Is there an actually good argument for why eliminating only disease carrying mosquitoes is acceptable, rather than just wiping them all out? There is no question that even without the threat of malaria, creatures like mosquitoes, bed-bugs and horse-flies decrease the quality of life of humans and animals. Would the effects on ecosystems really be so grave that they might plausibly outweigh the enormous benefits of their extinction?
The returns from just removing mosquitoes because their sting is annoying are tiny compared to eradicating disease carrying ones, and mosquitoes are pollinators. There are real risks to just eliminating them all at a whim, plus honestly it’s just not a habit we should get into.
To me it feels exactly like the kind of habit we should get into.
Imagine an advanced (possibly alien) civilization, with technology far beyond ours.
Do you imagine its members being pestered by bloodsucking parasites? Me neither.
The existence of mosquitoes is an indictment of humanity, as far as I’m concerned.
Imagine an advanced (possibly alien) civilization, with technology far beyond ours. Do you imagine its members being pestered by bloodsucking parasites?
Maybe not, but that says little about what path they take to avoid that. Maybe they simply have perfect repellents, or live inside extremely well-controlled habitats, or have gene-engineered themselves to not be tasty (some of us aren’t! I hardly ever get stung, my wife gets stung all the time). I feel like if you’re advanced enough, the safest and most efficient path tends to be that of fine control and minimum disruption rather than steamrolling your way through the world. Consider how surgery evolved for example from crude near-butchery to using optic fibers and tiny robotic probes to perform operations with a light touch in a lot of cases—and surely you could imagine your advanced civilization doing even better, with no need to cut any flesh at all in most cases. And there is an order to things—you would not want to (nor would benefit from) start producing hydrofluoric acid before you have plastic vessels to contain it in. My impression is that anyone willing to do something as crude and destructive as driving an entire family of animals to extinction just to avoid some itchy stings probably doesn’t have the knowledge to do so safely, and anyone who would have that knowledge would probably know a thousand better ways to do the same thing.
Is there an actually good argument for why eliminating only disease carrying mosquitoes is acceptable, rather than just wiping them all out? There is no question that even without the threat of malaria, creatures like mosquitoes, bed-bugs and horse-flies decrease the quality of life of humans and animals. Would the effects on ecosystems really be so grave that they might plausibly outweigh the enormous benefits of their extinction?
The returns from just removing mosquitoes because their sting is annoying are tiny compared to eradicating disease carrying ones, and mosquitoes are pollinators. There are real risks to just eliminating them all at a whim, plus honestly it’s just not a habit we should get into.
To me it feels exactly like the kind of habit we should get into.
Imagine an advanced (possibly alien) civilization, with technology far beyond ours. Do you imagine its members being pestered by bloodsucking parasites? Me neither.
The existence of mosquitoes is an indictment of humanity, as far as I’m concerned.
Maybe not, but that says little about what path they take to avoid that. Maybe they simply have perfect repellents, or live inside extremely well-controlled habitats, or have gene-engineered themselves to not be tasty (some of us aren’t! I hardly ever get stung, my wife gets stung all the time). I feel like if you’re advanced enough, the safest and most efficient path tends to be that of fine control and minimum disruption rather than steamrolling your way through the world. Consider how surgery evolved for example from crude near-butchery to using optic fibers and tiny robotic probes to perform operations with a light touch in a lot of cases—and surely you could imagine your advanced civilization doing even better, with no need to cut any flesh at all in most cases. And there is an order to things—you would not want to (nor would benefit from) start producing hydrofluoric acid before you have plastic vessels to contain it in. My impression is that anyone willing to do something as crude and destructive as driving an entire family of animals to extinction just to avoid some itchy stings probably doesn’t have the knowledge to do so safely, and anyone who would have that knowledge would probably know a thousand better ways to do the same thing.