Bill D, "over-population" doesn't come into it. The UK has one of the highest population densities in the world - maybe only Japan is higher - and we manage, after a fashion. And world food capacity is more than enough for everyone - we're just wasteful about how we use it. (For instance turning grain into beef takes seven times more grain than if we just eat the grain.) "Overpopulation" is sometimes just a way for us to come to terms with horrors like Bangladesh or Mozambique floods, or the fact that Zambian males live to age 36 on average (yes,thirty-six).

mkebenn, if you're sure your motor passed an emissions test,you can go and inhale its exhaust fumes in perfect safety! Who are you kidding? And how much payload do you have to cart around, that you really need those six cylinders? If you paid a bit more for fuel, like people in most other countries, you'd find some way of cutting back your personal contribution to global warming.

Thanks for the clickey Kat. If the Arctic Coastal Plain is the same thing as the north slope, I was up there once on my bike (following the pipeline!). If it's going to be Bush, he's going to make a real mess up there. Incredibly (or incredible to me) most Alaskans are right behind him. But not you, Ebbie!