Friday 29th of March 2024

even the bizarre

bugglife

the good, the bad, the ugly...

Some species of animals are unimportant to what we do and often they do not interfere with our crops or other activities. But some of us wish them dead or vanished anyhow because they are there — reminding us that we do not live in a fully sterile ideal place. It's a bug to be bug-sprayed with a lethal array of chemicals that do nothing good for our health either... And even if it did, the fact of killing a harmless minute animal may give us the feeling of great power... We can do better than that, stylistically.

The symbol e is that which I have created to represent Organica Spiritualia. This is to relate our "spiritual being" to nature. In fact it is our human intelligence (reactive animalistic processing of environmental factors for survival into stylistical actions) that creates our "spirtual being". Our consciousness is organic, based on our memory. Most animals that have a central memorising system of environmental factors can have a consciousness of space and position.

Our individual memory is greater than that of individuals in others species and gives us the ability to invent a lot of solutions, including fake solutions that solve "problems" nonetheless... But beyond these fake solutions, including ethical solutions, there are relationship between our generosity and species that do not really matter to our survival.

Organica spiritualia gives us the power to be generous to nature beyond our needs. But our needs are bathed more and more in greed, another Organica Spiritualia activity with less ethical understanding of where we are at at this point in time — an evolved being from a soup of life on a planet to which we could decide we owe nothing to.

The relationships between human survival and that of other species is often not as important as we could think... But this relationship is more important than our needs, because at this point in time we have evolved to be where we are — together on the planet. It's an ethical choice in which our judgement (or carelessness) of life or death over other species may alter the course of our future history or not... It is a stylistic choice. Extinction of species resulting from our activities is our stylist choice. We can and should choose different and care better.

extinction of species is forever.

ugly beast has its role...

ugly beast has its place...

 

What insects mean to us and why we need to save our insect populations
By and large many people regard insects with horror as either pests or revolting creepy-crawly creatures to be avoided or worse still, squashed without mercy. Infamous as they may be, insects play such a vital role in the food chain and the global eco-system of the planet that without them life as we know it would cease to exist.

Insects are in a great part responsible for the break down of organic material such as plant, animal and human remains, the elimination of animal waste, the aeration of the soil and of course the vastly important task of plant pollination. They are an essential food source to many birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, while in some parts of the world they also constitute a significant part of the human diet. The plight of endangered mammals is often given considerable exposure, however, insects and related species, many which are endangered, receive little attention despite their importance in the overall balance of nature.

In excess of a million species of insects have already been identified worldwide and it is estimated that at least an equal number but possibly as many as three to four million, still remain unidentified. Notwithstanding the fact that insects are one of the most abundant life forms on earth, however, with the number of insect species exceeding that of all other species combined, use of insecticides, proliferation of invasive alien vegetation and encroachment into their natural habitats is having its consequence and insect populations are being alarmingly reduced or decimated. Untold numbers of species have been adversely affected by man's selfish violation of rain forests, wetlands, bushveld and savannas. Many species, some possibly not even yet identified are threatened or possibly already extinct while others are moving from their normal distribution ranges in order to survive. Insect control in the past has also been highly irresponsible with indiscriminate use of non-specific insecticides killing not only the pests but also all their natural predators and other valuable and harmless species.

http://www.insecta.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=56&Itemid=64

failure to protect...

Having failed to meet the target set in 2002 of significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, the draft agreement before this meeting contains a set of 20 targets.

But there is fundamental division between those demanding tough pledges, such as ending biodiversity loss by 2020, and those who argue this is not possible.

Another draft clause calls for a 100-fold increase in international financing on biodiversity, which would be raised principally in industrialised nations and primarily spent in the developing world.

'Shocking and pitiful'

While the main priority for Western nations is to secure tough targets for protecting plants and animals and the habitat they need, developing countries are in general more concerned about international finance, and about an agreement on fair and equitable access to the Earth's natural genetic resources.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11609159

aliens do not come from space...

On one side is the emerald ash borer, an insect that has killed millions of ash trees, scientists say, and threatens billions more. On the other are three tiny species of wasps that in China have shown they will kill the borer.

The experiment is underway in a number of states, including Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio and most recently, last year in Minnesota, West Virginia and Kentucky. More states will try this year, according to Jon Lelito, manager of a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Michigan that raises the wasps.

Today, officials plan to release the first wasps in Wisconsin at a nature center in Newburg, a community about 30 miles north of Milwaukee, says Andrea Diss-Torrance, a forest entomologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2011-06-07-emerald-ash-borer_n.htm

Gus: wasps are known to "kill" other insects and spiders for their offspring to feed on and they mostly feed on nectar when adult.

the square root of nothing...

christmas beetle

From George Mombiot...

It was the year of living dangerously. In 2012 governments turned their backs on the living planet, demonstrating that no chronic problem, however grave, will take priority over an immediate concern, however trivial. I believe there has been no worse year for the natural world in the past half-century.

Three weeks before the minimum occurred, the melting of the Arctic's sea ice broke the previous record. Remnants of the global megafauna – such as rhinos and bluefin tuna – were shoved violently towards extinctionNovel tree diseases raged across continents. Bird and insect numbers continued to plummet, coral reefs retreated, marine life dwindled. And those charged with protecting us and the world in which we live pretended that none of it was happening.

Their indifference was distilled into a great collective shrug at the Earth Summit in June. The first summit, 20 years before, was supposed to have heralded a new age of environmental responsibility. During that time, thanks largely to the empowerment of corporations and the ultra-rich, the square root of nothing has been achieved. Far from mobilising to address this, in 2012 the leaders of some of the world's most powerful governments – the US, the UK, Germany and Russia – didn't even bother to turn up.

But they did send their representatives to sabotage it. The Obama administration even sought to reverse commitments made by George Bush Sr in 1992. The final declaration was a parody of inaction. While the 190 countries that signed it expressed "deep concern" about the world's escalating crises, they agreed no new targets, dates or commitments, with one exception. Sixteen times they committed themselves to "sustained growth", a term they used interchangeably with its polar opposite, "sustainability".

The climate meeting in Doha at the end of the year produced a similar combination of inanity and contradiction. Governments have now begun to concede, without evincing any great concern, that they will miss their target of no more than 2C of global warming this century. Instead we're on track for between four and six degrees. To prevent climate breakdown, coal burning should be in steep decline. Far from it: the International Energy Agency reports that global use of the most carbon-dense fossil fuel is climbing by about 200m tonnes a year. This helps to explain why global emissions are rising so fast.

read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/31/year-abandon-natural-world/print

 

See image and read article at top...