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The Ocean is Broken (2013)

theherald.com.au

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Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#141

Post by prawn »

anigbrowl wrote: post #109
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…

I'm fairly left and I'm not opposed to privatization at all. But... The highest bidder can police the fish themselves. If they fail to police the fish, their ownership is revoked and the rights are re-auctioned. Nice in theory, but in practice the highest bidder often ends up as such a strong political lobby that it prevails on government to do the policing, fights tooth-and-nail against quotas, and rights are almost…

And after the lawsuits, you may see PR companies employed to make an issue out of this before a local/state election and pressure a government to makes changes suiting the 2004 buyer.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#142

Post by brortao »

tolmasky wrote: post #82
leobelle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, are you still eating meat? Fish? What are you doing for your part?

"What are you doing for your part" is equivalent to nothing, UNLESS you are perhaps paradoxically working in finance to become rich enough to have enough money and/or influence to someday have a real effect on these problems. Or maybe actively researching sustainable technologies, or part of a pro-environmental lobbyist group or something. Don't kid yourself: if you want to stand on a high horse understand that your…

But individuals have a part to play. Individuals contribute to cultural changes, which are really important when it comes to fighting climate change and hunger.[1] Being vegan or vegetarian, full-time or not, doesn't mean that you're not still a part of the problem. But I think it's fair to argue that it's a step in the right direction.

I do think that veg*ns being judgmental of others' diet is worse than doing nothing, because it alienates a movement that could potentially be very good for our planet.

[1][http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report...]

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#143

Post by prawn »

manachar wrote: post #67
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…

> We have to privatize the oceans fisheries. Somehow the world managed to bring many whales back from the brink of extension without throwing up their hands and claiming "tragedy of the commons" or privatizing the ocean. It's not easy, but recognizing this as a global problem and doing the international consensus building needed to solve this problem should be a priority. The solution will probably need to be a mix o…

Lobbyists will prevent that from happening. The corporations backing the fishing will have more cause, urgency and financing to run their own PR campaigns.

A few years ago, I spent a few days swimming off a boat around the South of Turkey. The ocean seemed pretty lifeless. Here in Australia, you will come across all sorts of fish in almost any sea situation. Over there, I think we only noticed 1-2 species and barely any of them even, and this was amongst bays and rocky areas that would be full of life here.

(The good part was swimming around without worrying about sharks though...)

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#144

Post by Florin_Andrei »

snowwrestler wrote: post #112
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…

> If they fail to police the fish, their ownership is revoked and the rights are re-auctioned. This is not actually privatization; it is just outsourcing regulatory authority. Under real privatization, private parties are free to waste the resources they own. The theory is that they won't, since it would harm their long-term ability to create value. The reality is that individual humans only need so much money, so de…

If you privatize in this case, you basically say "I only care about the short term". End of story.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#145

Post by protomyth »

andrewfong wrote: post #79
protomyth wrote: post #61

What would go into building a vessel designed to remove all the junk from the ocean? How would it capture and process the waste?

There was (and maybe still is) a project to build an open-source low-power autonomous robot to clean up oil spills. https://sites.google.com/a/opensailing.net/protei/ Not sure if still active. Presumably, you could build something to pick up trash in general. Bigger issue though is the trawling -- junk or no junk, trawling is incredibly devastating to the ecosystem.

I was curious about a ship designed to clean up the wreckage after a tsunami or the pacific garbage.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#146

Post by prawn »

parasight wrote: post #12

Maybe it's worthwhile to spend more time and brains on saving our environment. At least until we are able to leave this planet. Which I don't see in the near future. We are able to walk on the moon, build atom bombs and heal deadly diseases. Are we smart enough to not destroy this planet?

No. We are too greedy on the whole to avoid slowly destroying it.

And even when we can leave this planet, we should still endeavour to keep Earth as well as we can.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#147

Post by Florin_Andrei »

parasight wrote: post #12

Maybe it's worthwhile to spend more time and brains on saving our environment. At least until we are able to leave this planet. Which I don't see in the near future. We are able to walk on the moon, build atom bombs and heal deadly diseases. Are we smart enough to not destroy this planet?

Maybe this is the answer to Fermi's Paradox.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#148

Post by Florin_Andrei »

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…

Private property in a case like this can also, and perhaps to a higher degree, create an incentive to put the squeeze on it, pump it dry, cash out, and start a business somewhere else in 5 years.

Imagining that self-interest alone creates outcomes that are morally right, or that make sense long term, is a terribly common fallacy.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#149

Post by Florin_Andrei »

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…

> On a tangential point, earth-life has survived five mass-extinction events, and a future one is almost certain.

We are actually right in the middle of it.

Re: The Ocean is Broken (2013)

#150

Post by UnFleshedOne »

derefr wrote: post #87
frankzinger wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my point has gotten lost somewhere. My point is that we can and therefore should do less damage, not for the sake of the human race's karma or to "fix the planet", but for the sake of individual animals. Not because it's right in the philosophical sense, but because thinking about animals not suffering makes me happy. Sorry if I am misunderstanding you, but all your replies seem to be about the big picture, w…

> Not because it's right in the philosophical sense, but because thinking about animals not suffering makes me happy. Right, and that's exactly what I'm responding to: "following your happiness" in helping animals is, on the whole, actually pretty shitty for the average, randomly-selected animal (where any randomly-selected animal will tend to live in the wild, not near any humans) compared to other things you could…

"like introducing invasive plants with known anti-parasitic properties to foraging ranges"

Completely off-topic now, but what about suffering of parasites themselves in presence of those plants? Why do people care about cute animals and not about and often at the expense of less cute ones? (that's a rhetorical question, because they are cute duh)

We can't make things better for some living organisms without destroying others. Since there is no objective way to weight outcome of an intervention, we can't "maximize global animal welfare". Most of the time it will benefit one fluffy thing at the expense of another, usually less fluffy.

Undoing results of our own actions is a defensible thing though. As is maximizing some kind of utility to us, for example working to increase or maintain biodiversity to avoid being next extinct species on the list. But biodiversity just means shitty life for more kinds of animals as far as maximizing animal welfare goes.

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