Letters

Our fruitless attempts to stay ahead of nature’s insects are actually killing us [“Beetlemania Is Coming,” Hampton Gardener, Residence, June 6]. These chemical applications, like Roundup, are wiping out the very insects critical to human survival.

Why are these chemicals even legal? They indiscriminately kill almost every insect in existence, including the butterflies and bees that are our pollinators; without them we will starve to death. Our entire ecosystem is moving rapidly to its complete collapse within the next decade—not a hundred years from now.

Our oceans are being polluted with toxic plastics, chemicals, fertilizer runoff and trash, and is being acidified as it warms, killing the reefs—it is very close to collapsing. Scientists are only just now catching up with the forecasts I made in 1968: Our warming climate is a snowball rolling downhill and gathering irreversible momentum. I’m not sure even the most drastic measures can save us from our tendencies.

Do we possess a death wish for slow suicide? The way we trash our waters and our neighborhoods with dog waste, over-fertilizing, plastics and crap thrown out of the windows of passing cars, I suggest that humans hate life and couldn’t care less about preserving our Earth for future generations. Perhaps it’s tied to child abuse earlier in their lives?

When our Earth’s ecosystems collapse, our suicidal drive for death will not be so slow. As for the grubs, let’s cultivate a predator that is not human.

While I’m at it, my Irish and Iroquois roots will not let it go unsaid: The Shinnecock are not custodians of the Earth. They have betrayed their Native values and have become capitalists who care not for the trees they dismembered nor the neon intrusion they are forcing onto the night sky. They, like me, might hate the sight of the mega-mansions, but we’re not forced to drive through their neighborhoods.

Lance CoreyWesthampton