As the Green Gettysburg Book Club advances into its third year online, we’ve kept on with our study of “the little things that run the world.” Entomologist E.O. Wilson in his book Half Earth, which we read in 2021, uses that phrase to describe the work of insects in maintaining the biosphere. For us in 2023 so far, this topic has meant a close look at Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse by Dave Goulson; Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World by Emma Marris ; and Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction by David George Haskell.
Goulson in Silent Earth begins with a discussion of the steep decline in insect populations world-wide that many of us have noticed on our windshields after a drive on a summer evening in recent years. We’re surprised to find very few dead insects and nothing much to clean off the glass. Many of us—and not only those of a “certain” age—remember driving through clouds of insects on a summer night and a very different windshield experience. Though insects are generally not as well studied as mammals, the studies we have report that insect biomass has declined dramatically since about 1970.
Goulson’s book continues with an account of insect evolution and an overview of why insects matter to the health of the biosphere. He also lays out systematically the steps we can take to reduce their decline. Much of what he recommends is relatively obvious: alternative agricultural practices with reduced use of insecticides; tree planting, pollinator gardens and an end to the war on insects at the homeowner level; and darker cities and reduced lighting in suburbs and outside of rural homes so as not to disrupt essential insect routines.
Insects aren’t alone in terms of decline, of course. As Goulson points out on page 48 of his book, “…wild mammals now comprise a meagre 4 per cent of all mammalian biomass, with our livestock (mainly cows, pigs and sheep) comprising 60 percent and we humans making up the remaining 36 per cent.” Whether we—and the rest of our livestock-based mammalian biomass—can do as good a job of sustaining the biosphere as insects have done remains to be seen.
Rambunctious Garden argues that we can, in fact, do a much better job of caring for creation. Step one for Emma Marris means giving up on the idea that the only nature worth saving is pristine nature, the remote wild spaces in National Parks and officially designated wilderness areas. Step two involves assigning ourselves the task of planting and maintaining “rambunctious gardens,” half-wild spaces that support biodiversity and create stable ecosystems that can provide us—as well as other species—with clean air, water and food and contribute toward a stable climate where the human project and the natural world can both flourish.
Sounds Wild and Broken, which we are currently reading, is taking us toward a fuller understanding of how sounds—the scrapings, whirrings, chirpings and piercing cries of the natural world—connect creatures and help them to solve life’s essential problems. Fossilized wing parts locked inside solid rock have a lot to teach David George Haskell about how and when sound first became important to creaturely life. But he also has us listening in new ways to the woods and fields where we have the privilege of living and getting to know our kin: peepers and tree frogs, barred owls, and soon—we hope now in mid-April—returning wood thrush.
Our next scheduled read is The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life by Johan Eklof. Insects, birds, turtles and humans all need darkness, it seems. We are looking forward to learning more about how less light in the world—at least at night—can help strengthen the biosphere upon which we all depend.
For more information on the book club or to receive the link for our 9:00 a.m. Friday meetings on line, simply send an email to host Will Lane at wlane@gettysburg.edu. Newcomers welcome!
Will Lane, a founding member of Green Gettysburg and the Green Gettysburg Book Club, is a Lecturer in English and Affiliated Faculty Member with Environmental Studies at Gettysburg College.