at the beginning of the 2nd world war earth had 2 billion people on it, it now has 6, that's a treble increase in just 65 years. this is quite scary when you think about it.
insects are relativiliy insignificant compared to mammals so they will thrive anywhere, 'tis why you'll find spiders, beetles and roaches etc on every continent (except antarctica possibly), but mammals on the other hand were given limits by nature to insure that they don't grow out of control. drought, famine, disease, subscepticle to hot, cool or cold environments, etc but humans have the ability to adapt. if we're hungry we farm our own food, if we move into a cold environment we make clothing. i don't think mother nature did much planning when it came to intelligence because the most intelligent species on earth is wiping out all the resources and multiplying rapidly. due to humans living close together the least overcame obstacle in our growth was disease with the bubonic plague, polio, tuberculosis, and countless other of mother natures fail-safe devices being her last attempt at slowing us, but we just cured them all. there's even talk of a pandemic in the next 2 years from bird flu, but we already have a working vaccine that is being produced and no doubt a cure will be discovered closer to the time for anyone not vaccinated who catches it.
the only reason cancer is the biggest killer is down to ourselves anyway, due to 100 years of electro-magnetic fields emanating from every device we use, chemicals in or on every single object we touch and an environment that's chock full of toxins, we've managed to knock out the P57 protein that has fended off damaged cells naturally for 100,000 years. that's why 1 in 3 people will get a cancer at some point.
i don't think mother nature will kill us, i reckon we'll end up doing it ourselves, as cancer will be cured someday but sterility won't and sterility levels have been dropping constantly for decades. in 100 years we'll all be sterile and just hanging around until we're extinct.
i'm usually quite an optimist too
