Great paper, Jeff! I’m glad more people are thinking about how to help insects.
I agree that a humane-insecticide campaign could reduce its risk of being misinterpreted as opposing insecticide use if it made uncertainty about the sign of pesticides for insect welfare a prominent part of its message—e.g., if that statement were within the first sentence of its press releases. Still, it’s easy for people to glance at a headline like, “Insect-welfare advocates fight the pain that insecticides cause to bugs” and think to themselves “Yeah, I try to buy organic/IPM food!” and then not read further.
I’m unsure whether a campaign to subsidize humane insecticides would be better than generally promoting concern for wild-insect suffering, though it is often helpful to work on concrete projects to avoid just talking and never getting around to acting. A humane-insecticides program would require a fair amount of initial work to research which insecticides to promote and to network with farmers, but this process could itself have outreach value and might garner media attention.
I think promoting gravel lawns for people who actively manage their lawns could be a competitively good intervention. Here are some of its advantages over humane insecticides.
Jeff writes:
I’m not sure of the exact opinion polls on this, but I would imagine the general public is more in favor of pesticide use than not
I would guess that most people would regard pesticide use as a necessary evil, but much of the public would prefer that food were grown without insecticides, so if you’re not at least in principle opposed to insecticides, that could look bad. Likewise, most people support the creation of parking lots when necessary, but I think most also regard parking-lot creation in itself as something of a moral cost.
We are already in the worst-case-scenario.
If insecticide use does prevent net insect suffering (which is unclear but not implausible), then we would currently be in a pretty good scenario, given that most food is sprayed with insecticides. Causing people to think more about insecticide use would almost certainly increase sales of IMP and organic foods. Most people don’t care about bugs but want to reduce the health risks of insecticides, so most people’s decisions will be driven by that consideration.
Great paper, Jeff! I’m glad more people are thinking about how to help insects.
I agree that a humane-insecticide campaign could reduce its risk of being misinterpreted as opposing insecticide use if it made uncertainty about the sign of pesticides for insect welfare a prominent part of its message—e.g., if that statement were within the first sentence of its press releases. Still, it’s easy for people to glance at a headline like, “Insect-welfare advocates fight the pain that insecticides cause to bugs” and think to themselves “Yeah, I try to buy organic/IPM food!” and then not read further.
I’m unsure whether a campaign to subsidize humane insecticides would be better than generally promoting concern for wild-insect suffering, though it is often helpful to work on concrete projects to avoid just talking and never getting around to acting. A humane-insecticides program would require a fair amount of initial work to research which insecticides to promote and to network with farmers, but this process could itself have outreach value and might garner media attention.
I think promoting gravel lawns for people who actively manage their lawns could be a competitively good intervention. Here are some of its advantages over humane insecticides.
Jeff writes:
I would guess that most people would regard pesticide use as a necessary evil, but much of the public would prefer that food were grown without insecticides, so if you’re not at least in principle opposed to insecticides, that could look bad. Likewise, most people support the creation of parking lots when necessary, but I think most also regard parking-lot creation in itself as something of a moral cost.
If insecticide use does prevent net insect suffering (which is unclear but not implausible), then we would currently be in a pretty good scenario, given that most food is sprayed with insecticides. Causing people to think more about insecticide use would almost certainly increase sales of IMP and organic foods. Most people don’t care about bugs but want to reduce the health risks of insecticides, so most people’s decisions will be driven by that consideration.