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A Global Fish War is Coming, Warns US Coast Guard (usni.org)
schwit1 shares an article from the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine. It includes this warning from the Coast Guard's chief of fisheries law enforcement:
Nearly two decades into the 21st Century, it has become clear the world has limited resources and the last area of expansion is the oceans. Battles over politics and ideologies may be supplanted by fights over resources as nations struggle for economic and food security. These new conflicts already have begun -- over fish... In 1996, Canada and Spain almost went to war over the Greenland turbot. Canada seized Spanish vessels it felt were fishing illegally, but Spain did not have the same interpretation of the law and sent gunboats to escort its ships. In 1999, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter intercepted a Russian trawler fishing in the U.S. exclusive economic zone. The lone cutter was promptly surrounded by 19 Russian trawlers. Fortunately, the Russian Border Guard and the Coast Guard drew on an existing relationship and were able to defuse the situation...
Japan protested 230 fishing vessels escorted by seven China Coast Guard ships entering the waters of the disputed Senkaku Islands. Incidents in the South China Sea between the Indonesian Navy and Chinese fishing vessels and China Coast Guard have escalated to arrests, ramming, and warning shots leading experts to suggest only navies and use of force can stop the IUU fishing... The United States needs to show it is serious about protecting sustainable fisheries and international rule of law. It needs a fleet that not only will provide a multilateral cooperation platform, but also take action against vessels and fleets that are unwilling to cooperate... If cooperation cannot be achieved, the United States should prepare for a global fish war.
When I read "fish war," I was imagining it more like this.
Japan protested 230 fishing vessels escorted by seven China Coast Guard ships entering the waters of the disputed Senkaku Islands. Incidents in the South China Sea between the Indonesian Navy and Chinese fishing vessels and China Coast Guard have escalated to arrests, ramming, and warning shots leading experts to suggest only navies and use of force can stop the IUU fishing... The United States needs to show it is serious about protecting sustainable fisheries and international rule of law. It needs a fleet that not only will provide a multilateral cooperation platform, but also take action against vessels and fleets that are unwilling to cooperate... If cooperation cannot be achieved, the United States should prepare for a global fish war.
When I read "fish war," I was imagining it more like this.
"The United States needs to show it is serious about protecting sustainable fisheries and international rule of law." Right. Change that to protecting its own interests, and international rule of law where it benefits self. As history has shown time and again.
So, please, don't try to play just and rightful, it has not worked for America for many decades.
It's too late. This is already going to happen even if we went to zero today. That would lead to big wars and even more release of carbon. It's so inevitable (as I have been told numerous times) that I gave up caring and never felt better about my own personal future.
Why do people pull something out of the past and just say, "See it happened before so we have nothing to worry about."
Things are different now. The World's fisheries are teetering on the brink of collapse. As one species gets fished out, another one is fished. There are fish in my super market's case that I've never seen before.
And the prices of what is still being fished is obscene. $30/lb for wild caught CoHo Salmon.
And farmed fish - they feed farmed salmon with wild caught fish. There is no such thing as sustainable fish farming in reality - just in the industry's PR.
And with government subsidies around the industrialized World for fisherman to haul more in, it's just accelerating the problem.
Also, show us where in the past there was over 7.2 BILLION people on Earth? And you're gonna point and say this happened before?
It's not Doom and Gloom yet, but we're getting there real fast. And people get hungry and thirsty, they go where the food is and fight for it.
Like in, say, Syria, where the US did everything in their power to destabilize the region and leaving Europe now to deal with the fallout?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It isn't. Humans are the only species on this planet that have even bothered to stop and think about their own ecological impact. Any other species whether predator, prey, or somewhere in between will just multiply endlessly with the only thing limiting their growth being the ability for the environment to support the population.
Equating humanity to a disease is just going to lead to bad thinking, because your solution is that humanity should be wiped out. That's what any person would tell you they'd want to do if they had cancer. So if you think humanity is a cancer, why haven't you taken the first logical step towards fixing the problem and ended your own existence? If you won't even do that, then what makes you think you get to demand that the lives' of others is ended?
Well, it's a good thing that "forcing their laws on the rest of the world" has never been something that Europeans were into. Oh... Wait...
Look. The species hasn't evolved. That simply cannot happen in such short a time span. There's nothing particularly special about people, in Europe or anywhere else, that prevents imperialism. It's just not en vogue, politically or socially, in Europe these days. But Europe has, in fact, been rediscovering a taste for exporting their laws beyond their own borders of late. See, for example, the notion that the concept of a "right to be forgotten" includes censoring what Americans are allowed to see on google.com vs. just what the Spanish, for instance, are allowed to see on google.es.
It's really just what's socially acceptable. And humans, on the whole, can regress into utter bastardry fairly quickly; especially if they can be persuaded that an: "If it's us against them, I vote us." situation exists. "President" 45, and the Charlottesville types are the obvious evidence of the backslide here. But you people aren't immune. The UK has taken massive steps back into darkness with Brexit. And even though she was defeated, the fact that Le Pen did as well as she did in the recent election says very bad things about France as well. And don't forget that the important bits of Russia are also in Europe.
Imagine all the people...
Right, and there are two ways I see to fix this.
The first possible solution requires a government entity to enforce limits on individuals. This enforcement must mean punishment harsh enough that people cannot simply pay a fine and still come out ahead.
A second possible solution is to divide up the commons into places that an individual has near complete control. That way if they overuse then they are just putting themselves out of business.
My dad would rent out land to neighboring farmers but never for less than three years. The reason he said was because if they rented for just a year or two then they'd tend to not care for the property. They'd plant a crop, and not bother with weed control or fertilizer. If they had "ownership" of the land for three years then they'd have to take care of it the first year if they expected a crop that third year.
Giving people ownership, of anything really, doesn't seem popular though. It seems people would rather live in the mess that a commons inevitably becomes than see some individual actually own something.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Giving people ownership, of anything really, doesn't seem popular though. It seems people would rather live in the mess that a commons inevitably becomes than see some individual actually own something.
The problem is that the economic systems tend towards runaway effects. Whether they're climatological, or just money helping already-wealthy people get more of the money, it almost doesn't matter. The fact is that ownership begets ownership. In and of itself, it is not enough. There's always someone who can afford to accrue property with the intention of crapping it up.
I don't know what the answer is, but I know that more people have to become more involved. I don't think that letting a few people ultimately own everything is going to foster that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"