I believe you. I also believe that this is a terrible fate that can be changed.
The need to tidy up and sterilize our outdoor environments is going to kill us all.
No more nonessential use of pesticides. No more nonessential mowing and weed-whacking. No more raking up leaves And putting them in garbage bags. No more non-native plants thinly decorating English-style lawns and gardens.
It is hard: tall and thickety weeds are repulsive to the suburban aesthetic standard. They are associated with uncleanness, poverty, lack of maintenance, ugliness, poverty, and decay. The uncontrolled and chaotic growth of a meadow is so reviled as to be unthinkable.
The Human World is supposed to be covered in uniform green Surface like carpet, so turfgrass, kept carefully short, must be enforced everywhere... This is so ingrained in us that "grass" might as well be another word for the ground outside, and even in video games and children's books, this is shown: flat, featureless green Surface.
This, before your eyes, is Death. No ecosystem = No life.
For a year and a half, I have been planting trees and native plants, letting large areas grow wild and unkempt and introducing more plants to them, weeding and clipping selectively instead of indiscriminately hacking everything down (how thoughtless!)
And I've started to see bugs I've never seen before just about every day. I have watched the amount of life in my little corner of Earth increase dramatically. There are multiple species of lightning bugs, dozens of dragonflies, butterflies everywhere, stag beetles and cicadas, loads of bees, innumerable moths.
I remember the sad decline in bugs as well, the summers with hardly any lightning bugs, but I see now that we can change it.
Outside isn't supposed to be NEAT and TIDY and WELL-KEPT, outside is supposed to be alive. Outside is supposed to have fallen leaves, wildflowers, logs, sticks, tall plants, thickets, and trees (any of those things appropriate for your biome). Possibly hundreds of plant species have been wiped out from your corner of Earth, but by planting native plant species, you can restore them to their rightful place.
And remember that "Weeds" are simply plants that have evolved to thrive in disturbed environments, and they in fact help heal a destroyed or disrupted habitat! They are Emergency Medical Technicians for the Earth.
Their aggressive growth and deep, stubborn roots stop erosion and topsoil loss, and they create conditions where a greater variety of plants can begin to grow and thrive.
So when weeds overtake a lawn that has not been mowed, that's because the lawn is an empty, devastated environment where most everyone has been wiped out, and they are doing what they evolved to do.
It's actually more complicated than that—many weeds, on top of being disturbance-adapted species, have specifically coevolved with humans, to live in human-created environments!
We make Weeds...and Weeds make Us.
Recognize, name, respect, and learn from every creature, and you will see the Weeds for what they are. You will learn of these plants' heritage as food and medicine, their deep kinship with the impoverished, the displaced, and the marginalized, and you will see the awesome dignity, beauty, and power of the most detested Pokeweed, maligned Dandelion and hated Crabgrass.
Knowing the weeds is the beginning of everything.
When everything feels hopeless, just remember the most vital secret: The human species is not alone in this fight.
We cannot, as individuals, destroy the scourge of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture—but Amaranthus palmeri just might.
(edible, highly nutritious plant used as crop by Native Americans) (USA's most costly agricultural weed) (it and its weed buddies fucking kneecapped Roundup Ready corn by evolving glyphosate resistance so goddamn fast) (simultaneous resistance to SIX. FAMILIES. of herbicide. was recently documented in a population in Kansas) (chemical companies have been trying to ~innovate~ new ways of using chemicals to stop herbicide resistance and it's literally only made resistance evolve faster) (like seriously its absolute carnage in the agrochemical industry) (these motherfucking plants are on levels of evolution heretofore unseen on planet Earth and billions of corporate dollars are getting sent straight to eeby deeby trying and failing miserably to get ahead of these weeds) (fun fact Amaranth traditionally symbolizes Immortality) (I WONDER WHY) (research underway to grow amaranth species as climate change resistant crop) (mutualistic symbiosis apparently includes destroying corporate hegemony)
(since industrial agriculture is probs the biggest cause of insect decline...I think there is very real reason to feel encouraged.)
