Fighting Mosquitos

For starters, you cannot say "mosquitoes" - as others have pointed out, there are ~3500 separate mosquito species, only ~100 bite humans, and only several dozen transmit disease.

I don't see any reason to only target those that transmit diseases. Target ones that are simply annoying because they string the average person, gives everyone a clear reason to support the proposal. There are also people with allergies or who simply don't heal the stinged area very well.

Also, I don't think country-level eradication plans (even for a single species) have the slightest chance of working long-term due to persistent re-invasion risk.

If you have to continue paying a few million each year to keep the mosquito population near zero that's no problem for any industrialized country if there's public will.

Narrowness is a virtue here, and this level of biological imprecision could alienate potential allies who will take you as reckless and uninformed.

Don't worry as far as biological imprecision goes. I don't invest the kind of effort required for being precise for a LW post to explore the idea but I would certainly invest the necessary effort if I wrote an actual petition and tried to make it viral.

I also made a choice against immediately crossposting to the effective altruism board or other venues to be able to iterate based on feedback.

(A related point is that the most promising interventions for eradication (like the sterile insect technique) are species specific, so it makes sense to start with the highest-priority target. Because [complex chain of reasoning to fill in later], I think aedes albopictus is likely the best bet.)

According to the map on Wikipedia we don't have any aedes albopictus in Germany but 4 neighboring countries have them. That means that it's not a valid target for German activism. Otherwise do you disagree with that map?

This type of objection, more than the financial cost, would be the main obstacle to overcome.

Eradicating any organism would have serious consequences for ecosystems — wouldn’t it? Not when it comes to mosquitoes, finds Janet Fang.

— "A world without mosquitoes"

(Louie links that in his post, but it's only one link out of 14, so I am rescuing it.)

There are 3,500 different kinds of mosquitos and only 100 of them bite humans. To the extent that mosquitos are food for something larger the mosquitos species that don't bite humans can do the job.

I'm not aware of research showing improved immune systems because of mosquito bites.

I'm also very cautious about manipulating our complex environment without really understanding what is going on. But in this case, after careful reading of the post (where it is explicitly mentioned to keep healthy mosquitoe populations in the lab until sure) and Wikipedia I tend to agree that this would reduce human suffering without noticable environmental impact. Apparently there even have been studies to the effect:

Studies have shown that this process has been very effective in preventing sleeping sickness in people who live in the area.

I still upvote your post because you do name a few points that are all not addressed by the article. And there could be more which are plausibly problematic.

Are you more than one million human deaths per year of cautious?

Case in point: the Four Pests Campaign.

Humans and domesticated animals make up roughly 98% of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass. I were looking for to effectively minimize humans ecological impact, mosquitos would not be where I would begin.

I think appealing to personal self interest of people hating to be stuck by mosquitos is more likely to mobilize people instead of trying to go after Red/Blue tribes.

Or we could see that sometimes we actually have shared interests, and act on them.

To convince Blues let's say that opposing eradicating the biting mosquitoes is racist since mosquitoes kill so many Africans, and that Reds don't want us to kill mosquitoes because they fear African population growth.

In practice Blues seem remarkably uninterested in the actual welfare of Blacks (or women) when in interferes with their other narratives. Thus I don't expect this to become an issue that gets Blue support for the same reason Rotherham didn't.

You're not allowed to kill members of an endangered species.

More precisely, you're not allowed to kill members of species your government has designated as endangered.

If the government agrees to your program of eliminating mosquitoes, I don't see many legal problems there. On the other hand, if you don't, I'm pretty sure you won't be allowed to proceed.

It seems like it would be easier to start with Africa, where the species is dangerous to humans and killing it off is more reasonable, and then try to convince other countries to use the technology just to reduce annoyances.

Since 1999 Mosquitos killed at least half the amount of Americans as 9/11. Freakonomics said that an American life is worth something between 1 and 10 million dollar for purposes of public policy. It seems like a cost effective intervention for reducing deaths in the US.

I would guess that there are bio-safety laws besides the endangered species list that come into play when you do interventions on that scale.

Even if laws on the books don't already exist paperwork can be fast if the bureaucracy things you are messing with them. You need the buy in of the power that be.

That means I would mean that you actually have to build the requisite organisation to put the project into place. On the other hand writing petitions or even a referendum is easier.

Lastly I doubt that you can legally do this without special government permission in any country, so you need to engage the government anyway.

In this case the most efficient way seems to involve inserting a few genes into your new mosquitos to make them sterile. Releasing billions of gene-manipulated mosquitos into the wild isn't something you can do without government approval.

Let's find out! Who deserves to die?

Human-biting mosquitoes?

[pollid:781]

Bed bugs?

[pollid:782]

Headlice?

[pollid:783]

Fleas?

[pollid:784]

Ticks?

[pollid:785]

Cockroaches?

[pollid:786]

Tapeworms?

[pollid:787]

Colorado potato beetles?

[pollid:788]

Boll Weevils?

[pollid:789]

Rats?

[pollid:790]

All are more difficult to target. Breeding a gazillion male rats that can't produce offspring is harder than raising corresponding number of mosquitos.

If you look at the linked post, you will find Holden (from Give Well) saying that Bill Gates foundation is likely going to study the issue in further detail.

Furthermore Africa is much bigger than a European country like Germany, so it should be easier to do in Germany than in a big country with many remote villages.

Holden Karnofsky in the comments of the linked article:

I’ve discussed these sort of thing before and have an impression that the Gates Foundation is interested in it. Whether we look into this sort of thing would depend on whether we select malaria control/elimination as a priority area for GiveWell Labs, a determination that will probably be made in 2015. My off-the-cuff guess is that this sort of work is being adequately explored with support from BMGF.

If it were genuine, Bill Gates would have picked it up. It says something about Bill Gates that this applies for charities, but not for $20 bills lying in the street.

No. Having a one Euro tax rate increase wouldn't qualify for me as spending "too much money". If I would run the project I would pay more money in hosting costs and website registration.

I am quite surprised

Suprise means your prior are likely to be wrong. Congratulation on having found an opportunity to update them in the right direction.

Talking about environment I suppose first we should make it more eco-friendly, finally get rid of fossil fuels and stop transforming the planet we live on into a heap of rubbish.

That's not something you can buy with a few million. Effective Altruism is about focusing your efforts where you can actually get a good return for the money that's spend. It's not about listing problems and tackling the most "pressing" problem regardless the return that you get for your money.

In this case getting rid of mosquitoes via releasing large numbers of sterilized male mosquitoes might be done money that's otherwise payed for anti-mosquito spray by individual people.