Climate of Our Future

In a culture where profit is enshrined as the highest good, and individual rights are exalted over social responsibility, its hard to even start a conversation about sustainable business practices with most Americans. President Bush and his administration have quite succesfully conjured images of economic collapse whenever anyone challenges our reliance on fossil fuels, for example. Ironically, the foot dragging they justify with fear-mongering masks the real crisis looming — a climate shift that will have even more dire social consequences.

Rather than asking Americans to make the hard short-term choices that will be repaid with a much stronger and more flexible economy down the road, our President has repeatedly sought to push through superficial and piece-meal improvements that keep the underlying structural inefficiencies in place.

The problems are not limited to the energy sector, of course. From the way we build our homes, to the way we manufacture the things that go in them; from the way we farm the land, to the way we harvest the seas; every aspect of our lives needs to be re-imagined within the context of sustainability.

Nor is it just the Republicans who have formed shady political parnterships that place narrow business interests ahead of the greater social good. Recently I read a very informative piece on the destructive aquaculture practices that are threatening to dessimate whole fish populations, with consequences for both ocean ecosystems and our food supply. In his article Oceans Without Fish, Peter Montague describes the scope of the damage that over-fishing has caused:

The world’s catch of ocean fish peaked in 1989 and has been declining since. In the early 1990s, scientists reported that 13 of the world’s 17 major fisheries were depleted or in steep decline. Typical is the Grand Banks fishery off the shallow coast of Newfoundland in the north Atlantic. There, after 350 years of commercial exploitation, the haddock, cod and flounder have all but disappeared and the fishery was officially closed a few years ago.

Commercial fishing, like industrial farming, becomes more profitable as the operations grow larger. This drive for profit has lead to the development of new technologies that allow fishing in deeper waters, and the new monstrous trawlers are much less discriminating, casting wide nets that capture much more than can be used. Not surprisingly, one of the major players in the field is politically well-connected:

Don Tyson, the Arkansas chicken magnate and supporter of Bill Clinton, has gone into the fishing business in a big way. Commercial fishing can be very profitable if conducted on a grand scale. In 1992, Tyson bought the Arctic-Alaska Fisheries Company, and three other fishing companies. They operate a fleet of industrial super-trawlers that each cost $40 million to build and reach the length of a football field. These trawlers pull nylon nets thousands of feet long through the water, capturing everything in their path –400 tons of fish at a single netting. These super-trawlers stay off-shore for months at a time, processing and freezing their catch as they go, thus giving them a major advantage over smaller land-based boats.

Approximately 40 percent of what these super-trawlers catch is considered trash and is ground up and thrown back into the ocean. They call it “bycatch” and, according to investigative reporter Jeffrey St. Clair, it can include endangered sea lions, and seals, as well as unwanted fish. (In the northeast Atlantic alone, the bycatch in a year’s time amounts to 3.7 million tons.)

The article goes into much more detail about these worst practices, including a discussion of how fishing is being extended lower down the food chain causing potentially permanent damage to the ecosystems. Not only is the profit of private industry being served at the cost of long-term economic and ecological impacts, in many cases it’s being subsidized by federal and state governments. The close ties between the corporate ownership and their pet politicians makes solving the problem much more of a challenge.

Government could limit the kinds of fishing technology that are allowed –to give the fish a chance –but this would put “the public interest” up against the likes of Don Tyson. In today’s political climate, with private money dominating our elections, Don Tyson would win because he’s wealthy and he supports all the right politicians. Dr. Pauly believes there is an urgent need to create protected areas where fishing is simply not allowed. He sees no-fishing zones as easier to implement and enforce than fishing quotas, limiting fishing time at sea, restrictions on allowable fishing gear, and controls on pollution –though these steps, too, are needed, he believes. No-fishing zones can be created quickly and can be enforced. In Britain, the fishing industry has begun to accept no-fishing zones as a way to save the industry in the face of declining fish stocks.

None of these realities are pleasant to contemplate, but embracing the short-term sacrifices needed to solve them will be much less painful than allowing the trends to continue toward their inevitalbe end: the very economic collapse currently being used to justify inaction.

Read the full text of Oceans Without Fish