The graphic below is certainly interesting, but is also sobering. It makes the point that in 1950, none of the world's fisheries were being harvested to their potential. The technology that would permit harvesting to potential simply was not available. Then, as technology developed, we moved to harvest peak. This is good. This is progress. Had we then stopped there, all would be good. Had we had the political will to not use our technology to harvest to maximum possible, but rather to harvest sustainably, all would be good. It could be said that until about 1960, a mindset that said harvest to maximum, was progressive. In a rational world, a change in mindset would have occurred around 1960, and this new mindset would have said we need to curb our ability to fish.
If you find this hard to believe, I simply remind you of what has happened to the cod fishery in Canada. What used to be an abundant food resource is no more! Readers of this blog are familiar with that, I hope.
The question I have is where else on this planet is the same thing occurring. The answer is at many places, just not quite as dramatically. I tried to show this with the posts I had on agriculture. But we are in denial, because if we were to acknowledge this, we would need to change our lifestyle, perhaps even our political ideology.
I do not disagree with the comment though I have a thought that I seem to recall incidents that as Canada worked to curb the harvest it had a real challenge convincing other coutries of this need. What we save others may take away anyway. In some cases when we strive to save we create other problems as a result of our naive dogooding Therein lies our greatest challenge as we manage our resources that we actually manage them - too much they become extinct - too little they create other inbalances eg geese/deer and the "safe" environment the urban areas provide...until they defecate your green space into an unusable maunure pile or eat your garden you've sweated and endured mosquitoes for or kept you from sleeping in. Now you look for other very expensive "nice" but VERY expensive ways to keep them. My solution would be simple effective - inexpensive and would feed the hungry. My example works on the local limited are - the situation cited of fisheries is huge and I don't know how you control it. If I am hungry today I will eat and telling me not to so I can eat tomorrow does me no good as I will be dead if I don't eat today - not my situation but for how many is it?
ReplyDeleteKK
Thank you KK.
ReplyDeleteThe assertion has been made on this blog that given a free reign, the market will always encourage the development of new technologies so that there is no need to be concerned about a resource shortage.
This post has one purpose only: to dampen such enthusiasm.