Some interesting passages I ran across...

in a book titled: "The Ptarmigan's Dilemma" by John Theberge and Mary Theberge.

The biosphere is under assault. Climate change is happening faster than species can adapt. Ecosystems are under threat. Tropical forests are falling at the rate of a football field per minute. Amphibians worldwide are going extinct. Passerine birds are declining. The sixth great global extinction is well underway, with an alarming number of species slipping into the extinction vortex. Causing , driving, or exacerbating all these things is a current human population s8ize and growth rate beyond any imaginable global, sustainable carrying capacity. (p. 352-353)

Later on the same page they write there is hope but only if human animals align themselves with behaviors to support a sustainable Earth:

The working end of such an alignment would be a rejection of the belief that growth is good, increased consumption is necessary, resources are unlimited, everything natural is stock-and-commodity just there for the taking, and human dominance over nature is a divine right. (p.353)

The number of humans is astonishing, for instance there are now about 1.3 billion people in China...the human population of the whole planet in 1900 was only about 1.6 billion. (source)

The population of the state of California is about 38 million. The population of the city of Tokyo metropolitan area is about 36 million. (source, source). Amazing (horribly so).

Just in my lifetime, the number of human animals on the planet has more than tripled.

We are a species of primates out of control (no disrespect to the other primate species).

Help.

I can't wrap my mind around.......

the fact that there are only an estimated 3,000 or so tigers left in the wild in the whole world. Especially when you couple this with the fact that there are an estimated 30,000 Mcdonald's worldwide.

This means that for every tiger living in their original habitat, there are 10 Mcdonald's spewing out colored sugar water and cholesterol. One tiger......ten McDonald's.

The wikipedia article also notes that at the beginning of the 20th Century there were an estimated 100,000 tigers living in the wild.

Estimates for the lion population are a little more variable but a likely high guess is 20,000 or so left in the wild......again there are many more of the golden arch places than there are lions. In 1950 the estimated wild lion population was 400,000.

I am not particularly interested in a world where fat calorie factories outnumber tigers. I do believe we human animals are totally out of control....in many many ways.

One thing for sure.....

The single most significant thing that can be done for the environment, for the animals, for all that live on the earth is to reduce the number of humans on the planet. There are way more than twice as many people in the US than there were when I was born, and I assure you life is not twice as good. It has been going in the other direction. We would be wise to provide a tax credit for those that choose to remain childless, however I will not hold my breath waiting for wisdom to kick in. In fact, were we an honorable people, considering what we did and do to the folks that really own the country we would have no more children....none. And when a family died out, what they own would revert to the ancestors of the original inhabitants.....such would be the honorable thing to do, I will not hold my breath waiting for that either.