Where Did They All Go?

When I was a kid, each summer, in our neighborhood, the ‘”bug truck” would slowly spray clouds of DDT to “protect” us from mosquitoes. It used to be that whenever you hit the road one travel ritual was to clean the bugs off your windshield.  There’s even a name for this concern: the windshield phenomenon. We were a bug-hating nation. Now, entomologists have documented the dramatic loss of insects around the globe.

Insect populations are declining rapidly, with some estimates suggesting a drop of 45% over the last 40 years. Other studies indicate a 9% decline per decade in land-based insects, driven by habitat loss, climate change, and pesticides. Some regions, such as parts of Europe, have experienced losses of over 75% in certain flying insect populations. 

For decades, insects were treated as annoyances at best, pests at worst.

According to a recent paper from the Brownstone Institute, “Alarm bells started ringing when several high-profile research papers began pointing to declines in insect populations. One of these bombshells dropped in October 2017, when researchers found a 76% decline in insect biomass in Germany over several decades. These were not in industrial zones or pesticide-saturated fields. They were in nature preserves. The results demonstrated that flying insects as a whole are declining, not just vulnerable species such as bees, butterflies and moths. Other research showed declines in insect-eating lizards, frogs and birds, revealing how interconnected and fragile the ecosystems are.” 

The Windshield Phenomenon Was a Warning We Dismissed

A World Without Insects

Again from the Brownstone Institute’s article by Joseph Varon: “Insects occupy a central role in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. They pollinate plants, recycle nutrients, regulate microbial populations, control pest species, and serve as the primary food source for numerous birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. Rather than being peripheral, insects form the structural foundation of these systems. The loss of these species could result in the disappearance of familiar foods such as coffee, chocolate, apples, and almonds, directly impacting daily nutrition.”

What Are the Causes?

Those who attribute climate change as the chief villain need to broaden their understanding.

According to the Brownstone article and many other sources, key contributors include:

• Chronic pesticide exposure, particularly systemic insecticides such as neonicotinoids, which persist in soil and water and affect non-target species.

• Herbicide-driven loss of flowering plants, eliminating food sources for pollinators.
• Monoculture agriculture, which replaces complex habitats with biological deserts.
• Soil degradation and microbial collapse, undermining insect life cycles.
• Light pollution, which disrupts navigation, mating, and feeding behaviors in nocturnal insects.
• Urban sprawl and habitat fragmentation, reducing genetic diversity and resilience.

Many of the above elements causing insect decline are increasingly being linked to human health. Yet, according to experts who are studying the links, medicine and public health institutions are failing to recognize the interconnectedness.

Technology Will Not Come to the Rescue

When science becomes captured by industrial practices and regulatory capture, early warning signals are often reframed as “unproven” rather than investigated as urgent. That allows technology to profess to save the ecological loss. Their ideas? Artificial pollination, synthetic food systems, and lab-engineered substitutes for biological complexity. These ideas are ignorant of what insects perform naturally in trillions of micro-interactions every day.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, about 75% of the world’s flowering plants and 35% of the world’s food crops depend on animal pollinators, including bees, beetles, butterflies, moths and other insects. Without insects, humanity would continue to limp along thanks to wind-pollinated crops, but our forests, rivers, lakes and skies would be as devoid of animal life as any post-apocalyptic landscape.  

What Could Change Look Like?

What is needed, experts propose, is a call for restraint and transparency, including:

• Long-term, independent ecological monitoring
• Environmental safety testing that evaluates chronic, cumulative, and synergistic effects
• Reduction, not expansion, of chemical environmental load
• Agricultural practices that restore biodiversity rather than suppress it
• Intellectual humility about what we do not yet understand about the cycles of nature.

What We Can Do

The Brownstone article concludes with what we can do individually and collectively. We can:

• Adopt a local habitat, even as small as one square yard, to contribute to the preservation of biological diversity.
• Participate in a community garden that doesn’t use harmful chemicals – go organic.
• Eliminate toxic chemicals from our gardens, lawns, and indoor repellants.
• Doctors can also play a pivotal role. They can become educated and inform patients about the connection between the environment and human health. By advocating for healthier ecosystems and supporting local health/environment initiatives, clinicians empower not only their patients but also their communities.

If you would like to read the entire Brownstone Journal article, here is the link:       https://brownstone.org/articles/insect-loss-as-an-early-warning-of-systemic-biological-failure/

Insect Loss As an Early Warning of Systemic Biological Failure by Joseph Varon. January 26, 2026.

Photo credits:, Ladybug – a chosen soul, bugs on glass – The Brownstone Institute, butterfly – getty images, community garden – getty images.