My only problem with insects as a necessary part of our nutrition is that it's basically the last stop before all we have left are vats and mats of algae.

When Europeans came to the east coast of what is now Canada, they were in awe of the cod. They said things like "we can walk across the sea on their backs" as a way of helping to visualize the teeming billions.

Where are the cod now? The fishery collapsed because of over harvesting. It will likely never be restored to anything like its original state, despite the pressure to kill the nonhuman predators that feed on them.

"The fishery should have been better managed" you say?

Pray tell, what were we doing with the cod? Were we killing them the way we killed bison, to make way for high-speed, high-volume transportation of freight and people, favoured species, and starve the native populations? No, unlike with bison, we were shipping cod "home" and then across the country and around the world to feed an ever growing population.

"Better management" would have meant making decisions about who got to eat and who didn't. Unlike with bison, nobody set out to destroy anything.

We're busy destroying insect populations right now, both deliberately and as a side effect of other activities. We have not yet added them to our food supply. What do you think will be the outcome of becoming dependent on them to meet our nutritional needs?

How about a prediction? As with every natural resource, some species will be favoured and farmed to the detriment of every other species. Eventually, that won't work anymore, and we'll be living off algae. And when that doesn't work anymore?

@poweruser@lemmy.sdf.org