With the recent news (from Michael Casey, Associated Press) that fireflies are disappearing from the earth – due to light pollution (too many lights), heavy pollution (too much industrial waste) and several other man-made alterations (environmental apathy, perhaps), it’s good to know that Ultimate Fighting is approaching mainstream popularity (according to brand guru, Rob Walker in his Consumed column in the New York Times) and banking record consumer dollars.
One is good for business. The other is bad for bugs. What’s the relationship?
First, the bugs. According to the few experts there are, fireflies – or lightning bugs, as many children call them – are just not showing up anymore, chased away, in most estimations, by artificial light. One of the problems basically is that the insects won’t mate under the spreading soak of suburban floodlights and sprawling shopping center halogen. Would you?
We can’t stop kudzu, fire ants, mosquitoes or snakehead fish and we can’t cure cancer, heart disease or end our addiction to foreign oil, but we can rid ourselves of one of the friendliest things that shares our habitat? We can’t stop murder and poverty but by-god, we can un-light the fire of those dreaded fireflies.
It is kind of embarrassing to be a human when you think about that.
The glowworms possible extinction isn’t just an American phenomenon but a worldwide reality. Some species of fireflies are gone entirely.
Since we can’t eat them, why should you care about those lights in the gloaming when there’s twelve channels and pay-per-view of two tattooed behemoths, face-pounding and head-locking into a high-def, bloody pulp on cable?
“Toss me another beer, y’all. Meat-locker Jones is about to uncork a can of whupass on that ol’ boy next to the fence over there.”
Those who ignore the possibility of global warming and turn their backs on any suggestion of human responsibility for abusing the earth and squandering the resources that keep us alive sometimes point out that this type of bleeding heart, tree-huggery is no big deal. After all, there are approximately 2,000 species of the insect we’d call a firefly. But the math is not on the fly’s side. Seventy percent, for instance, have disappeared completely from entire cities in Thailand. Researchers across the United States have noticed precipitous drops in lightning bug populations as well.
Sorry, you say, we have more important things to think about than fireflies, spotted owls and two-headed frogs sucking up spun-off neutrons down by the iridescent river. We have pro sports, for instance (which sort of includes college football, college basketball and maybe the Olympics).
That brings us to Ultimate Fighting – which is, by the way, illegal in the State of New York. Even old fighters like John McCain called it “human cockfighting.”
“You got beat into a lobotomy and all I got was this crummy t-shirt.”
It’s not that crummy, however, when people buy $22 million a year worth. Brands like Tapout (when a combatant can’t take the punishment anymore, he taps out) are unloading logo’d MMA apparel in 20,000 stores nationwide. I bet my 80-something mother would take a few pop-knots inside a chain-linked square for less than 22 mil.
I’m not sure exactly what it says about us as humans when we would rather beat the hell out of each other than chase fireflies through the woods, but maybe it just fits with our desire to dominate, well, everything, until it taps out.
Are local laws keeping you from throwing down on your neighbor when his backyard grill smoke drifts over and disturbs your hammocky slumber? Install 40 floodlights on the roof eaves and give those damned fireflies a beat-down they will not soon forget. You’ll feel much better.
Angry at that rush hour jackass for driving too slowly, cutting you off or snagging your favorite parking spot? Don’t get road rage; get even with an entire species. Field-dress a few fireflies with a klieg light. After all, they’re just screwing around out there anyway. If we can’t keep national politicians from having rampant affairs, the least we can do is put an end to firefly whoopee in our own backyards.
