Canada panics over overpopulation

POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Monday, June 15, 2026 05:17
VIEWED: 5416
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Originally posted by dreamtrove:

MAGONSDAUGHTER, sorry, I think you have a misapprehension about the american standard of living. Either that or I do, but I've seen an awful lot of America.

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As a nation, America consumes a whopping chunk of the earth's resources. Didn't say it was evenly consumed per capita.

Every thing is relative. Given that great chunks of the worlds population don't have access to the basics of clean water, enough food and housing, even a poor american would probably appear to be living like a king to someone in Somali.

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In the United States:

Reducing consumption without reducing use is a costly delusion. If undeveloped countries consumed at the same rate as the US, four complete planets the size of the Earth would be required. People who think that they have a right to such a life are quite mistaken.

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Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy.
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On average, one American consumes as much energy as
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2 Japanese
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6 Mexicans
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13 Chinese
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31 Indians
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128 Bangladeshis
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307 Tanzanians
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370 Ethiopians
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The population is projected to increase by nearly 130 million people - the equivalent of adding another four states the size of California - by the year 2050.
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Forty percent of births are unintended.
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Americans eat 815 billion calories of food each day - that's roughly 200 billion more than needed - enough to feed 80 million people.
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Americans throw out 200,000 tons of edible food daily.
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The average American generates 52 tons of garbage by age 75.
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The average individual daily consumption of water is 159 gallons, while more than half the world's population lives on 25 gallons.
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Fifty percent of the wetlands, 90% of the northwestern old-growth forests, and 99% of the tall-grass prairie have been destroyed in the last 200 years.
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Eighty percent of the corn grown and 95% of the oats are fed to livestock.
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Fifty-six percent of available farmland is used for beef production.
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Every day an estimated nine square miles of rural land are lost to development.
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There are more shopping malls than high schools.


Other Facts:

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250 million people have died of hunger-related causes in the past quarter-century — roughly 10 million each year.
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700 to 800 million people, perhaps even as many as a billion, don't get enough food to support normal daily activities
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Africa now produces 27% less food per capita than in 1964.
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1.7 billion people lack access to clean drinking water, and by the year 2000, the number of urban dwellers without access to safe water and sanitation services is expected to grow by 80%.
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0.1% of pesticides applied to crops reaches the pest, the rest poisons the ecosystem.
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Each year 25 million people are poisoned by pesticides in less developed countries, and over 20,000 die.
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One-third of the world's fish catch and more than one-third of the world's total grain output is fed to livestock.
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It takes an average of 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat in modern Western farming systems. It takes 5,214 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef.
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Each person in the industrialized world uses as much commercial energy as 10 people in the developing world.

source: Paul Ehrlich and the Population Bomb / PBS [the PBS website is defunct but the book by the same name is available]

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DT, some of your theories just amaze me.

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I know they know exactly what they're doing. There's probably not a huge gap between man and squirrel in intelligence. Squirrels and mice both can figure out fairly complex machinery. I'm sure they can figure out where trees come from. It's not rocket science.

But okay, you want proof? Here's just a small inkling of it: If a squirrel didn't know jack about trees, then why would it wander all over the yard and plant trees 10 to 20 feet apart? Why wouldn't he just bury them all in the same place? Also, why bury them at a seed-depth. Why not just stockpile them in a warren. Oh, I'm sure he does the latter. Those are the ones he intends to eat. The squirrel who digs up nuts is the one who miscalculated, and ran out of food. But that's his backup plan.

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I feed squirrels in our back yard; we have approximately 5 reds and 2 greys that come around regularly. But no, I don't see their storage techniques, around here we have no snow and temps are mild, they don't have to bury food, and we have dogs so they don't come down in the back yard,. Plus I feed them.

Squirrels bury nuts in different places, so that if one cache is gone, there are others. That's a proven, accepted fact. Some do stockpile them:

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Red squirrels store conifer cones in middens, or piles, instead of burying them like their larger cousins do. The middens made by red squirrels can be up to 30 feet across and 1.5 feet deep!

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http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Home/species_a_to_z/speciesguide_default/re
dsquirrel/tabid/6915/Default.aspx

Actually, around here burying nuts is a negative trait for them, and that's when they rely on my feeders most:

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In temperate regions early spring is the hardest time of year for squirrels, since buried nuts begin to sprout and are no longer available for the squirrel to eat, and new food sources have not become available yet. During these times squirrels rely heavily on the buds of trees.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrel

What you may have observed may also be explained another way:

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To protect their winter food stocks from potential thieves, they put on an elaborate show of burying non-existent nuts and seeds, a study has shown.

Scientists say the fake burials are designed to confuse any rival squirrels, birds or humans who might be watching.

The incidence of fake burials goes up when they think their food is under threat. Dr Steele recruited a group of undergraduates to follow the squirrels and find out where they were burying food. The number of bogus interments shot up as soon as the human volunteers began to raid the food stocks - suggesting that the creatures were becoming even more deceptive as a reaction to the raids.

Experts are divided on whether the latest research means they are capable of reason or whether they simply get into routines which work for them.

Dr Lisa Leaver at the University of Exeter said: "They may just have learned through trial and error that certain behaviours protect their food from theft."

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-508696/Cunning-squirrels-make-
bogus-burials-nuts-seeds-fool-onlookers.html

I'm sorry, but the concept that squirrels' memories, tho' razor sharp, are long enough and their intelligence, while admittedly quite high for animals, is high enough that they make the connection between the burying of their nuts and the growth of trees much later, and do so for that PURPOSE, is just, well, let's just say I disagree. Nowhere can I find any scientific backing to this concept. Yes, squirrels are bright little buggers, and are ruthlessly cunning. For ANIMALS.

As to getting around town by telephone wires, of course, it's a natural progression. Squirrels use trees as their highway; little difference between that and phone poles. And most smart gathering animals cotton to how to get food out of something, one way or another.

But "not rocket science"? "Not a huge gap between man and squirrel in intelligence"?, well, I w

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