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Chan island wrote:

So I’ve been grappling with a question that is proving difficult to get Google to pin down for me; which place do the most invasive species come from? Like, are there any regions that are net exporters of species that in other regions are invasive? For example the Burmese python is invasive in Florida, but native to Myanmar so tally one for Myanmar.

All I've found so far is a study that brushed on it, but the chart that came with it was general to the point of uselessness.

My first thought was that this would fundamentally be a measure of human activity rather than an intrinsic feature of certain ecosystems. I wonder, however, if I'm right in assuming that the movement of invasive species is primarily because of humans. Many examples of it are, knowingly or unknowingly, but how often does it happen without human intervention? And I see what you mean in that some habitats are particularly vulnerable, such as New Zealand because of its lack of native ground-dwelling mammals. Do some habitats produce especially dominant species that particularly damaging when unleashed in a new place? Like Ruinenlust my money is on the Rift Valley or wherever homo sapiens is native to. There's a strong hypothesis that human arrival in places other than Africa coincides with the mass disappearance of large land animals.

Northern Wood wrote:

Of course, this may simply be another instance of a uniquely American problem, I'm not sure...

It's not. Margaret Thatcher reputedly said that if you were on a bus after the age of 30 you should consider yourself a failure. Many British people would also rather spend their journey in a car on their own than on a bus with other people, though that's probably because we're antisocial rather than because freedom. More and more places that people want to go to are being placed out of town because of lower land prices and the freedom to build, so planning is based on assumptions about cars. Car reliance is perhaps not as prevalent as in the USA though. We don't see residential developments without sidewalks, for instance. A journalist writing a satirical piece on cultural differences said that if you decide to walk somewhere in the US because it's a nice day people will think you're an unusually well dressed and purposeful homeless person.

As well as transporting people our economy is fixated with transporting goods, mainly because transport is cheaper than labour in the regulated markets of the west. So everything is manufactured in developing countries or China, and if you go to a supermarket on the Scottish coast to buy frozen Scottish prawns you'll probably find they were peeled and pack in Thailand. If we really want to reduce the impact of transport we're going to have to reconsider a lot of things.

Mount Seymour wrote:

3) The first time I ever interacted with anyone else over the internet was on the Forest RMB.

Unlike others, I would be ready to believe that.