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Was shocked to read that shark livers are used for biodiesel. Feels like 18th century whaling for lamp-oil. Here's a Forbes article that seems almost enthusias
by causal 3y ago
Was shocked to read that shark livers are used for biodiesel. Feels like 18th century whaling for lamp-oil.
Here's a Forbes article that seems almost enthusiastic about this as a "green" energy source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2020/03/08/the-future-of-biofuel-may-include-shark-liver-oil/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2020/03/...
- rocketbop 3y ago> For those sharks who have perished due to becoming bycatch, this allows a unique opportunity to have their livers provide valuable products like biodiesel, squalene, and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) –including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; also icosapentaenoic acid) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Afterall, the major constituents of WSLO are triglycerides (TG), diacylglycerol ethers (DAGE), and squalene. What a strange article.
- darth_avocado 3y ago“Oops, look at this shark that I totally didn’t mean to catch. Ohh well, now that it’s dead, I can maybe use the bycatch for shark fin soup.”
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago"perished due to becoming bycatch" So sorry we accidently killed you. In order to give your life some meaning, we've come up with "unique opportunity to have their livers provide valuable products"
- Simon_ORourke 3y agoThat's all we can ask for in many careers
- ElevenLathe 3y agoI doubt I will ever provide as much value as a shark liver's worth of biodiesel.
- cgannett 3y agoYour employer frantically googling how much biodiesel can be produced from a human liver
- throwway120385 3y agoIn modern capitalism your life only has meaning if you produce products.
- randomsolutions 3y agoTo who? As opposed to?
- 123yawaworht456 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_shall_he_eat#Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_...
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoThat isn't an argument that Capitalism is good, or better. In Capitalism, if you don't work, you don't eat. So finding a quote about communism that says same thing, is not making any point that one is better or worse. The difference is in Communism, there should always be 'some work'. If you are willing to work, there is work. Even if it is some public works project. In Capitalism, maybe not. Nobody is looking out for you. If you don't have the skills for what is in demand right now, then so sorry, go ahead and die.
- 123yawaworht456 3y agosure. 'some work' under communism will yield you a bed and and a few bowls of gruel per day. in the US, there are 'working poor'. under communism, there are 'working poor and starving'. at the time when skilled blue collar workers in the US had two story houses and multiple cars per family, the same people in the USSR lived in communal apartments (with 3-4 people per room and 3-4 families per bathroom and kitchen) and commuted to work in overcrowded buses. even towards the end, in the 80's, after several decades of relative peace and prosperity, even engineers and scientists had a standard of living far below the level of 'working poor' in the US. having a small concrete box in a commie block and a shitty car (that you had to wait several years for the privilege of being allowed to buy for a very sizeable amount of money) was the Soviet dream.
- nonethewiser 3y agoThis seems overly cynical. If sharks are purposefully being killed like this then thats one thing. But that’s not being alleged. If sharks are accidentally killed then it’s good that they’re making use of them to some extent. Hopefully they can make even more use of them.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoThey are being killed through the use of specific fishing techniques. Anyone using those techniques KNOWS that this is going to happen. Adding a financial incentive to continue harmful practices is NOT a good thing.
- Hnrobert42 3y agoThey could reduce the amount of bycatch, like they have with dolphins. They won’t if there is economic incentive not to.
- refactor_master 3y agoBut dolphins and giraffes are cute. Sharks and cattle aren’t.
- jprd 3y agoLegions of toddlers demand you review the body of work from Pinkfong, and then reconsider your inclusion of sharks as "not cute".
- causal 3y agoYou're essentially saying that accidental shark death is bad, so we should make it on purpose. We should be punishing bycatch, not incentivizing it.
- oregano 3y agoThis idea really disgusts me. If an animal is “accidentally” killed then the first action should be to punish the people who did this and then take steps to ensure it does not happen again. Just allowing capitalism to continue to wreak havoc on our planet is so obviously not moral thing to do.
- downWidOutaFite 3y ago> the authors stress that is should remain a “waste” product and not create a market for increased shark fishing
- dev1ycan 3y agoOh wow I caught a shark, conveniently enough though, I happen to have this factory with the exact processes necessary to extract materials out of the shark.
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoSo it's more a greenwashing initiative causes the problem... Similar vibe as replacing leather with microplastics or meat that can exist anywhere with deforesting the amazon for meat alternatives ingredients.
- digging 3y ago> meat that can exist anywhere with deforesting the amazon for meat alternatives ingredients. Is this the case? A major problem with beef is that so much of it comes from the cleared Amazon. Also, meat intrinsically takes more space than vegetables because we still have to clear land to grow feed for the meat, so a 1:1 replacement of Amazonian beef with soy and chickpeas or whatever would be a massive increase in yield.
- causal 3y agoYeah magnitude matters. Clearing rainforest is generally bad but if meat requires 5x the land of plants then we shouldn't make false equivalencies.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- samatman 3y agoIf one discovers that a brand of tshirt is being manufactured using slave labor, a reasonable response is to buy another brand of tshirt. Clearly more is needed to solve the problem, but the slave labor doesn't "rub off" on the other tshirt, it's obviously silly to say "don't wear tshirts, some of them are made by slaves". It's no different with beef. Most beef in the USA comes from the USA, and you might raise various objections about the treatment of cattle, pollution from runoff, and so on, but it isn't contributing to rainforest deforestation, so that isn't a good reason to not eat it.
- wyre 3y agoCrops grown for animal feed is still a major cause of deforestation and USA beef can still be culpable for contributing. Realistically, I think most US cattle is fed from domestic feed, but I know Brazil exports a lot of animal feed to Asia and Europe. To expand on your metaphor, not only are the t-shirts made with slave labor, but the cotton grown is harvested and milled by slave labor and without supply chain transparency it’s impossible to know if the new brand is also using the slave-labor cotton.
- verisimi 3y agoI know... But when you think about it, it is renewable! I mean, even fossil fuels are renewable eventually....
- hedgehog 3y agoWhaling continued until much more recently. I knew a guy in the early 2000s that made his money in the whale oil business and he was around 70 at the time.
- aidenn0 3y ago"Save the whales" was the cliche environmental slogan when I was growing up in the 1980s. They even made a Star Trek movie where that was a major plot point.