The Nonlinear Library EA - Killing the moths by Bella
Mar 25, 2024
A podcast discussing the ethical dilemma of dealing with a moth infestation using non-lethal methods in a London flat. The speaker explores the struggle of balancing humane treatment with the necessity of pest control, reflecting on the moral implications and inner conflict of exterminating the insects.
07:49
1 chevron_right 2 chevron_right 3 chevron_right
Introduction
00:00 • 2min
Struggles and Moral Dilemmas with Moth Control
01:50 • 4min
A Moral Reflection on Dealing with a Moth Infestation
05:48 • 2min
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Killing the moths, published by Bella on March 25, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
This post was partly inspired by, and shares some themes with, this Joe Carlsmith post. My post (unsurprisingly) expresses fewer concepts with less clarity and resonance, but is hopefully of some value regardless.
Content warning: description of animal death.
I live in a small, one-bedroom flat in central London. Sometime in the summer of 2023, I started noticing moths around my flat.
I didn't pay much attention to it, since they seemed pretty harmless: they obviously weren't food moths, since they were localised in my bedroom, and they didn't seem to be chewing holes in any of my clothes - months went by and no holes appeared. [1] The larvae only seemed to be in my carpet.
Eventually, their numbers started increasing, so I decided to do something about it.
I Googled humane and nonlethal ways to deal with moth infestations, but found nothing. There were lots of sources of nontoxic methods of dealing with moths - like putting out pheromone-laced glue traps, or baking them alive by heating up the air - but nothing that avoided killing them in the first place.
Most moth repellents also contained insecticide. I found one repellent which claimed to be non-lethal, and then set about on a mission:
One by one, I captured the adult moths in a large tupperware box, and transported them outside my flat.
This was pretty hard to do, because they were both highly mobile and highly fragile.
They were also really adept at finding tiny cracks to crawl into and hide from me.
I tried to avoid killing or harming them during capture, but it was hard, and I probably killed 5% or so of them in the process.
Then, I found the area where I thought they were mostly laying their eggs, and sprayed the nonlethal moth repellent that I found.
I knew that if this method was successful, it'd be highly laborious and take a long time. But I figured that so long as I caught every adult I saw, their population would steadily decline, until eventually they fell below the minimum viable population.
Also, some part of me knew that the moths were very unlikely to survive outside my flat, having adapted for indoor living and being not very weather resistant - but I mentally shrank away from this fact. As long as I wasn't killing them, I was good, right?
After some time, it became clear this method wasn't working.
Also, I was at my wit's end with the amount of time I was spending transporting moths. It was just too much.
So, I decided to look into methods of killing them.
I was looking for methods that:
Were very effective in one application.
After all, if I could kill them all at once, then I could avoid more laying eggs/hatching in the meantime, and minimise total deaths.
Had a known mechanism of action, that was relatively quick & less suffering-intense.
I called a number of pest control organisations. No, they said, they didn't know what kind of insecticide they used - it's…insecticide that kills moths (but it's nontoxic to humans, we promise!).
So, I gave up on the idea of a known mechanism of action, and merely looked for efficacy.
The pest control professionals I booked told me that, in order for their efficacy-guarantee to be valid, I needed to wash every item of clothing and soft furnishings that I owned, at 60.
For a small person with a small washing machine, a lot of soft furnishings, and no car to take them to a laundrette… this was a really daunting task.
And so - regrettably - I procrastinated.
September became December, and then the moth population significantly decreased on its own. I was delighted - I thought that if the trend continued, I'd be spared the stress and moral compromise of killing them.
But December became February, and the moths were back, in higher numbers than ever before.
It was hard to wa...
This post was partly inspired by, and shares some themes with, this Joe Carlsmith post. My post (unsurprisingly) expresses fewer concepts with less clarity and resonance, but is hopefully of some value regardless.
Content warning: description of animal death.
I live in a small, one-bedroom flat in central London. Sometime in the summer of 2023, I started noticing moths around my flat.
I didn't pay much attention to it, since they seemed pretty harmless: they obviously weren't food moths, since they were localised in my bedroom, and they didn't seem to be chewing holes in any of my clothes - months went by and no holes appeared. [1] The larvae only seemed to be in my carpet.
Eventually, their numbers started increasing, so I decided to do something about it.
I Googled humane and nonlethal ways to deal with moth infestations, but found nothing. There were lots of sources of nontoxic methods of dealing with moths - like putting out pheromone-laced glue traps, or baking them alive by heating up the air - but nothing that avoided killing them in the first place.
Most moth repellents also contained insecticide. I found one repellent which claimed to be non-lethal, and then set about on a mission:
One by one, I captured the adult moths in a large tupperware box, and transported them outside my flat.
This was pretty hard to do, because they were both highly mobile and highly fragile.
They were also really adept at finding tiny cracks to crawl into and hide from me.
I tried to avoid killing or harming them during capture, but it was hard, and I probably killed 5% or so of them in the process.
Then, I found the area where I thought they were mostly laying their eggs, and sprayed the nonlethal moth repellent that I found.
I knew that if this method was successful, it'd be highly laborious and take a long time. But I figured that so long as I caught every adult I saw, their population would steadily decline, until eventually they fell below the minimum viable population.
Also, some part of me knew that the moths were very unlikely to survive outside my flat, having adapted for indoor living and being not very weather resistant - but I mentally shrank away from this fact. As long as I wasn't killing them, I was good, right?
After some time, it became clear this method wasn't working.
Also, I was at my wit's end with the amount of time I was spending transporting moths. It was just too much.
So, I decided to look into methods of killing them.
I was looking for methods that:
Were very effective in one application.
After all, if I could kill them all at once, then I could avoid more laying eggs/hatching in the meantime, and minimise total deaths.
Had a known mechanism of action, that was relatively quick & less suffering-intense.
I called a number of pest control organisations. No, they said, they didn't know what kind of insecticide they used - it's…insecticide that kills moths (but it's nontoxic to humans, we promise!).
So, I gave up on the idea of a known mechanism of action, and merely looked for efficacy.
The pest control professionals I booked told me that, in order for their efficacy-guarantee to be valid, I needed to wash every item of clothing and soft furnishings that I owned, at 60.
For a small person with a small washing machine, a lot of soft furnishings, and no car to take them to a laundrette… this was a really daunting task.
And so - regrettably - I procrastinated.
September became December, and then the moth population significantly decreased on its own. I was delighted - I thought that if the trend continued, I'd be spared the stress and moral compromise of killing them.
But December became February, and the moths were back, in higher numbers than ever before.
It was hard to wa...