[forgotoldacc]

Forests were clear cut in the 1800s, yeah. But plant life remained. The latter half of the 1900s moved us in a direction where nature was clear cut and paved over with a mix of rocks and petroleum, which is not very conducive to life. Then we kept moving in that direction by building massive parking lots that are empty most of the time and putting day/night cycle disrupting lights everywhere to keep those paved barren areas lit all night. Then because those dim yellow lights weren't enough, we switched to bright white lights that simulate daytime that blast all hours of the night just to really drive in the day and night cycle disruption. Also, we replaced all native plants with ugly grass. And because that grass struggles to survive, we spray the grass with poison to kill any life that may consume it and any local plants that may attempt to thrive amongst the grass. Also, we constantly mow that grass to keep it just 1 inch long and kill anything that may survived there even despite the poison and lack of biodiversity. And whenever leaves from local plants fall, which serve to replenish soil during decomposition, and act as food and shelter for insects, we get a loud ass leaf blower to put it all into a pile, put that into a garbage bag, and ship it all off to a garbage dump to ferment inside a bag for the next few hundred years so we can make a lot of methane to accelerate global warming for generations to come.

1800s folks stupidly cut down trees because they didn't know any better, but they weren't actively destroying everything and intentionally making it absolutely uninhabitable like our generation does. And now we even have bizarre concepts like HOAs, which mandate absolute and completely intentional environmental destruction for the sake of uniformity.

[terminalshort]

You are vastly overestimating the amount of land that is taken up by urban and suburban areas. Drive across the country and you will see that very little of the time you spend is in those areas. And then even that is an overestimate because those roads aren't random. They were specifically built to go through all the biggest cities on the way.

[forgotoldacc]

Fly over America and you'll see that it's basically all farmland , paved over, or desert. Lots of roads have trees lining them because the space between them is hard to use. Go up in an airplane above those roads and you'll see there isn't too many truly thick forest, outside of mountains where it's hard to build things. Alternatively, pan around the world with google maps. America is only about 33% forest.

And even then, insects don't only live in forests. They live in fields, marshes, all sorts of terrain. And it's overwhelmingly tamed and sterilized.