3 ms·
I wonder whether there might not also be additional factors that we have not considered. For example, insect viruses. We know that when human populations mixed
by hyperion2010 8y ago
I wonder whether there might not also be additional factors that we have not considered. For example, insect viruses. We know that when human populations mixed between continents upwards of 95% of one population vanished due to disease. Very few people study insect diseases (and are usually just happy that a 'pest' has been killed), and there are so many species it would be a nearly impossible task to study them all. Globalization is now mixing members of all species and their diseases with them. It would not surprise me if part of this drastic decline was also due to massively virulent diseases sweeping through completely unprepared populations just as European diseases did to the indigenous populations of the Americas.
- sdenton4 8y agoPossible... But we know from a previous pesticide problem - DDT - just how disastrous a single chemical can be. And that was in the seventies: Big Ag has only gotten bigger since. I think agriculture has to be treated as the main cause unless definitive evidence to the contrary is produced. (And at the scales we're talking about, that evidence should be pretty easy to turn up, if it exists...)
- nyolfen 8y agothis is some really weak reasoning, lol. it most likely has many causes. as others have said elsewhere, it impacts rural uncultivated areas like rainforests as well