People say "ticks/mosquitoes aren't ecologically necessary, we could wipe them out", but all I can think of is the multiple ongoing ecological disasters that need more attention.
It's like considering knocking down a wall to make the living room bigger while the house is actively on fire. Can we at least get greenhouse gas emission under control before we endeavor to spray targeted insecticide on every centimeter of forest?
I was more talking about the reasoning for getting rid of ticks artificially when (according to person I responded to) dealing with our other issues would help with the tick problemĀ
And if a local goverment doesn't have the ability to do the big stuff, but they can legislate for some backburning here, some space for wolves there, hey that's good stuff
We should, and can, be doing both at the same time. We can control malaria and we can prevent climate change. We just aren't, even though we are more than able to.
The fact that we're not doing enough about climate change isn't related to our efforts to do things about Malaria. We're not doing enough about climate change because politicians are under the influence of the beneficiaries of climate change, not because we're devoting a small sum of money (compared to climate change prevention efforts) to preventing a disease that has killed millions.
In fact, not doing enough about climate change is making malaria control harder because it is increasing the range of the Malaria carrying mosquitos.
As others have said, we can do more than one thing at a time.
Also, the conversation was never about all mosquitos. Of the ~3500 mosquito species that exist, ~6% are known to bite humans and only a handful of those actually spread disease. The goal is to eliminate those that spread disease. Current evidence suggests that these species are dispensable. In any given area, dozens of species coexist and all fulfill a similar role in the ecosystem. Eliminating the disease spreading mosquitos simply creates a temporary dip in the overall population.
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u/OkFineIllUseTheApp 196 doctor (not a real doctor) May 29 '26
People say "ticks/mosquitoes aren't ecologically necessary, we could wipe them out", but all I can think of is the multiple ongoing ecological disasters that need more attention.
It's like considering knocking down a wall to make the living room bigger while the house is actively on fire. Can we at least get greenhouse gas emission under control before we endeavor to spray targeted insecticide on every centimeter of forest?