We're undoubtedly in the midst of another mass extinction, caused by human activity. Here's another one that will freak you out:

Oh, my. I hadn't even noticed how much less I've had to clean my Windshield lately. That is a very bad sign...

I'm 51, I spent the 90's in Louisiana, and since my wife doesn't fly, we have driven across the USA more times than we can count. In the 90's, if you didn't have a bug screen on your grill, the LoveBugs would clog your radiator and you would over heat. You also needed the windshield scrib and squeegee to scrub off the bug splatter every time you filled up. Now, you don't need either of them.

This has bothered me for years. It's a really strange thing to be telling younger relatives about how you legitimately could not drive any substantial distance without windshield cleaner at certain times of year. I remember them being plastered across the front edge of the hood and against the radiator after a long trip.

It's one of the most visibly different things about the world today, IMO, and it's a little eerie.

When I was a kid, there used to be hundreds of fireflies in my backyard in the summer. Now, I get excited to see even two or three.

I blame the anti-mosquito pesticide services half my neighbors seem to hire.

Not quite correct. The 2020 image should have a car completely covered in a dust of green pollen because city planners only planted male trees for decades because female trees would produce fruit or seed and be a "nuisance" and/or create trash/animal bait etc...

But if they only planted female trees, they would never get fertilized, so they wouldn't produce fruit anyway... Or pollen.

Worst case scenario, they would produce fruit, and cities would still smell bad and have rodent problems. But without the allergies.

I'm so dopey. I thought this was suggesting that we'd invented some clever formulation to stop dead bugs sticking to windshields in 2020 and that we'd all have fully autonomous cars by 2050.

Whoa, this is disconcerting. My folks used to run a rental car agency and I helped out every now and then by cleaning cars. I remember cleaning so many bugs off of cars 20ish years ago, and now on my own car - barely nothing. :(

Idk but I’m reminded of the 2002 adaptation of The Time Machine. One of the great achievements of our civilization was an advanced AI with all of our collective knowledge that you could converse with. Feels like our AI tech is on track to get there by the time we start dying off en mass lol

I'm [emotionally*] ready for the hyper-industrialized moon-scape our planet will become once our environment completely collapses. I think there will be a point past which any environmental protection measures will be useless because there's nothing left to protect so industrial landscapes will become the norm.

My parents never gave me money unless I worked for it and washing their cars was one of those few things they did pay me to do. I remember always having to scrub bugs off the front, it was the hardest part. I've literally never washed my road cars because its just dust.

Last panel should have one of those stock scanning robots behind the wheel.

Stop cutting your lawns and dig a pond. It's not going to stop industrial scale destruction, but it's something actionable that you can do yourself and see the positive impact right at home. If enough homes do it, a network of gardens can become a macro system.