chickened,
I am a biologist and an agriculturist that has a reality rooted in all sorts of conflicts of interests. In the former role I work with many species that are in trouble because of inadequate volumes of suitable habitat and / or lack the inability to colonize suitable new habitat as existing habitat is degraded. My other role often involves activities that do the degrading. We gotta have food and a place to romp but do we have to have so much per person. We do not share well, especially with critters that require large expanses and have trouble crossing landscapes we modify, critters that require habitats that are ephemeral, or critters that require habitat that not subject to our typical management practices. If we set aside enough of the landscape for other critters, especially the bigger and keystone species, then we are also storing a form of fat that can be used by future generations. That fat can be genetic diversity with future nutritional or medical value, intact ecosystems that can provide insight into how we can more efficiently manage the ecosystems of immediate to humans. That fat could be an emergency use only landscape when drought or other disasters temporally degrade productivity of areas managed for our immediate uses. If we do not set aside the fat that is adequate for supporting lots of wildlife that is selfsustaining, then we could find our selves in boat similar to that occupied by folks in east African countries or China were droughts or other food production compromising events can not be compensated for and can lead to serious stress to a society.
The real root of issue is do we gotta have so many people. My co-workers would rather play in traffic than deal with that part of the equation relating to how we stress the environment.
