From: Geoff Smith (geoffs@interchange.ubc.ca)
Date: Fri Dec 03 1999 - 01:06:39 MST
James Rogers wrote:
> > Or Canada....Canada is larger than the contiguous 48 yet has only approx one
> > tenth the population (as I recall...i may be in error)....of which the
> > greater percentage live within 200 miles of the US border...
>
> Canada has roughly half the population of the U.S. Somewhere in the range
> of 125-135 million.
As a Canadian, I thought I'd better set the record straight:
Last time I checked, Canada had a little under 28 milion people, around
10% of America's population.
As another illustration, I used to live on a island, which is around 30%
larger than the country of Israel, and I think the population of Israel
is around 6 million. If you look at this island(Vancouver Island) on a
globe, it is a tiny dot, and *dwarfed* by Canada as a whole, yet by
Israel's standard it could house over a fifth of our population.
However, there is a counter point to this which is that most of Canada
is tundra and ice, not a great place to live, and impossible to farm. I
think the main argument for overpopulation is that there is not enough
room to grow all the food, not that there is not enough room to house
all the people.
Until we can grow meat and vegies in labs, stacked on top of one another
into huge food-producing high-rises, I still see this as a valid point,
*if* we actually make it into the 100's of billions of people, which I
doubt we will.
Canada's birth replacement rate per couple is around 1.2, and even with
immigration it's still around 1.8, not enough to even sustain the
current population!
Geoff Smith
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