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But as women become educated and have careers the child birth rate drops.
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Oh it works, no doubt about it, but it's not required.
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Well actually they sort of do. Being that poor means that infant mortality is very high, so lots of children don't survive. Further to that, they don't exactly have sweet pension schemes - they need the kids to work the land for them.
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Not that many. 2 - 4 surviving children would do it. Any more and you're deliberately creating a lack of resources for your own short-term benefit.
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Yes, but to get 2-4 SURVIVING children you have to have silly numbers of children.
Mali has a 10% infant mortality rate (compared to 0.5% in the UK).
If 10% are dying before their first birthday then the attrition over the first 18 years in gonna be huge.
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Right, so you make a few more, that's not the problem.
But they're evidently making too many.
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Quite possibly, but you never know exactly how many you need. Some people may be lucky and others won't be. So they just err on the side of caution and keep going.
Education and availability of protection may help too.
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Even if population freezes, there are areas humans are outconsuming its resources.
As towns expand, they are surprised when foxes, bears, etc appear in "their" yards, soon dead.
Rivers are being bled dry all along their paths by growing cities and towns.
Farms are being overused to feed us, without the fallow season.
China is buying up land in other countries to farm. People are going hungry there while food is shipped back to China.
Toxic landfills are appearing in countries (electronics, etc). Coincidentally, illnesses are appearing in those same areas, from runoff and unsafe recycling methods.
Untreated sewage is still being dumped into rivers and oceans in this age.
Greedy corporations insist on wasting drinking water to frack gas out of the ground.
No, I don't think we fit into nature very well. 
I need an app that will automatically deliver a new BBBBBBBBaBB (beautiful blonde bimbo brandishing bountiful bobbing bare breasts and bodacious butt) every day.
John Simmons / outlaw programmer
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I agree with all that you say, but think of it from the point of Europe only. In developed countries, don't we fit into nature quite well?
(Admittedly we send a lot of stuff abroad for recycling which we shouldn't.)
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I'm sure that your postulation is made in good faith, but it really misses the point. Sure, some wildlife thrives because of man's presence. In North America we have reccoons and skunks that love our garbage. We have invasives like European Starlings and Eurasian Sparrows that are not intimidated by man's presence and love our bird feeders. In the UK there are foxes. But, for all the species that tolerate/get along with us, there are tens, hundreds, thousands that we are driving to extinction. We have badgers (different species in N.Am and Europe, but all in trouble), wolverines, Polar Bears (will almost certainly be extirpated from the wild within 100 years), in Britain, the humble, loveable and pest-devouring hedgehog ....
Some species need more space than we give them (e.g., the Lynx), some are out-competed by invasives or species that thrive from our presence (The Eastern Bluebird was almost wiped out, the Red Squirrel in Britain) ....
Ecology is a vast web of interdependence. Species have gone extinct in the past with and without man's help. New species come along. This is evolution, BUT, the rate at which it is happening is unprecedented in known history. We are having as big an affect on the world's wildlife now as ice ages have in the past (and whatever whacked the dinosaurs!). Look at the Passenger Pigeon in North America. Its extinction has let ticks run wild with the ever increasing affect of Lyme Disease.
We are messing up our home like a frat kid after a bender. David Attenborough was merely stating a fact. It has happened, it is happening and it will happen. I'd like to see us mitigate more, plan and execute more wildlife sustainability and stop burying our heads in the sand.
Most of all, as a keen environmentalist and nature lover, I'm sad!
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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I don't think there are thousands of species at risk though, I have certainly seen no evidence. Polar bears are doing perfectly OK all in all, Badgers are so numerous in the UK they are causing TB again, Hedgehogs are in decline, but this actually highlights what I am getting at, we actually care and do something about it in developed countries. http://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/leaflets/sobh.pdf[^]
I cant comment for the US though but clearly people like you do care, as do almost al people who aren't sociopaths. So we do care for nature actively and I believe that mans actions necessarily impact it negatively.
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Hey Matt, be careful about bandying "the US" about, I'm an ex-Brit in Canada mate! 
Sorry, but thousands is an understatement. CITES lists 5,600 animals and 30,000 plants: http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/species.php[^]. These are only the one that they are attempting to protect. There are many more that have not even been identified that are threatened.
Polar bears: Weights have been falling as have birth rates. The population is currently reasonably stable, but it is more fragile than ever. There have been reports of them switching to other foods (with the declne in seal availability) but the consensus in the scientific community is due to the combination of the dissappearing ice cap and ranging more widely for alternate food sources bringing them into more conflict with man, Polar Bears are in trouble.
I'm glad to hear that Brock is on the rebound, clearly I'm out-of-date (I've been here for almost 20 years!) Agreed that the cute and cuddly do get special attention, , but the not so cute are ignored . Every species that is prematurely lost is a shame and each species typically has multiple dependent species.
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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You are completely leaving out the impact of farming, and all the large animals in Europe have been wiped out already, so your baseline is already way off. If you are willing to completely change the way we live, grow food and protect the environment, then perhaps we could make a change.
In the US, we've killed off all the natural predators for deer, so we have to keep them in check through hunting. Bringing the system back in balance would mean reintroducing wolves throughout much of the country.
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Well, the boar survives very well on the continent, even if its gone from the UK. I don't know how many other large animals you are thinking of though. There are Wolves in the alps, and bears in the Balkans I believe still. Deer in the UK are so numerous they are posing a problem to some trees now.
So really all big animals that I can think of are still there in Europe. What did you have in mind?
As for farming, there is so much land set aside these days because Europe over produces that I don't see how it is more of a threat than it was. Plus production is far more efficient these days, we are getting more and more from a square meter of land.
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I thought Malaysian Airlines offered the shortest flights? 
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On the contrary! Malaysian Airlines offers the longest flight - it never ends!
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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P0mpey3 wrote: I thought Malaysian Airlines offered the shortest flights
I thought Concorde holds that record. 
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105 minutes is pretty long, compared to some: Westray to Papa Westray[^]
Admittedly they don't use Airbus A380s, but that's probably because the runway would have to be longer than the island... 
You looking for sympathy?
You'll find it in the dictionary, between sympathomimetic and sympatric
(Page 1788, if it helps)
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London Paris is short, I did it once, it takes longer to taxi then fly, the plane goes up, they throw drinks at you, it immediately nose dives, and you are at CDG. Its nuts.
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Munchies_Matt wrote: the plane goes up, they throw drinks at you, it immediately nose dives
Ah, the legendary Parisian waiter service!
You looking for sympathy?
You'll find it in the dictionary, between sympathomimetic and sympatric
(Page 1788, if it helps)
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This was BA actually, they had to virtually abseil the drinks trolley at a running pace down the aisle before the plane headed groundwards.
Mind you, not as bad as the flight you linked, just looked, that's mad. 47 seconds! Just crazy. Why not use a boat, it must be cheaper!
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Assuming the fastest connection available [IP/AC] it'd take longer to load the page than to take the flight.
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During my first holiday abroad I was quite naive about the joys of flying.
We took off from Miami to fly to St Lucia on an MD-11 after a short flight we landed, it was a shock to find out this wasn't "our stop"
After 4 more take-offs and landings, with flights of around 10-20 minutes duration we did eventually land on St Lucia, our luggage didn't though, it took and extra three days for that to arrive.
Oh the memories.
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