“Insects are the little things that run the world; life as we know it depends on the insects.”

E. O. Wilson

In the face of overwhelming environmental threats to the entire planet, promoting pollinator plots to a hundred -plus ELCA churches in the northeast corner of Minnesota perhaps may seem so minuscule as to be nearly irrelevant to the global crisis - especially when meaningfully addressing threatened ecological collapse will require sweeping, broad-scale changes in our governmental policies, our economies, our current addiction to consumptive consumerism.  But, as an old Chinese proverb states, even the longest and most difficult journey must begin with a small first step.  So, before we take a first step, let’s review the current context, the terrifying dilemma: that our earth is facing an environmental crisis of a severity never before experienced in all its history.  And this has descended on us with mind-boggling rapidity – the start of the crisis, the beginning of the plunge off the cliff, coincided with the Industrial Revolution little more than a couple centuries ago.  And most of the degradation has occurred just within our own lifetimes.   The assaults on our planet’s ecological health are many, and interrelated - climate change/global warming, habitat destruction, widespread pollution of waters and soils, ever increasing levels of toxins in the environment, pervasive takeover of many biomes by invasive species, and ongoing relentless loss of biodiversity. My comments will focus on biodiversity loss and habitat destruction.

As one, but only one of God’s beloved species, we as homo sapiens have reason to fear loss of biodiversity.  Our survival depends on it.  A few examples of where we are now, in 2025: biologists estimate that one million species face extinction, including 40% of our plants, and that 2/3 of the wildlife worldwide has disappeared. Some entomologists have written about an insect apocalypse, fearing that we are already beyond the tipping point with respect to survival of the insect populations as we know them.    Ornithologists estimate that our bird populations in North America have declined by 3 billion since ~ 1970. Renowned Pulitzer Prize winning ecologist and author Edward Wilson has written that “Insects are the little things that run the world; life as we know it depends on the insects.”  He also has said that “to save the earth, we must save one half the planet for nature.”  But already, more than half of the planet has been altered or destroyed with respect to natural habitat. Doug Tallamy, entomologist and founder of the “Home grown national parks” movement, comments that “our remaining natural areas are no longer large enough to sustain the nature that sustains us.”  In our hubris, we have overlooked an inconvenient fact:  what we have foolishly called the “lowliest” of lifeforms - bacteria, fungi, zooplankton, algae, insects, other tiny invertebrates - these form the foundation of all healthy ecosystems.  Their collapse portends ours.  Again, quoting Wilson: “Insects are the little things that run the world; life as we know it depends on the insects.” Insects disappear in proportion to the loss of the biodiversity which supports them.   Scholar Jason Hickel says, “Biodiversity loss” is such a strange euphemism for destruction of non-human beings.” 

Now here is a point which bears emphasis, and which I think many folks do not realize:  90% of the insects which support our local food webs – and this includes pollinators – can only flourish and develop on the plants with which they share an evolutionary history. Until the past 200 years, such evolutionary change was gradual enough that the insects could “keep up with the changes” in the plant communities with which they coexisted.  No longer.  We are now in a geologic era some term the “Anthropocene”, as the  earth-altering changes happening in the 20th and 21st century are, for the first time ever - largely driven by human caused activities which lead to global warming and wholesale destruction of ecosystems.  Remembering the caveat that we need to preserve, set aside, or restore half the planet for nature.  let’s look at our own state, Minnesota, for a regional perspective.  Less than 1% of our native prairie environment still survives, less than 1% of our old growth coniferous r forests survive, and about 10% of the original “big hardwoods” ecosystem persists.  Sounds like this is a smidge below the 50% threshold.     How about our neighbors?  In Iowa, 1/10 of 1% of native prairies persist; in Illinois, it’s 1/100 of 1%.  If we accept the possibility that the flourishing of our insect populations is essential to our survival – and most of us are selfish enough to want “survival” for ourselves and our children and grandchildren – then we need to embrace long overdue humility and honor insects at the very least as “one of God’s precious other than human creatures”.  Indeed, if they can save us but we cannot save ourselves without them, I think they qualify for the sobriquet “more than human.” 

So, with a nod to our own self-interest again- namely, producing enough food on the planet to feed all 8 billion of us – we need pollinators to assure ongoing adequate food production for our own species.  Not all foods are pollinator dependent, but about one third of our diet is, including many fruits, nuts, vegetables which provide the wonderful richness and diversity of food sources with which we have been blessed.  Many of the pollinator species have life cycles which include larval forms (caterpillars) which themselves supply a critical source of food for birds, bats, predatory bees, and carnivorous beetles. The idea behind providing as much natural habitat as possible is this: each little reestablished plot of native wildflowers, or shrubs, or native trees can become a small nutritional and nesting refuge for the bees, butterflies, moths, beetles and flies which require them for their survival and reproduction.  They can find those “islands” in what has become for them, an otherwise vast and inhospitable ocean of life-threatening scarcity – the “hardscape” of concrete, asphalt, industrial and urban sprawl, and the “softscape” of intensive monoculture in agriculture - think corn, soybeans, wheat -  and our own societal obsession with another version of a monoculture sterile from the perspective of a pollinator – our endless expanse of manicured golf courses and weed-killer marinated lawns which occupy hundreds of millions of acres of our land from coast to coast.   We as humans have caused the flood of environmental destruction which threatens the survival of the planet, and now we must also become the metaphorical “ark” which can perhaps save us, and our fellow God given creatures, from that flood.  Think of each pollinator garden as a little ark, an oasis of hope and hopefully survival, for our beleaguered invertebrate friends.     

Now the other question – why the church?  Instead of focusing on merely a hundred thirty or more churches in a single synod, why instead not try to energize tens of thousands of the congregants who comprise their memberships?  Try to coax them, on their own plots of land, to establish pollinator plots.  This would foster good individual stewardship. And strength in numbers.   More “bang for the buck”.  Right?   Although maximal involvement of individuals is laudable, and of course encouraged, I perceive a problem:   as an individual, frankly, I am willing to confess that at times I am absolutely overwhelmed by the enormity of this crisis. Depending on the day, I have felt angry, despairing, overwhelmed, exhausted, pessimistic, hopeless, numb, distracted, unfocused, inept, cynical, or paralyzed.   Having said that, when I remember to immerse myself in the wisdom and promise of my faith tradition, or a fellow traveler knows to reposition me within that promise.  I find an escape route from the dead end of hopelessness.  In the book of Genesis, its first chapters restore focus and guidance regarding what role we should play – calling us to be stewards of creation along with the Creator.  Not with dominion, as in some apparently off-base translations from the Hebrew, but as “keeper and tiller” – that is, as one who exercises responsibility for maintaining the well-being of the garden of Earth.  To quote David Rhoads, “It might be more appropriate to say that we are responsible TO creation. Most fundamentally, however, we are responsible TO God to care for creation.  This is our vocation, under God.”  I hear God saying, “Yes, you have really screwed up.  You know that I cherish the life of a single sparrow, and under your watch, 3 billion of its kin have disappeared during the half century of your own adulthood.   Not exactly what I had in mind when I hoped the creatures in my creation would flourish and multiply.  Nonetheless, I have not given up on you.  Repent, turn direction.  You will be forgiven.   Get over it.   I need your hands, and I need them now.”   The notion that our primary vocation   is to steward the earth and its resources – which implies loving God with all one’s heart and loving one’s neighbor as oneself – is not a new-fangled one.  Five centuries ago, Martin Luther, when asked what he would do if the world were to end tomorrow, is reported to have said, “I would plant an apple tree”.  More than 30 years ago, the ELCA produced its Social Statement on Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice.  This document did not mince words when acknowledging the role our individual and collective sins have played in disrupting and dishonoring creation.  But it emphasized the gift of hope.  Zechariah then, and we now, are captives of hope.  I love being captured by hope; I need to be captured by hope.  Then, we can dream dreams and look forward to a new creation.  God wants a new creation. God, our faith teaches us, wants to live with us here, on this poisoned and degraded planet.  That, at least, was John’s vision in Revelation – chapter 21, verse 2 “the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.”  

To conclude, I will leap from the very end of the Bible back to its very beginning and revisit the flood account.  Here, I am indebted to Dr. Diane Jacobson, a Luther Seminary Old Testament professor emerita, who with her husband Paul have been vibrant and invaluable members of the Northeastern Minnesota Synod EcoFaith team which is one of the presenters of this Summit.  Diane wrote this: “and yet the Biblical account of the flood is also a tale of promise.  The rainbow stands as a sign to us and to God.  God sees the rainbow, the sign of the covenant, and remembers the divine promise. Abundant, fruitful, and ongoing life is the will of God.  The dove of peace with the olive branch in her beak joins the rainbow as God’s sign that the chaotic waters will never again have the final say.”  So, as an individual, and as churches, we  are empowered to shake off our malaise and paralysis, dirty our hands, and plant those pollinator gardens, confident that they too will join the rainbow and the olive branch as signs that we retain hope and confidence that our Creator God dwells in the world, and though grieving its demise, passionately desires its restoration.  Amazingly, through unfathomable grace, the Creator still welcomes us, and unquestionably needs us, as co-conspirators in this great act.