

🌱𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐇🌳

❤️🌍

[diana-andraste]

Unser aller Mutter Erde (Earth: Mother of Us All), Alfred Kubin, 1901-02

[alpaca-clouds]

Let Us Talk About Insects For Once

I could swear I have talked on this before, but I cannot find it (tumblr search is still busted) and also, it is something important, that sadly a lot of the big science communicators have communicated wrongly - mainly due to trying people to care about it.

You probably have heard this phrase before: Save the bees!

And the image this conjured up for you is this one:

The kinda adorable, fluffy little honey bee, who make nice and tasty honey for us, are being kept all around, and also have a very weird movie about interspecies romance dedicated to them, that communicates this issue wrong once more.

Well, what if I told you, that a) honey bees are just a very tiny minority of the insects responsible for polinating plants in the world, and b) are actually doing right fine, given that they are somewhat domesticated and people make money with them. So yeah, to the shock of absolutely no-one the Bee Movie is horrid pro-honey-bee propaganda.

Instead the animals mainly responsible for polinating our plants are other species of bees - those actually endangered often - who live often more solitarily and do not produce honey either at all or in as high quantities as the honey bee does. Butterflies, moths, wasps, flies, beetles and wasps instead are doing a whole lot of polination work, too.

And yeah, I get that the flies - such as the humble hoverfly - are not as cute or sexy, as the honey bee is, but... we kinda need them fort his whole pollination shit. I mean, by as much propaganda as the Bee Movie it, it was right about one thing: While it would absolutely not affect anyone if all honey bees went on a worldwide strike (good labor coordination though!), if we run out of polinators we might be a bit fucked.

So, honor the beetle and the humble hover fly.

Of course polination is not the only thing that we need insects for.

Yes, I am well aware that most time humans think of insects mostly as annoying pests, but let's be honest: We kinda know that they are somewhat important for the eco-system.

Other jobs that insects take over in the eco-system include, but are not limited to:

Removing waste (such as feces and dead animals)

Providing a food source for all sorts of small critters

Help plants filter water

Loosen the ground by digging through it and making it hence better suited to grow plants

Control one another and other animals, who without them would turn into a danger for humans and/or the eco-system

And that is without helpful jobs insects might actually take over for humans - especially in agrarculture, like hunting other pests or breaking down weeds.

So, you might notice: Even the stupid, digusting kinds of insects are kinda important and fulfill their own specific place in the eco system.

And as anyone who so much as looked at a car in the year 2000 vs today might have noticed... insects are kinda in trouble. Because in the year 2000 your typical car windshield looked like this:

Which is not what it tends to look like today. And while this is anecdote and not scientific data, we of course also have studies that confirm this subjective information.

Scientists have measured the biomass of insects in the environment with certain measures and have found results worthy of concern. Over here in Germany the flying insect biomass has decreased by 75% between 1989 and 2016. Sweden found the same 75% for a similar timeframe. The ground based insects looked better, though their biomass is harder to measure. Depending on the study their biomass has decreased between 18 and 34% over the last 30 years.

An US study found that the overall biomass has decreased by about 34% in the US, the abundance of insects (basically how densely they live and how likely it is for you to encounter insects) however by 61%. And mind you, the same study noticed that while this is an issue the abundance of certain insects - ones that in their current population might become a problem for either humans or the environment - increased.

Several studies also have found that while these decreases were observed, a similar decrease was observed in some species feeding on certain insects - especially birds and certain rodents.

Which lets me speak about the origins of this issue. Why are the insects dying?

I am guessing that both solarpunks and guerilla gardeners might be most familiar with the issue of the lawn and the impervious surfaces.

To make it short: A lot of insects rely either on earth to dig in, or on those plants to polinate - because it is an important food source. They might also rely on certain forms of biological waste (like dead animals and animal feces). And basiclly in a lot of areas we removed all of this. We replaced natural flowers with well maintained lawn, and compacted the ground, if not sealed it all together with concrete. We also remove those dead animals and the animal poo from nature, because it bothers us. And with that we take a lot of insects important elements to live on.

Which means that, yes, ideally a garden should look a lot more like the one beneath than what the HOA (a thing that pretty much is non-existent outside the US) wants you to have.

But again, this is not where it ends. We need more ground that is not sealed and not compacted. We need ground that insects can live and borrow in. Just as we need some animal carcasses to just rot where the animal died - and some animal poo to stink up some areas were humans might live. I am sorry, but there it is.

And yes, I hear you screaming. "But what about the poison?!" And yes, that is also another issue, that definitely is impacting the biomass - though the abundance is more influenced by the last three points.

Basically, yes, a lot of the stuff that farmers use to fight off either weeds or pests are obviously also killing the insects that we technically would love to survive. Because poison tends to not differentiate.

And then there is of course the other issue: Invasive species and climate change.

Germans might be well aware of these fuckers, that kinda look like ladybirds (no, but really, why are they called ladybirds and not ladybugs?) but are not. Or are, but not the right one. Basically they are species of ladybirds that are from other places on the world and somehow ended up over here, where for a variety of reasons they kinda end up killing the local ladybirds. Partly by competing for food sources, partly by being poisonous, and so on.

And of course they are not the only invasive insect species. In fact, the most invasive species tend to be insects and arachnids. And the reason for them living here is two fold.

While most of the time insects and arachnids tend to not be rewilded in places were they are not supposed to be, they do at times hitch rides on humans who travel the world - or in the luggage of said humans.

At times some of those species just happen to do the travelling on their own. For example, I spent the last two years collecting a couple of spiders of the Nosferatu spider species, that just managed to make their way from Southern Europe up here to Germany on their own.

And the reason they manage to survive is obviously climate change. It has gotten too warm and a lot of insects that would not survive here before now are capable of doing so.

And of course some insects that are natural in these parts, can no longer survive because it is too hot for them.

Those issues are obviously not just a thing in Germany. They are a problem basically everywhere.

Which reminds me of one thing. Don't get me wrong. There is some insects that are generally not really beneficial outside of feeding birds maybe. Mosquitos are one of those, which is why there are researchers arguing for erradicating them. Not becuase their bites are annoying, but because they get us - and some animals - all sorts of sicknesses. (Even though we obviously know that their existence once saved earth, lol)

But yeah, insects dying is a problem. And we should do something about it. Not just the sexy honey bee, but also some annoying flies and stuff.

And because y'all managed to read all of this so far, you get a picture of a pretty butterfly.

[reality-detective]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"

— Thomas Jefferson

God bless the Republic of These United States.

God bless the American Patriots who hold this Land so dear.

God bless All Patriots worldwide who stand with Us, and who are watching with breathless anticipation as Americans wage a Nonviolent and Digital Second War for Independence.

We will not bend.

We will not break.

We will never, ever back down.

We will stoke the fires of Liberty and burn them brightly for the world once again.

Ahead of Us lies true Freedom for all of Gods People, in all corners of this Earth.

Happy 4th of July 2024 to Patriots in ALL Nations, and to ALL Soldiers of Faith and Honor, without whom the World would have surely fallen. We shall never forget. ⚔️ 🇺🇲

[anxiouslemondesigns]

Y'all understand the assignment. Right?

[tish-illustrations]

we only have one earth <3

[miscellaneousdrawings]

“you’ve barely touched your food” (wip) // acrylic on canvas

i saw an inaccurate but interesting ai prompt and painted it but correctly and with my own two hands. i also wanted to romanticize this demon lady because i think she is beautiful and refined .

[vegan-nom-noms]

Can’t be vegan? Go vegetarian.

Can’t be vegetarian? Do meatless Mondays.

Trying your hardest (whatever that may be) to help animals and the environment is far better than sitting on the sidelines and watching it burn.

[jenfoundabug]

Please enjoy this really cute honey bee. I hope she brings you a small amount of joy in these trying times ❤️❤️❤️

[lets-revolt-and-survive]

future is calling you

nature is feeding you

workers are housing you

capitalism-

-thats destroying you

[thackeroy]

This project...oh boy this project. So. I hate the yarn I used, it was an odd cotton yarn and my fingers did NOT like the texture of it, it almost felt like knitting with cotton wool which I also do not enjoy the texture of and makes me want to crawl out of my skin suit. But, despite my obvious dislike of touching this yarn, I do love this project because of what it is.

I did not make this as a wearable scarf, my point in making this was more as a teaching tool, as a physical and visible example of climate change. Every four rows, (every two garter bumps?) is representative of one year. The colours, starting with the blue, represent the average global temperature starting from 1922 all the way to 2021.

[natureisthegreatestartist]

[alpaca-clouds]

Gene Tech is not your enemy

Let me throw one unpopular opinion at you: Gene Tech is actually not a bad. Genetically modified crops and what not are not bad and no, they will probably not give you cancer or anything of the like. In fact, if we want to save the planet and what not, we should totally embrace gene tech and gene editing.

With that I do not mean: "Edit human genes." Which is something that on one hand would be interesting and could have great promise, but on the other hand... would probably make the world so much world and lead to all sorts of eugenics.

No, I am talking first and foremost about editing the genes of some plants and maybe some insects.

See, I live in Germany, where a lot of GMO food is actually outlawed, which I find not good. Now, let me make one thing clear: Nobody should be able to copyright the genum of a crop. So fuck the hell off, Monsanto!

But gene editing can help us overcome many problems.

For once, we just have to face the facts: Climate is changing right now. It is changing and it creates bad harvests in many areas of the earth, because the crops are not adjusted for the new climate. In some areas it suddenly is too wet, in others it is too dry.

Humans have always edited the genes of plants and animals, of course. Just that we did it the very slow way by selective breeding them. Without selective breeding a wolf does not turn into a poodle.

Our ability to directly edit the genum of crops now allows us to quickly adust to the changing climate. Which might save a lot of people, if we allow it.

But apart from that, we can also do other things by gene editing.

We might be able to create plants, that are much better at storing CO2, than they would normally be. We are in fact able to create bacteria and algea, that eat micro plastics. We might in general be able to create bacteria able to dissolve garbage. We might be able to sustain plant species that otherwise might perish due to climate change.

And there might actually be some other things. See, we could maybe extinguish maleria thanks to gene tech. And we might be able to fight invasive species through it.

A lot of people in the conservation movement will be like "No, we should not mess with nature". But the thing is, that we already are messing with it.

Gene tech can help us to actually fix some of the problems we caused.

Again: Fucking Monsanto should not be allowed to copyright crops they created like this. But just because they are using it this way, does not mean, that the technology itself is horrible.

Opposing it just... does not get us anywhere.