The Insect Crisis is a Human Crisis

Insects can seem to be everywhere, all at once, sometimes to an annoying extent. Three out of four every four known animal species on Earth are insects, after all. But these dazzlingly adept creatures, which pre-date the dinosaurs, are suffering a silent yet hugely consequential crisis, with their numbers plummeting around the world.

Oliver Milman, environment correspondent for Guardian US, has outlined the ramifications of this loss in his book The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World, a publication that has received widespread praise, from the environmentalist Bill McKibben to the New York Times.

What does it mean when the world’s pollinators crash at a time when the global demand for food is only increasing? What crucial roles to insects play to prop up ecosystems and food webs and what happens when this status quo is threatened? What does it mean to us to us - culturally, morally, artistically - to lose the beauty of a butterfly, the flicker of a firefly, the industrious buzz of a bumblebee? What is causing all of this to happen?

Milman will draw from his interviews with dozens of entomologists and his travels to the frontlines of the insect crisis, from the dwindling monarch butterfly stronghold in the Mexican mountains to the overstretched beekeepers trying to keep agriculture going in California, to explain why the decline of insects is a loss for us all.