Pretty much. We set off several positive feedback loops and punctured the equilibrium, and nature’s going to have to find a new one. Whether or not that can support life as we know it know is up in the air.

(I didn’t even mention phytoplankton die offs - a lot of the oxygen produced on earth is from photosynthesis happening in the ocean - not from terrestrial plants. So you also have less of a carbon sink in that process as well.)

When I was a child, long road trips would leave the front grill of our car caked with bugs. When I’d hunt for dandelions with my siblings, leaning close to the ground revealed a world just teeming with activity.

Now - where are the bugs? Especially with how difficult it is to identify insect species, we’ve probably lost hundreds of thousands of bugs that were never named or studied. How critical were those bugs to their ecosystems?

It’s difficult to motivate people to care about species of phytoplankton or ants though. Even the “save the bees” thing got twisted into a celebration of non-indigenous species that were brought in for agricultural purposes (wasps are critical for pollination, but not as cute as honey bees I guess.) The more you study ecology, the more you realize how complicated and interlocking it is, the more you realize that most human beings cannot be brought to care without substantial changes to our education system.