When I was a kid, I remember seeing clouds of them in the school field when we went out to play. There used to be so many that they would cover your windshield. For the last few years I have hardly seen any around. Today, I only saw a single solitary bug lazily flying through the air.
I suspect the rapidly changing climate is the cause but, I guess I feel a bit of shock at realizing and reflecting on the fact that this is happening right at home.
I guess that on reflection, a good part of the shock comes from realizing only a year ago that these processes are happening right now on a accelerated time table. What people had been told over the last fifteen years was that this was a process that would unfold over the course of the 21st century, of which I could expect to see half of it over my lifetime. What is sinkIng in is that these processes will occur rapidly over my lifetime and the world will be a profoundly different place than when I was growing up at the start of this century.
It brings about a fear of the uncertain which at times I find myself comparing to the fear felt by those generations that lived through the last great crisis of capitalism in the 20th century. I suppose that is what it is at the end of the day, and if I were a historian of any kind, I might consider with appropriate foresight naming this period the Crisis of the 21st Century.