The state of illinois issued lay off notices to hundreds of employees because the sweetened beverage tax was delayed

[Final-Fan]

sc94597 said:

Final-Fan said:

That doesn't address nor explain the fact that you clearly used the wrong number, but I'll move on. 

In that case, since the only realistic comparion in terms of environmental impact (the context in which these figures were used) compares the number of people to the area of land on which they lived in each time period, and not percentage of total population engaged in that activity then and now, how do you explain your misinterpretation? 

I supported one part of my statement with regards to hunting, and didn't feel like supporting the other part because it was off-topic from the original discussion. Since you inquired, I supported the other part of my statement. The effects of hunting and fishing are different. I didn't use any wrong number. I just supported one portion of my statement. 

The number of people who hunt or fish, and the area of a particular region are not the only variables. They just happened to be sufficient variables to justify that the burden of hunting is not necessarily more today than it was in 1790. How often people hunt and fish is also important. This can be gleaned from considering how much people depended on hunting and fishing in a particular period of time. In 1790, a higher percentage of the population required fishing and hunting for subsistence. Today, such activities are more often recreational, and therefore it can be assumed that it happens less often per hunter/fisher and in limited portions. A lot of fishing doesn't even entail taking the fish home. They are thrown back into the lake, river, or ocean. 

To support my point, suppose that the average number of fishermen today take home 10 fish/year. Suppose that in 1790 the average number of fish taken home per year, per person, was 52 fish (once per week.) 

So 44.7million fishermen * 10 fish/year/fisherman * 1 year = 447,000,000 fish. 

Compare that to 4 million * 50 fish/year/person * 1 year = 200,000,000 fish. 

Then we can make the hand-wavey area comparison to discover that the effect of 4 million people fishing 50 fish/year on average in a much smaller area is much larger than 33 million people fishing 10 fish/year on average in a much larger area. 

I agree that there are more variables in play than merely people and land area.  I would agree that the data you provided is not sufficient to conclusively support one position over the other.  "Hand wavey area comparison" is not good enough considering the nitty gritty of how many miles/acres of fishable lakes and streams there are (more east than west, I think), their availability to the average person in 1790 and today, etc. 

In any case, I don't see where "environmental impact" is only applicable to hunting or how you were limiting the discussion to hunting in some other way in the posts in question.  Please point that out to me.

P.S.  I think there's a pretty good inferential argument to be made, as follows:  Current fishing and hunting is regularly subjected to quotas on account of the populations of game animals being depleted to dangerous levels when these quotas do not exist, which has happened in the past.  These quotas were largely not in place in the 1790s and the game animals did not go extinct or become depleted to the same extent as far as I know.  Thus the inference can be made that modern hunting has more environmental impact.  If I am wrong in regard to the underlying facts, please let me know; if I am somehow right there but wrong in the conclusion, please tell me how that could be so.