this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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Since people are reading this, let me rant a bit:

One of the things you can do, as an individual, to help your local environment, is grow flowers. Even if you live in an apartment, just a flower pot on a windowsill helps - even tiny urban gardens have an outside impact on pollinators.

If you have a yard, you can replace invasive grasses with native species and nectar-rich flowers. Don't use herbicides or pesticides. Leave leaf litter alone over the winter to provide habitat for insects. Set aside a section to "go wild". Just like with flower pots, leaving even a small section of lawn without chemicals and frequent mowing can have an outsized impact on pollinators and native insects.

Lawns and gardens are a space where individual effort and individual care for the environment really does matter. You might not be able to reverse climate change, but you can make a migratory monarch butterfly's day just a little better.

And tell people! Tell people how you are gardening and how you're managing your lawn, and why. Because the most important thing you can do for the climate is talk about it.

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[–] ArtieShaw@fedia.io 37 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Even just through personal experience - I drove more than 1200 miles through the US midwest this summer. Corn country.

30 years ago I would have needed to squeegee my windshield at every gas station. This year I think I hit one bug large enough to even notice it.

My yard is mostly clover and similar ground cover, but I think my patch of lawn may be having less of an impact than industrial agriculture.

[–] Anivia 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not denying there are less insects nowadays, but part of that is also due to cars being much more aerodynamic nowadays though

[–] frezik@midwest.social 5 points 1 month ago

That's been tested by driving old cars, and no, that's not it.

https://www.kbb.com/car-news/have-you-noticed-fewer-bug-splats-on-your-windshield-scientists-have/

Wired reports, “the research included vintage cars up to 70 years old to see if their less aerodynamic shape meant they killed more bugs, but it found that modern cars actually hit slightly more insects.”

Modern cars aren't necessarily that much more aerodynamic, anyway. Depends on when you're talking about. Porsche and Chrysler both found just about the most optimal shape for cars back in the 1930s. Chrysler didn't stick with it, but Porsche did, and the basic idea was rediscovered by everyone else later.

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