I love the idea and goals, but just reading the headline, I immediately leaped to one thought. Reading the article, they eventually addressed it.
In week two, we were somewhat surprised to find aquatic life – water fleas and mosquito larvae darting about under the surface.
If we don’t go to great lengths every season limit every opportunity for mosquitoes to breed, our backyard is miserably unusable for half of the year.
Yeah, getting rid of malaria in large parts of the world was one of the great successes of the 1900’s, and a large reason for that was the drainage of wetlands. Part of the reason I personally cannot at all sympathize with folks who want to restore the wetlands. Particularly with the world heating up, it’s likely to result in a surge of mosquito-borne disease.
I’m not convinced reducing a human disease is worth the destruction of those environments. It’s not all about us and that warming you mentioned is a direct result of us acting like it is.
There are also other ways to deal with mosquito populations that don’t involve destroying the habits of other animals.
I fundamentally disagree. Our mastery over nature is what allows us to even care about such esoteric things. As a humanist, I consider climate change a problem because it poses a threat to humans, much like mosquitoes do.
If we really had mastery over nature, we wouldn’t have a lot of the problems that we do. And the potential threat to us is my whole point; upsetting certain balances could be very bad for us. I don’t think we understand enough about life to be able to say what the effects of eliminating entire ecosystems are, let alone whether they are worth it.