[anigbrowl]

All true, but the point I'm trying to make (poorly) is that there's more to life than truth-seeking. That's the function of science, but even if science hands you a definitive answer you still need to create the political will to implement it. And it's a fact that there are people who have economic interests in not fixing problems.

I don't care about insect biomass in particular. I care about it as a possibly-wrong indicator of general environmental degradation, of which we have numerous indicators. I also have a possibly-wrong model of the root causes of this and other problems.

You can't skip steps. It sucks that it takes time and effort, it sucks that you can't just solve everything overnight, but it is the only way to be an agent of effective positive change rather than an agent of chaos.

You can't solve everything overnight, but you can lose everything overnight while you're fretting over whether a problem exists or vacillating over its severity or dithering between a multiplicity of unpleasant solutions. An ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory, and my exhortations to act, which will sometimes lead to unproductive or ineffective results, are the product of decades of observation and thought.

I'm sorry that this doesn't lead to a neatly wrapped General Unified Theory of Sustainable Sociopolitical Development - because I too would love to have a verifiable roadmap to a brighter future - but chaos is preferable to predictably circling down into a drain. Overall, I have concluded that the world is getting shittier, that this trend is accelerating, and that the costs of your gradualist approach exceed the benefits.

[lotharbot]

personally, I've seen several circumstances where the costs of "doing something" are much higher than the benefits of deliberate study and taking correct action, even on a global scale.