Why Overfishing = Global Warming

Overfishing and global warming. The pathological behavior behind both is exactly the same, and the result is this: we're facing a world 40 years hence of rising seas empty of fish and devoid of ice.

How come?

(1.) Unsustainable business practices that have put profits above any other consideration.

(2.) Polluting and exploitative industries protected by government policy.

(3.) Scientific evidence ignored as alarmism.

The excellent series "Empty Seas" in the New York Times this week brings this home, again.

Two paragraphs -- from previously published sources -- nicely connect the dots for us.

Here's Charles Clover, author of End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World:

The fact that the sea is presided over by lunatics who believe there should be commercial fishing in 100% of the sea breeds a culture that is corrosive. Two erroneous beliefs have been allowed to flourish. First, that you can cheat biology. Second, that you can keep people happy in far-flung communities in the west of Ireland, Scotland and Spain by allowing them to fish, when the gallop of technology means that this year maybe only half a dozen people in the village can fish sustainably, and next year it will be four.

It's the same story with coal. Here's Jeff Goodell, author of Big Coal, writing in Rolling Stone on January 12:

The coal boom that is currently sweeping America is the atmospheric equivalent of a swan dive off a very tall building. At precisely the moment that scientists have reached a consensus that we need to drastically cut climate-warming pollution, the electric-power industry is racing to build more than 150 new coal plants across the United States. Coal is by far the dirtiest fossil fuel: If the new plants are built, they will dump hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year for decades to come -- virtually guaranteeing that the U.S. will join China in leading civilization's plunge into a superheated future.

As you read the series on oceans in the NYT, don't just think fish. The impending catastrophe is another global symptom of a larger disease. Oceans without fish. A world without ice or forests. Carbon everywhere.

Welcome to the future of business-as-usual.

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