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Here's How America Uses Its Land:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/

The biggest percentage is for pasture. I had no idea. More food is grown for livestock than what humans consume too.

I think the state and national parks need to be bigger.

The amount of pasture land, especially in the west, is due to how arid the land is. Most of it is unsuitable for crops and you need something like 100 acres per cow to legally use it.

 KTG17 wrote:
Here's How America Uses Its Land:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/

The biggest percentage is for pasture. I had no idea. More food is grown for livestock than what humans consume too.

I think the state and national parks need to be bigger.

I think this is the same in every country. Or at least every developed one. Russia being the exception because it has a ridiculous amount of land, most of it too cold for large scale agriculture. Canada and Scandinavian countries may be in the same situation.
Most land is used for food production, and most of that food is used to feed our livestock so we can have tasty steaks and yoghurt. And ice cream. Never forget ice cream.

Our "addiction" to meat is a longstanding problem that will only get worse in the future. That's why there are so many researchers looking into alternative forms of protein and fake meat.

I disagree that the consumption if meat and dairy is the problem. Those looking to switch humanity to alternate sources of protein are attempting to treat the symptom, rather than the disease which will, at best delay the inevitable.
The real problem is overpopulation, and it's rapidly getting worse. Unfortunatey, there is no political or social will to stop it, and our entire economic system is hostile to it, being based on growth rather than sustainability.
Nevertheless, it must be halted, or we're doomed.

 KTG17 wrote:
More food is grown for livestock than what humans consume too.

Yes, in Iowa a great percentage of the corn is grown to be turned into ethanol, which is a cool way of making 4,000 gallons of water into 3 gallons of somewhat cheaper fuel (and your food cost more to offset the savings). it's a pretty swell deal and don't you dare call it welfare.

Bran Dawri wrote:
The real problem is overpopulation, and it's rapidly getting worse.

You know, you could just use the gauntlet to make more resources, Thanos.

Bran Dawri wrote:
I disagree that the consumption if meat and dairy is the problem. Those looking to switch humanity to alternate sources of protein are attempting to treat the symptom, rather than the disease which will, at best delay the inevitable.
The real problem is overpopulation, and it's rapidly getting worse. Unfortunatey, there is no political or social will to stop it, and our entire economic system is hostile to it, being based on growth rather than sustainability.
Nevertheless, it must be halted, or we're doomed.

Ehh, I think if you look at the statistics for the sheer volume of food that is thrown away in the US that it's less an issue of overpopulation, and more an issue of disbursing the food there is.

Bran Dawri wrote:
I disagree that the consumption if meat and dairy is the problem. Those looking to switch humanity to alternate sources of protein are attempting to treat the symptom, rather than the disease which will, at best delay the inevitable.
The real problem is overpopulation, and it's rapidly getting worse. Unfortunatey, there is no political or social will to stop it, and our entire economic system is hostile to it, being based on growth rather than sustainability.
Nevertheless, it must be halted, or we're doomed.

Lots is being done to stop rapid population growth. The majority of aid money is going towards this. Subsistence farming, high infant mortality and low education leads to large families. Most aid money is goes towards infrastructure, education and health programs that attempt to end this and lead to small families, reduced population growth and less resource use.

There is also an issue with the amount of waste and the huge over eating of meat and poor use of land. If I could wave a magic wand I would do the following to reduce the impact on land:

1) Reduce the amount of meat eaten in the west by 50%, just by reducing portion size. I am not good at this myself, but I am far from the worst. We eat too much meat, both for the environment and for our own health. I do not belive that becoming vegetarian is needed, or even a good thing, but we need to stop eating so much. Unfortunately meat tastes good.

2) Do more to reduce waste. In my opinion one of the biggest issues in the UK is time. We waste food because we don't have time. This is because we live too far from where we work because of how our land is used, houses are built and how we work. I would change this.

3) Some areas have a huge pest problem with rabbits, deer and pigeon. Rabbits and the problem species of deer are invasive. Most countries have invasive species that are also edible. We should eat more of them.

 Ouze wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
The real problem is overpopulation, and it's rapidly getting worse.

You know, you could just use the gauntlet to make more resources, Thanos.

Mmm, I never suggested killing off more than half the human race.
And while Thanos' solution was more than a little draconian (not to mention fictional), that doesn't mean the problem isn't real.

One issue with overpopulation is that its liked to a lot of religious and social factors that have a long history. Some cultures still operate in ways which benefit large families or which encourage them. Or there are specific needs for specific types of offspring (eg in China where they want sons not just to carry on the name but also because when parents retire they live with their son and his family as their retirement plan - got no son you've got no retirement plan)

Religion is also a huge barrier, especially in many poorer countries where there is also a significant lack of education, family planning and other aspects that try to help curb population growth. Many of those nations enjoy increased child survival due to improved living and medical access; but are still reproducing based on a social and religious system that evolved to try and copy with a higher amount of infant mortality.


I also fully agree that waste is a massive issue. I recall talking to a manager for KFC and they would overstock on chickens (whole chickens) to an insane degree (over £100 a week or so if I recall right though might have been longer, and they were getting chickens wholesale for under £1 each) and that was still within company limits on waste.
Curbing the food waste alone would be a huge step forward. If you coupled that to improved distribution that would help immensely.

Though its more than that. It's one thing to say - transport the food and dump it on poorer nations - but at the same time if you artificially flood a market with free or dirt cheap food you can actually harm the local farming industry for the country since now those farmers can't compete with the sudden influx of near free or very cheap food. And the governments aren't really setup for subsidising the farming sector.



So there's a lot of complexity and that's before we even touch on all the other things that get thrown into the mix (terrorist or local militia or even government groups taking donated or cheaper food from out-of-country and then inflating prices or just selling it on to other markets).




The one ray of hope is that many western native populations are showing declines in population growth. Sexual education, access to contraception and the empowerment of women into the workplace and greater social standing all contribute toward a system that can encourage stabilizing and reducing population growth. In my view if those three things happen to the human race as a whole then we can see a potential future where populations should decline naturally without having to impose draconian measure like China did with their one-child-policy

Overpopulation is a very Malthusian way of looking at it. Its more an issue with allocation and waste than population. A 2 parent+2 children househould in the West is going to have a lot more of an impact than your 2 room 2 parent+8 children household in poorer countries. Overconsumption is the issue to tackle here, because once those poor countries get richer their population growth will naturally platform, we want to stop them from consuming on our current level in the future, that's the real root cause. Because there is no way we're going to reduce the world's population by over more than half in this century, we just have to waste less and settle for a little less.

A lot of the current population increase is due to increases in the average lifespan. In short, people live longer which means that the reduction in population due to deaths has decreased as a proportion of global population. I'll let the late professor Rosling explain it better:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Because there is no way we're going to reduce the world's population by over more than half in this century, we just have to waste less and settle for a little less.

Actually there are several ways this can be done.

1) Disease

2) War

3) Major climatic change resulting in massive food production reduction.

Heck in the last century alone we had two massive World Wars which slaughtered millions and caused massive food shortages and the like. Disease is another big killer and whilst we have better medical care and the general health and fitness of many in developed nations give them a bonus to survival; all it takes is one disease that resists modern medical advances and we have multiple massive urban areas that are ripe for passing disease along.
The latter has happened multiple times in history and topped major civilizations.

Again we've more potential resistance today and transport networks and international trade are far faster so that if one area is affected, others can provide support/trade for resources. However a global level climatic shift could (esp when coupled with environmental damage) be a trigger. Consider how in China bees are drastically underpopulated to the point where they are having to manually pollinate crops.


I agree a planned population reduction is a lot harder and slower.

 Overread wrote:
One issue with overpopulation is that its liked to a lot of religious and social factors that have a long history. Some cultures still operate in ways which benefit large families or which encourage them. Or there are specific needs for specific types of offspring (eg in China where they want sons not just to carry on the name but also because when parents retire they live with their son and his family as their retirement plan - got no son you've got no retirement plan)

Religion is also a huge barrier, especially in many poorer countries where there is also a significant lack of education, family planning and other aspects that try to help curb population growth. Many of those nations enjoy increased child survival due to improved living and medical access; but are still reproducing based on a social and religious system that evolved to try and copy with a higher amount of infant mortality.

Religion has very little impact on it after one or two generations. Ireland and Italy used to have huge families within living memory. First generation immigrants from the Indian subcontinent have huge families. Now Italy and Ireland don't. Second and third generation children of immigrants are wanting one or two children. All of these remain very religious, but priories have changed.

 Steve steveson wrote:


Religion has very little impact on it after one or two generations. Ireland and Italy used to have huge families within living memory. First generation immigrants from the Indian subcontinent have huge families. Now Italy and Ireland don't. Second and third generation children of immigrants are wanting one or two children. All of these remain very religious, but priories have changed.

Agreed, but that is where you are more talking about people who have migrated and then steadily integrated into the host country. It also depends on how the generations one to the next regard religion and how the religion dictates and controls and imposes its ideals on the new generations.

There's a huge amount of variety and a lot of double standards (eg far as I'm aware the Pope is still against contraception, however many Catholics in developed countries to make use of contraception; but their counterparts in less developed nations or those countries/regions with a much heavier religious level of social pressure don't. There's also no denying that if a major religion like Christianity did openly welcome things like contraception it would have a huge social impact.

 Overread wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Because there is no way we're going to reduce the world's population by over more than half in this century, we just have to waste less and settle for a little less.

Actually there are several ways this can be done.

1) Disease

2) War

3) Major climatic change resulting in massive food production reduction.

Heck in the last century alone we had two massive World Wars which slaughtered millions and caused massive food shortages and the like. Disease is another big killer and whilst we have better medical care and the general health and fitness of many in developed nations give them a bonus to survival; all it takes is one disease that resists modern medical advances and we have multiple massive urban areas that are ripe for passing disease along.
The latter has happened multiple times in history and topped major civilizations.

Again we've more potential resistance today and transport networks and international trade are far faster so that if one area is affected, others can provide support/trade for resources. However a global level climatic shift could (esp when coupled with environmental damage) be a trigger. Consider how in China bees are drastically underpopulated to the point where they are having to manually pollinate crops.


I agree a planned population reduction is a lot harder and slower.

So it depends on either a war, disease or starvation more apocalyptic than we have ever seen in recorded human history? We had two world wars that killed a combined 0.1% of our total current population (even relative to population in those days we're talking single digit percentages) and a pandemic that killed roughly perhaps 0.2% of our current total (100+ million, which relative again is still single digit). Even accounting for the relative difference in population, we still have had massive technological advances. We're discussing something that topples the world order, not civilizations. Plenty of civilizations only collapsed because of factors on top of that disease, its a death toll never seen even for the biggest plagues. Its unrealistic to just guess that something like that may happen to significantly reduce the population. Its not meant for policy decisions and does nothing to start preventing the problem now. Even if half of the popution dies off, we're still going to have a problem if people keep consuming like we do today, when roughly 1/7th of the population is already using far too much to maintain their lifestyle. You would basically have to have 90% die off to combat the overconsumption issue, its just not a realistic solution. We need some serious reform in how many of us live their lives, untill technology can compensate better.

It also doesn't help that those countries whose populations do begin to have fewer children almost invariably begin to make up for the population decline by bringing/letting in immigrants for economic reasons, thus completely offsetting the reduced birth numbers and consequent easing of environmental pressure.
As I said, our economic and social setup is not equipped to deal with, let alone instigate, a controlled population decline.

But enviromental pressure is much better eased on our living patterns than population in any short term projects to start tackling it. Any significant decline is still going to take a couple of generations even if we don't take in any new immigration. Its approaching the problem from the opposite direction unlike let say putting certain taxes on products like palm oil and meat or even plane tickets. Drive down demand or even set limits, act now and then think about how to overhaul society and the economy based on our population.

And even if the West has a decline, the other parts of the world might still be moving towards wanting our same standards with 6/7th of the world pop. If we keep living with the same standards even with pop decline, we're just pushing the problem down the line. We have to get away from the "more more more" approach. There are just too many of us for our current standards unless the population takes a massive dive over the next 50+ years.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Because there is no way we're going to reduce the world's population by over more than half in this century, we just have to waste less and settle for a little less.

Actually there are several ways this can be done.

1) Disease

2) War

3) Major climatic change resulting in massive food production reduction.

Heck in the last century alone we had two massive World Wars which slaughtered millions and caused massive food shortages and the like. Disease is another big killer and whilst we have better medical care and the general health and fitness of many in developed nations give them a bonus to survival; all it takes is one disease that resists modern medical advances and we have multiple massive urban areas that are ripe for passing disease along.
The latter has happened multiple times in history and topped major civilizations.

Again we've more potential resistance today and transport networks and international trade are far faster so that if one area is affected, others can provide support/trade for resources. However a global level climatic shift could (esp when coupled with environmental damage) be a trigger. Consider how in China bees are drastically underpopulated to the point where they are having to manually pollinate crops.


I agree a planned population reduction is a lot harder and slower.

So it depends on either a war, disease or starvation more apocalyptic than we have ever seen in recorded human history? We had two world wars that killed a combined 0.1% of our total current population (even relative to population in those days we're talking single digit percentages) and a pandemic that killed roughly perhaps 0.2% of our current total (100+ million, which relative again is still single digit). Even accounting for the relative difference in population, we still have had massive technological advances. We're discussing something that topples the world order, not civilizations. Plenty of civilizations only collapsed because of factors on top of that disease, its a death toll never seen even for the biggest plagues. Its unrealistic to just guess that something like that may happen to significantly reduce the population. Its not meant for policy decisions and does nothing to start preventing the problem now. Even if half of the popution dies off, we're still going to have a problem if people keep consuming like we do today, when roughly 1/7th of the population is already using far too much to maintain their lifestyle. You would basically have to have 90% die off to combat the overconsumption issue, its just not a realistic solution. We need some serious reform in how many of us live their lives, untill technology can compensate better.

Even worse, massive epidemics such as the Black Death in the past (which killed off between 20%-80% of all people in some areas) are no real cure for the population growth problem, since they usually only lead to increased population growth and increased standards of living for the survivors, causing population levels to recover within a few decades.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Because there is no way we're going to reduce the world's population by over more than half in this century, we just have to waste less and settle for a little less.

Actually there are several ways this can be done.

1) Disease

2) War

3) Major climatic change resulting in massive food production reduction.

Heck in the last century alone we had two massive World Wars which slaughtered millions and caused massive food shortages and the like. Disease is another big killer and whilst we have better medical care and the general health and fitness of many in developed nations give them a bonus to survival; all it takes is one disease that resists modern medical advances and we have multiple massive urban areas that are ripe for passing disease along.
The latter has happened multiple times in history and topped major civilizations.

Again we've more potential resistance today and transport networks and international trade are far faster so that if one area is affected, others can provide support/trade for resources. However a global level climatic shift could (esp when coupled with environmental damage) be a trigger. Consider how in China bees are drastically underpopulated to the point where they are having to manually pollinate crops.


I agree a planned population reduction is a lot harder and slower.

So it depends on either a war, disease or starvation more apocalyptic than we have ever seen in recorded human history? We had two world wars that killed a combined 0.1% of our total current population (even relative to population in those days we're talking single digit percentages) and a pandemic that killed roughly perhaps 0.2% of our current total (100+ million, which relative again is still single digit). Even accounting for the relative difference in population, we still have had massive technological advances. We're discussing something that topples the world order, not civilizations. Plenty of civilizations only collapsed because of factors on top of that disease, its a death toll never seen even for the biggest plagues. Its unrealistic to just guess that something like that may happen to significantly reduce the population. Its not meant for policy decisions and does nothing to start preventing the problem now. Even if half of the popution dies off, we're still going to have a problem if people keep consuming like we do today, when roughly 1/7th of the population is already using far too much to maintain their lifestyle. You would basically have to have 90% die off to combat the overconsumption issue, its just not a realistic solution. We need some serious reform in how many of us live their lives, untill technology can compensate better.

Even worse, massive epidemics such as the Black Death in the past (which killed off between 20%-80% of all people in some areas) are no real cure for the population growth problem, since they usually only lead to increased population growth and increased standards of living for the survivors, causing population levels to recover within a few decades.

Well, partly we have to take into account that it was a different time birth level wise. Even if say children per couple went back up it might not recover to the regular pre disease level with current standards. But I was indeed thinking about the Black Death, as one of the most devastating plagues killing off 'only' an estimated 33%. That amount of death would only temporarily slow down climate change if everyone else started moving towards reaching current Western living standards. Population solutions unless very radical land in the too slow, too late category for the most part when by 2050 we might have done massive irreversible damage to the climate.

 Overread wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Because there is no way we're going to reduce the world's population by over more than half in this century, we just have to waste less and settle for a little less.

Actually there are several ways this can be done.

1) Disease

2) War

3) Major climatic change resulting in massive food production reduction.

Heck in the last century alone we had two massive World Wars which slaughtered millions and caused massive food shortages and the like. Disease is another big killer and whilst we have better medical care and the general health and fitness of many in developed nations give them a bonus to survival; all it takes is one disease that resists modern medical advances and we have multiple massive urban areas that are ripe for passing disease along.
The latter has happened multiple times in history and topped major civilizations.

Again we've more potential resistance today and transport networks and international trade are far faster so that if one area is affected, others can provide support/trade for resources. However a global level climatic shift could (esp when coupled with environmental damage) be a trigger. Consider how in China bees are drastically underpopulated to the point where they are having to manually pollinate crops.


I agree a planned population reduction is a lot harder and slower.

Well they say we have a pandemic every 100 years and it has been a little more than a 100 since the last one (Spanish Flu) so you might be getting the population control there

Anyone in favour of controlled population reduction should kindly do their part and volunteer for sterilization. Put your money where your mouth is.

Planned population reduction may not start out as an act of discrimination, but historically?

"We'll encourage the poor, and uneducated to reduce numbers because they tend to have more babies, so that's more of a problem, because they tend to generate fewer resources then they consume."

Translates to, "You know how minorities are inconvenient? Let's get rid of them!"

And I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but that's what happens when planned population reduction strategies hit the road in the real world. :(

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Because there is no way we're going to reduce the world's population by over more than half in this century, we just have to waste less and settle for a little less.

Actually there are several ways this can be done.

1) Disease

2) War

3) Major climatic change resulting in massive food production reduction.

Heck in the last century alone we had two massive World Wars which slaughtered millions and caused massive food shortages and the like. Disease is another big killer and whilst we have better medical care and the general health and fitness of many in developed nations give them a bonus to survival; all it takes is one disease that resists modern medical advances and we have multiple massive urban areas that are ripe for passing disease along.
The latter has happened multiple times in history and topped major civilizations.

Again we've more potential resistance today and transport networks and international trade are far faster so that if one area is affected, others can provide support/trade for resources. However a global level climatic shift could (esp when coupled with environmental damage) be a trigger. Consider how in China bees are drastically underpopulated to the point where they are having to manually pollinate crops.


I agree a planned population reduction is a lot harder and slower.

So it depends on either a war, disease or starvation more apocalyptic than we have ever seen in recorded human history? We had two world wars that killed a combined 0.1% of our total current population (even relative to population in those days we're talking single digit percentages) and a pandemic that killed roughly perhaps 0.2% of our current total (100+ million, which relative again is still single digit). Even accounting for the relative difference in population, we still have had massive technological advances. We're discussing something that topples the world order, not civilizations. Plenty of civilizations only collapsed because of factors on top of that disease, its a death toll never seen even for the biggest plagues. Its unrealistic to just guess that something like that may happen to significantly reduce the population. Its not meant for policy decisions and does nothing to start preventing the problem now. Even if half of the popution dies off, we're still going to have a problem if people keep consuming like we do today, when roughly 1/7th of the population is already using far too much to maintain their lifestyle. You would basically have to have 90% die off to combat the overconsumption issue, its just not a realistic solution. We need some serious reform in how many of us live their lives, untill technology can compensate better.

Even worse, massive epidemics such as the Black Death in the past (which killed off between 20%-80% of all people in some areas) are no real cure for the population growth problem, since they usually only lead to increased population growth and increased standards of living for the survivors, causing population levels to recover within a few decades.

Well, partly we have to take into account that it was a different time birth level wise. Even if say children per couple went back up it might not recover to the regular pre disease level with current standards. But I was indeed thinking about the Black Death, as one of the most devastating plagues killing off 'only' an estimated 33%. That amount of death would only temporarily slow down climate change if everyone else started moving towards reaching current Western living standards. Population solutions unless very radical land in the too slow, too late category for the most part when by 2050 we might have done massive irreversible damage to the climate.

The "damage" we are doing to the climate is already irreversible. Climate change is a natural process that is always ongoing, and we Humans are speeding it up quite a bit. Even if we would suddenly all vanish, climate change would not reverse, it would still go on, the only thing that would change is that the rate of change would slowly start to slow down again. But the "damage" we have done, which is that due to Human factors, the climate has changed in centuries to a degree that normally takes millennia (with the exception being certain past natural events such as an asteroid impact or the sudden draining of Lake Agassiz, which produced major climate shifts in decades or less), would not be undone. Climate change is not something we will be able to stop. It is something we will have to adapt to. And with the current speed of changes, we'd better adapt very quickly, because I don't see the political will to do what is necessary to slow down climate change.

I know, its why I used massive as a bit of a distinction, its already a good/great deal now, but we're still making it worse and are nowhere near reaching a stable level for even our own effect now. Letting it go on like this is going to make it so much harder tot tackle the consequences. Hopefully technology can keep pace to compensate for short term political gain. But as long as it doesn't affect those with money there is no will really.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Anyone in favour of controlled population reduction should kindly do their part and volunteer for sterilization. Put your money where your mouth is.

India:
3,287,273 km2.
~1,300,000,000 inhabitants.
~395 inhabitants per square km.

Sweden:
450,295 km2.
~10,000,000 inhabitants.
~22 inhabitants per square km.

I'm all in favor of controlled population reduction in the areas where it's necessary.
Controlled population reduction in areas/countries where it's not necessary however, seems pointless.

Making a comparison like that and then saying things like "necessary" certainly seems to be inching towards the wider point greatbigtree was making.

I understand his point completely.

Fact is however, that if Swedens population doubled in the next 50 years, it would have nowhere near the global impact that we would see if Indias population doubled.

Let alone the fact that Sweden could support twice its current number of inhabitants while India couldn't.

Is controlled population reduction needed in Sweden? Hardly.
Is controlled population reduction needed in India? Possibly.

See, I didn't even use the word "necessary".

Overpopulation is largely a myth. At least in terms of how it relates to being able to produce food. We are nowhere near running out land to make food with. The real issue as mentioned before is getting that food where the hungry people are. Africa is where most hunger exists, because in those areas you have a situation where there was a large population boom but without an accompanying increase in food production. A combination of poor soil and only subsistence agriculture keeps food production down.

Now you could ship cheap food from the US/EU to Africa to completely mitigate this, and a good amount does go in the form of aid but its not nearly what would be necessary. Then there is the problem that food exports from western nations into these hungry countries actually hinders their own agricultural development. And they can't really support themselves with their own industries either since they have little of value for export. As a result, their subsistence farmers continue to suffer and these nations are stuck in a vicious cycle of hunger and poverty.

Meat also gets a bad rap. Yes, feeding cows grain isn't efficient. However we have so much excess land for agriculture that we can afford to do that. And even if we stopped grain fed animals completely, we could still have a lot of meat because most grazing land is unsuitable for anything other than to have some cows/goats/sheep munch on it. Pigs and Chickens are also very efficient meat producers so they are worth being grain fed because the gain in protein make it worth it.

Overpopulation only exist on a localized level in terms of "X region has a higher population than it can sustain with local food production". Earth as a whole is nowhere near this point.

The concept of having more land possible to convert into farming is, however, purely looking at the situation in a human centric resource manner. Sure we can turn vast areas into productive farmland However the loss of habitat and species will, similarly, be vast.

So yes we can make more farmland, but the cost will be even more loss of species diversity, even more loss of habitat and unique ecosystems.

So its not just a straight "lets make more farmland."


Asides which we are only just starting to become fully aware of the vast intricate relationships that keep the world working. You might strip out some worthless woodland then find that a species of bird that nested there was keeping a population of insects under control which then boom and eat all your food in a year (this sort of happened in China only they deliberately culled the birds).

Or how the increase in farmland results in increased nutrient levels in the waterways which can result in algal blooms which contributes to reduced fish populations - a critical thing if you've just hit the salmon run waterways and now shattered salmon breeding.

Its unnecessary to make more farmland out of wilderness right now, since there is a huge amount of farmland which is unused in the US. In fact, US farmland is shrinking. Whats swallowing up land is urban expansion, not increased farmland.

Plus you can actually use 'untouched' wild land for grazing, and it actually benefits the area. Grasslands are healthier when they have herds of herbivores on them.