'Advanced societies' are going to have to realize that without insects man cannot survive

I fell in love with butterflies over 55 years ago back in Pennsylvania and that love stayed with me even though in my late teens and early twenties I did not pursue my love. In later years when I met my now companion, I was introduced to the profession of 'Field Biology'. He introduced me to birds, their calls and songs and we formed a consulting firm and ran it for nearly 20 years. In 1997 our region in the US was center for 2 species of butterflies that had just been list under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). Many of my associates who were aware of my early love, encouraged me to take the Federal tests and receive a permit to survey for these now endangered species. I got my permits and began to learn everything about this rare and unique butterflies. Within in a few years I was considered one of the top butterfly experts in field biology in Southern California. In my studying and learning about these butterflies, I discovered a serious flaw in the Federal ESA. They focused on adult locations and projects that desired to develop either mitigated for the adult locations or adjusted their projects to minimize or avoid the adult locations. The flaw was, in most cases the adult were no where near where the larval hostplants were and that is where the butterfly eggs were laid. In most cases they were smack in the middle of the proposed development. Over the years I tried working with the government to update their protocols abut they refused.
During this process I became more and more interested in other insect Orders and was also a regular speaker to the public mostly about butterflies but I would always insert the ecological requirements of other insects which almost always landed my future speaking engagements as well as teaching volunteer docents at many preserves and parks. What kept coming up in nearly every teaching session in the docent classes was a few who absolutely hated insects and could not get over the 'ick' factor of them.
Well I had my standard spiel about the importance of these creatures but flies, or cockroaches, etc. would not convince the few. They had no problems with butterflies until I started showing them photographs of some of my trips into Mexico or south where butterflies were attracted to pee buckets or fresh mammal scat where adults where dipping their proboscis into the fresh dung. All of a sudden many of the stalwart butterfly lovers felt different about them. When spoke about flies nearly no one liked them and when I share an interesting statistic that of the 17,000+ species of flies in the US and Canada that the role of 70%+ of flies' job in nature is just to pollinate. The looks on the entire groups faces was priceless. All of a sudden they now looked at a fly with different eyes.
Now, whenever I teach or give presentations, I always starts off with my premise, "You do not have to like these 1.3 million known species worldwide, but you will come to realize one day you are going to have to respect them because without them, humans cannot survive on this planet." I then go into every day things that people would be involved with. Things like eating, medicines, vaccinations, indicator environments, etc. Eventually the audience can see that insects are involved with well over 98% of things they do daily.
Today within the United States environmental laws are being weakened or eliminated for the sake of big business monies not realizing by doing this insects as well as plants are declining and being eliminated at an alarming rate which eventually will be that it will cost much more in the very near future to attempt to augment or replace these losses. To this day in the U.S. illegal spraying has caused the crop industry billions of dollars just because only one species of bee is impacted, the European honey bee (Apis melifera). By the way San Diego County has at least 700 species of bees and is one of the largest producer in the U.S. of Avocados, which needs bees to pollinated the flower.
I could go on with many, many other examples just in Southern California but I encourage everyone, do not ignore these creatures, Without them you cannot survive.