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The Ocean is Broken (2013)

theherald.com.au

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Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#51

Post by stretchwithme »

Tragedy of the commons is where the price paid for a resource is merely the extraction cost. The cost of replacing the resource or losing it entirely is ignored.

Private property creates an incentive to preserve the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Some things, like fishing rights, can work to preserve resources while still allowing their use. It doesn't work with everything.

Either way, we are going to have to pay more than just the extraction cost if we expect a resource to continue. We are going to have to pay more for fish. Privately owned fishing rights forces action to prevent collapse. Without something like it, the collapse of the resource will surely force a higher price. Just not now, when it actually could help prevent the collapse.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#52

Post by pertinhower »

hairama wrote: post #19

This is a great story--unfortunately, it's just that, a story. It's not surprising to me that there are people recklessly over-fishing, but without any numbers, no government can take action to stop it. On a tangential point, earth-life has survived five mass-extinction events, and a future one is almost certain. This doesn't negate the tragic, useless destruction of life, but the earth itself--and some form of life…

Is this supposed to make me feel better? I'm real happy for the earth surviving and all, but I want to survive too, and I want people to survive. A philosophy of, "The earth will survive though we'll be gone—and maybe that will be justice," is ridiculous, because if we're gone, who will be left to celebrate the justice? Justice lies in the conscious mind, and if the conscious mind is gone, justice goes too.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#53

Post by pekk »

pstuart wrote: post #28
leobelle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.nutellausa.com/faqs.htm Nutella is "a member of the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil), Ferrero only uses palm oil which is extracted from controlled plantations in Malaysia." So you can enjoy your Nutella guilt free.

If one also ignores the fact that it's mainly sugar frosting.

The subject was that palm oil involves dead orangutans. Does sugar frosting do that too, or are we changing the subject to how sugar is bad? If you overeat sugar frosting, it's your diabetes, not a negative externality.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#54

Post by sliverstorm »

pygy_ wrote: post #49
sliverstorm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of anything at the grocery store that doesn't have some sort of negative implication. Heck, just driving to the grocery store burns fuel and supports the automotive industry. Biking to the grocery store burns food (of which all food has negative implications) and supports the bicycle industry. You can work yourself into knots over it; there is no way in which you can eat food and not have some negative…

That's patent nonsense. The problem is not consumption/destruction per se, but the fact that we destroy more than what the planet can build out of solar energy. We're burning the reserves and the means of production.

What, precisely, is nonsense about my comment? Brushing something off as nonsense and saying vanishingly little else is not exactly a compelling argument.

Also, did you read my parent? Parent was not talking about sustainability and burn rate vs. incoming solar energy or production rate. Parent was talking about mental anguish brought about by the costs his existence poses on the planet- at least, that's what I heard.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#55

Post by frankzinger »

derefr wrote: post #29
frankzinger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As someone already said, we should not worry about our planet, for it is going to be here, long long after we are finished. We should be worried about ourselves." See, this is something I don't get about most people. Does nobody else feel sympathy for individual animals ? We're inflicting immeasurable amounts of suffering and death and nothing will ever make that less of a tragedy.

That's a particular kind of scope insensitivity on your part, though: although we're inflicting suffering and death... so is the rest of nature, greater in most cases by enough signifiant figures that our effect gets lost in the noise. For every individual animal suffering at the hands of a human, millions die of starvation and disease in exactly their "adaptive habitat"--when they're not slowly chewed to death by pr…

Some good points, but let's look at the context: millions of fish and other sea animals die as bycatch every day. This is a huge amount of death and suffering that can be avoided and serves no purpose whatsoever.

Plus, we're humans, we have the power to manipulate and control (to a certain extent) nature, so saying "we're doing no worse than nature" is not good enough, IMHO. It's within our power to do less damage, and we should do what we can.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#56

Post by joshuahedlund »

BoppreH wrote: post #11

There was an "What If"[0] on xkcd about the ocean and ships' weight. The question itself was innocuous, but inside a parenthesis was this sentence: (Marine fish biomass dropped by 80% over the last century, which—taking into consideration the growth rate of the world’s shipping fleet—leads to an odd conclusion: Sometime in the last few years, we reached a point where there are, by weight, more ships in the ocean than…

Note that it's not all bad news on the overfishing front. There are certainly bleak trends, but people, companies, organizations, and governments are responding to the incentives that are becoming increasingly apparent (though we should certainly encourage improved responses!) Ex. "U.S. seafood catch was at a 17-year high last year, thanks to policies to rebuild domestic fisheries."[0] Looks like the numbers dropped a bit off that high in 2012[1], and I'm not aware of 2013 data yet, but I'm interested to see what continues to happen.

[0]http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/23/c... [1]http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/Assets/commercial/fus/fus12/FUS_...

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#57

Post by pekk »

stretchwithme wrote: post #51

Tragedy of the commons is where the price paid for a resource is merely the extraction cost. The cost of replacing the resource or losing it entirely is ignored. Private property creates an incentive to preserve the goose that lays the golden eggs. Some things, like fishing rights, can work to preserve resources while still allowing their use. It doesn't work with everything. Either way, we are going to have to pay m…

You have mischaracterized the tragedy of the commons. These premises form an intellectualized rationale for crony capitalism, but your suggestion doesn't solve the tragedy of the commons.

Suppose that you hand over Yellowstone to some big company (say, Wal-mart) for a song, because they are politically connected. Now Yellowstone is not part of the commons, so there is no tragedy of the commons, right? No, you have only obscured the problem, but the problem remains. Because Wal-mart has no special interest in preserving it as a common good. If it makes the most money for them to sell Yellowstone piece by piece to ranchers and fast food franchises, or install a lot of fake geysers as if it were the Bellagio, they will do that for their profit, but that doesn't eliminate the negative externalities. Starting with how the land was handed over to someone connected, which is how this kind of intervention you suggest is frequently corrupted.

Just because you own something doesn't mean that you won't spoil it, let alone that you won't spoil things for other people with a legitimate interest if it happens to profit you. More ownership is not a silver bullet.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#58

Post by drone »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #40

The astounding decline of the ocean's fisheries is an incredibly important issue. But we all know that. What we all don't know is the solution. What we've got is a classic tragedy of the commons. It's made more difficult due to the international nature of oceanic fisheries - those little guys like to swim around, paying no heed to national boundaries. Plus there's all of that international ocean to police. Who's goin…

Countries can prevent markets from being utilized to off-load those fish. It's not entirely preventable, but it can be made difficult enough to not be profitable.

The sad, unfortunate, fact is that some countries' (Japan, China, for two examples, EDIT: but certainly some citizens from nearly all countries) citizens care far less about the sustainability of their fishing, and more about having what they desire, when they desire. Should the price go up due to under-population? They're OK with that too.

There are already systems in-place for tracking sustainable fish, and ensuring that each fish was sustainably harvested (my gulf wild is one such: http://mygulfwild.com/), but until the consumers in most markets demand them, they won't take off.

For our family, we have a simple rule: we don't buy fish (based on species) that aren't as a rule sustainably harvested. Dead-stop. We don't buy them at restaurants either. Dead-stop. We prefer fish we catch ourselves, over all other fish, and secondly fish that are harvested and sold through markets which monitor for illegal behavior, where we know the operators of the market.

I rarely eat fish from a restaurant where the chef doesn't know the chain from which that fish was supplied. Around here, there are enough good fish places and markets that a chef can't argue they couldn't know.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#59

Post by chaosphere2112 »

CalRobert wrote: post #4

I sometimes wonder if shopping for groceries is as frustrating for most people. I like Nutella, but when I see Palm Oil as the second ingredient I picture dead orangutans. I like beef, but I sympathize for a fellow mammal and think of the enormous amounts of diverted water and fertilizer runoff that goes in to producing feed. I enjoy fish, but thinking of this makes me sick to my stomach. I enjoy many beverages that…

Leave me alone! I'm just an ordinary man / who loves strawberries / I love to grab the green fuzziness / in my gathered fingertips / and dip the seedy point in sour cream / and brown sugar / and into my waiting lips.

Mmmm, that's a sweet kiss worth / repeating all night, / just an ordinary man / loving his strawberries. / And I don't want to have to think / who picked them with / what brown illegal alien fingers, / back bent under the California sun / that used to belong to his forefathers anyway.

I don't want know that the price of cream is American decadence / that the rest of the world would never dream of spending. / Or that sugar is giving me an insulin rush, / or that strawberries are sprayed with EDB / causing me cancer.

I don't want to know these things, so don't bother me. / I'm just an ordinary man who loves strawberries / that come to me past striking cashiers at Safeway / that come to me in green plastic baskets / that will not decompose / but fill the air with toxic fumes as they're incinerated at the city dump / polluting Hawaii's air and ocean.

Plastic containers, a petroleum biproduct / that the Arabs are processing / to enable the rich to buy the homes of movie stars in Beverly Hills / to buy whole hotels in Miami, or LA, or New York / while the rest of their people / in poverty pray / bowing their heads to the ancient ground.

While all of the oil flows out of the deserts / to America / to grease the great machine / that grows the strawberries that I love / sent by diesel trucks to the coast / and by jet to Hawaii / where I can sit in my bed / and enjoy the pleasures of an ordinary man / kissing that sweet kiss / all night long / without a care in the world.

- Eric Chock / http://www.bambooridge.com/bluesun.aspx?bid=259

Hand transcribed, so there's a bit of error in there.

Edit -- Formatting.

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