Are we preparing a darkness darker than the old darkness?
Whistling by the graveyard where the wind wails unrestrained? Where the big picture's just the frame because the humble soldiers of pollination and regeneration are being slain by our domination and fumigation?
There's not enough funding or wandering with our eyes and ears to the Earth and air to know where much of which we weren't aware has gone.
After a long summer drive, a guy in Germany realized, unlike the past, his windshield wasn't spattered by hundreds of bugs he's smashed. As an entomologist explained, in a decade local insect count was halved.
Bugs are by far Earth's most varied and numerous life forms. Fifty percent dead is cause for alarm.
Do we think their demise won't do us harm? Your grub from a box was originally a crop.
Guess what happens if honey bees' buzzing stops? Also, insects are nature's clean-up crew. If they stop recycling feces, offal and entrails, what're we going to do? And the insectivores — birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, mammals? Dominos.
Will alien explorers conclude this "advanced civilization" died of willful accidental suicide — O.D. — of carbon, pollution, pesticide?
MARK MARLEY
New Orleans