Why can agricultural interests get their shit together on eradicating a harmful species while when it comes to human health, eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes leads to endless hand wringing about playing god and whatnot?
What ever happened to that project to build automated mosquito laser zappers? Didn't Bill Gates's foundation have a project to do this, by tracking them based on their wing-flapping frequency (which apparently is very particular to that species of mosquito) and then burning their wings off with a precisely targeted laser? This seems like a nice, pesticide-free way of eliminating these awful things.
> Didn't Bill Gates's foundation have a project to do this, by tracking them based on their wing-flapping frequency (which apparently is very particular to that species of mosquito) and then burning their wings off with a precisely targeted laser
Eradicating mosquitoes is nearly that easy. At very least, significantly curtailing their population is something that's not terribly hard to do.
Mosquitoes need standing water for their eggs to hatch. That significantly limits where the things can breed. There are more than a few water additives that will kill off a population of mosquitos. However, there's always at least some resistance to wide deployment of those programs because of "playing god".
If you area suffers from mosquitos it's almost certainly because a group of anti-mosquito abatement folk got together to lobby against those programs being implemented.
> Mosquitoes need standing water for their eggs to hatch. That significantly limits where the things can breed
If you've spent any time in the eastern or northern United States, you'd realize that standing water is more or less ubiquitous.
Mosquitos need very little water to breed.
> If you area suffers from mosquitos it's almost certainly because a group of anti-mosquito abatement folk got together to lobby against those programs being implemented.
I've seen first hand what happens when cities/counties put more funding and effort into mosquito abatement programs.
The larvicide and pesticide treatments are highly effective and can be highly targeted either by airplane delivery or on foot treatments. It takes very little at the right time to have a huge impact on the mosquito population.
We could also encourage more healthier ecosystems with larger bird and fish populations. I've often noticed that areas with huge amounts of mosquitos have very few fish and few birds. Fish predate on the larvae and birds predate on the adults.
I think climate change plays a role in my area as well by increasing the length of the breeding season.
That's a completely uncharitably reading of my comment.
Mosquito abatement programs generally involve treating large swaths of area with larvicide at the right time, often by plane.
The reason counties in state like Louisiana doesn't do that more frequently is the cost of the larvicide and plane charter along with the area that needs to be sprayed. That is a budget issue that ultimately also faces uphill battles because people will accuse the abatement program of wanting to just drain all the swamps (just like you did).
These aren't impractical programs, they do cost money.
Oh, and not for nothing, cholera is a problem when you leave water management up to people putting their septic tanks next to their well water. It's a problem of the lack of investment in water infrastructure. Much like mosquito management is something addressable with pubic investment.
is there any proposition whatosever that would meet zero opposition globally? It's hard enough getting provinces to agree on stuff. I can't imagine getting hundreds of countries to all unanimously agree on anything.
We'd need some hostile alien species to even consider that.
> I can't imagine getting hundreds of countries to all unanimously agree on anything.
There are many, many international agreements that >100 countries agree to. The EU requires consensus for many things (what does that mean exactly? zero 'no votes?) as does NATO, which requires unanimity for some things. US Congress passes bills 'without objection' as a normal thing.
Maybe you are reading too many inflammatory stories? Humans are social creatures who are hard-wired to cooperate.
I mean even polio has its defenders, who seem to be winning (in the sense that you only need to convince 5% of the population to avoid vaccination to break herd immunity for the rest of us).
Probably because eradicating hornets can be done by finding and destroying nests. Mosquitoes on the other hand are far harder to get rid of. The most successful mosquito eradication campaign in history was the use of DDT in the 50s. We could always just use DDT again right?
Releasing artificially sterilized singe-sex pests at scale is pretty effective. [0]
Tl;dr: Some species only mate once in individuals' lifetimes. Consequently, if that mating is with a sterile partner, no offspring will be produced. Thus severely limiting the size of the next generation.
DDT is still approved for mosquito control. It is problematic, but is very effective... The big deal was banning it for agricultural use. Targetted use to control malaria is probably justified, given the negatives of malaria.
Eradication of mosquitoes was a very popular cause in the 20th century, but the means by which that was being done caused a lot of incidental environmental damage (draining wetlands, thinning bird shells, gassing other bugs, etc) so the brakes were pulled. Since then new techniques have been developed but they need to overcome the caution people now have for the whole idea.
They weren't eradicated through biotechnology use that could get out of control (people don't complain when there are mosquitoes eradication campaign based on suppression of stagnant water either, but some people are legitimately scared by the prospect of using gene drive at scale).
It's only been done a twice? in America in Florida and California and both had protests from environmental groups worried about bird/bat populations. Similar to any time a construction project is being done.
