4 ms·

Destroying ecosystems beyond a tipping point. And the politicians just care about being re-elected. Focusing on short term gain. ” The decision taken by the Co

Destroying ecosystems beyond a tipping point. And the politicians just care about being re-elected. Focusing on short term gain. ” The decision taken by the Council of Ministers earlier this week on the 2024 fishing quotas in the Baltic Sea is in many ways unique. It shows a remarkable historical short-sightedness, ignorance of the fish and fishing in the inland sea, inability to understand the scientific advice of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and - perhaps most of all: the ministers are bending the laws that regulate fishing, ecosystems and the marine environment to the limit.” https://balticwaters.org/en/baltic-sea-brief-60-the-final-herring https://balticwaters.org/en/baltic-sea-brief-60-the-final-he...

bjelkeman-again 2mo ago
The world reached peak fish catch in the mid-90s. [1] And we now eat more grown fish than caught fish. The problem is that with increased acidity in the oceans, as part of the ocean absorbing mor CO2, we get less algae and eventually less fish. [2] But, yeah, let’s keep fishing until the stocks collapse. [3] They take a very very long time to recover. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/capture-fisheries-vs-aquaculture https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/capture-fisheries-vs-aqua... [2] https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/articles/ocean-acidification-threat-marine-life https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/articles/ocean-acidification-t... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...
- ElFitz 2mo ago
  What makes it even more ridiculous is that one could think grown fish are a fine solution over-fishing. But it turns out, many fish farms use caught fish for (part of) the fishmeal and fish oil used to feed the fish they grow. Because many fish we eat turn out to be pescetarian.
  - ra 2mo ago
    Yes. And that foodstock is often either processed bycatch from unmanaged fisheries somewhere in the world - or industrial scale processed sardines.
- EA-3167 2mo ago
  Ocean acidification is much more complex than "less algae and less fish." In fact some algae and bacteria will have giant blooms partly as a result of that, warming, and Nitrogenous runoff. Giant blooms consume oxygen in the primary marine trophic levels, causing die-offs that liberate more nutrients, leading to hypoxic and even large anoxic zones. You also have the concern that acifification can lead to (at first) worse outcomes for organisms depending on carbonates, and eventually (potentially) their extinction. All of this assumes that we have a pretty solid understanding of what this system looks like as we wrench it from one feedback loop into another, but it's the best we've got.
epolanski 2mo ago
Nobody is going to be elected telling people the harsh truth: that we consume far too much than the planet can sustain. Farmers and fishers on top of that will always get cross partizan sympathy. People just don't want to hear that the way they eat impacts and stresses the planet beyond its limits and that the producers of food get in any way penalized. Truth is that we desperately need carbon taxes asap, to at least slow down the planet destruction. But it will never be popular.
- ASalazarMX 2mo ago
  The problem is multifaceted, because we not only aren't told the truth, we are told lies that make things even worse, and people seem to like those. For example, overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected. Either democracy has broken beyond repair, or humanity averages to dumb. I'm inclined to the latter, because I believe that every individual, even if they can do smart things, is very dumb in other things.
  - alephnerd 2mo ago
    > overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement.
    - xienze 2mo ago
      > Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement. And governments in those countries are importing as many people as they can to paper over their own population decline.
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        What's the international market price of a person?
expedition32 2mo ago
I once saw a fascinating TV program about fishing quatos that were first introduced for the North Sea in the 1970s. It led to a war between Dutch government inspectors and fishermen. Thirty years later everyone involved agreed that it had saved the industry.
parineum 2mo ago
> And the politicians just care about being re-elected. Focusing on short term gain. It's really convenient to blame the politicians instead of the people that vote for them. If people had a long term vision, politicians would too.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  There's never been a government in the world whose majority wasn't influenced by taking bribes.
- bigbadfeline 2mo ago
  > It's really convenient to blame the politicians instead of the people that vote for them. One of the major roles of elected officials is to take responsibility for what's happening, that's the major point of representative democracy. People would be responsible only if they had the right to enact and endorse laws directly. This is really basic stuff, should be understood by everyone older than 7. Not to mention that in the real world, all candidates are equally disinterested in the lives of people or fish. It doesn't matter who people vote for. > If people had a long term vision, politicians would too. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. People don't have to have long term vision, that's politician's job, they all promise good things but never deliver and keep blaming the guy before them instead.
  - parineum 2mo ago
    > People don't have to have long term vision, that's politician's job... You don't have long term version?
  - dragonwriter 2mo ago
    > People would be responsible only if they had the right to enact and endorse laws directly. This is really basic stuff, should be understood by everyone older that 7. Authority and responsibility inherently and unalterably lie with the people; that they either by explicit delegation or tacit toleration allow others to exercise power on their behalf does not relieve them of either. This is the basic thing that everyone ought to understand.
pjc50 2mo ago
Fishermen are weirdly powerful in the EU for an industry that employs few people and doesn't make a lot of money. I'm not clear how that works, I'm guessing because it's a job the public understand and has macho overtones. Fishing was a major part of the advocacy for Brexit despite being a smaller source of revenue than Warhammer.
- balderdash 2mo ago
  I don’t know about the aggregate - but people make big money in fishing (check out Salmmar). I think the bigger thing is that fishing tends to be big business in rural coastal communities - which means that an outsize number of politicians are closely aligned with their interests (in the way farming, ranching, timber, etc is near and dear to many rural politicians).
imtringued 2mo ago
This isn't on the politicians. If you look at it from the perspective of a politician, if you enact a strict fishing quota, you've personally decimated jobs in the industry. You've saved the industry, but said industry will never forgive you and will always hold the job loss against you. If overfishing causes job losses, that's on the fishermen, they're the ones to blame.

bjelkeman-again 2mo ago

The world reached peak fish catch in the mid-90s. [1] And we now eat more grown fish than caught fish. The problem is that with increased acidity in the oceans, as part of the ocean absorbing mor CO2, we get less algae and eventually less fish. [2] But, yeah, let’s keep fishing until the stocks collapse. [3] They take a very very long time to recover. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/capture-fisheries-vs-aquaculture https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/capture-fisheries-vs-aqua... [2] https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/articles/ocean-acidification-threat-marine-life https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/articles/ocean-acidification-t... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...

ElFitz 2mo ago
What makes it even more ridiculous is that one could think grown fish are a fine solution over-fishing. But it turns out, many fish farms use caught fish for (part of) the fishmeal and fish oil used to feed the fish they grow. Because many fish we eat turn out to be pescetarian.
- ra 2mo ago
  Yes. And that foodstock is often either processed bycatch from unmanaged fisheries somewhere in the world - or industrial scale processed sardines.
EA-3167 2mo ago
Ocean acidification is much more complex than "less algae and less fish." In fact some algae and bacteria will have giant blooms partly as a result of that, warming, and Nitrogenous runoff. Giant blooms consume oxygen in the primary marine trophic levels, causing die-offs that liberate more nutrients, leading to hypoxic and even large anoxic zones. You also have the concern that acifification can lead to (at first) worse outcomes for organisms depending on carbonates, and eventually (potentially) their extinction. All of this assumes that we have a pretty solid understanding of what this system looks like as we wrench it from one feedback loop into another, but it's the best we've got.

epolanski 2mo ago

Nobody is going to be elected telling people the harsh truth: that we consume far too much than the planet can sustain. Farmers and fishers on top of that will always get cross partizan sympathy. People just don't want to hear that the way they eat impacts and stresses the planet beyond its limits and that the producers of food get in any way penalized. Truth is that we desperately need carbon taxes asap, to at least slow down the planet destruction. But it will never be popular.

ASalazarMX 2mo ago
The problem is multifaceted, because we not only aren't told the truth, we are told lies that make things even worse, and people seem to like those. For example, overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected. Either democracy has broken beyond repair, or humanity averages to dumb. I'm inclined to the latter, because I believe that every individual, even if they can do smart things, is very dumb in other things.
- alephnerd 2mo ago
  > overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement.
  - xienze 2mo ago
    > Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement. And governments in those countries are importing as many people as they can to paper over their own population decline.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      What's the international market price of a person?

expedition32 2mo ago

I once saw a fascinating TV program about fishing quatos that were first introduced for the North Sea in the 1970s. It led to a war between Dutch government inspectors and fishermen. Thirty years later everyone involved agreed that it had saved the industry.

parineum 2mo ago

> And the politicians just care about being re-elected. Focusing on short term gain. It's really convenient to blame the politicians instead of the people that vote for them. If people had a long term vision, politicians would too.

inigyou 2mo ago
There's never been a government in the world whose majority wasn't influenced by taking bribes.
bigbadfeline 2mo ago
> It's really convenient to blame the politicians instead of the people that vote for them. One of the major roles of elected officials is to take responsibility for what's happening, that's the major point of representative democracy. People would be responsible only if they had the right to enact and endorse laws directly. This is really basic stuff, should be understood by everyone older than 7. Not to mention that in the real world, all candidates are equally disinterested in the lives of people or fish. It doesn't matter who people vote for. > If people had a long term vision, politicians would too. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. People don't have to have long term vision, that's politician's job, they all promise good things but never deliver and keep blaming the guy before them instead.
- parineum 2mo ago
  > People don't have to have long term vision, that's politician's job... You don't have long term version?
- dragonwriter 2mo ago
  > People would be responsible only if they had the right to enact and endorse laws directly. This is really basic stuff, should be understood by everyone older that 7. Authority and responsibility inherently and unalterably lie with the people; that they either by explicit delegation or tacit toleration allow others to exercise power on their behalf does not relieve them of either. This is the basic thing that everyone ought to understand.

pjc50 2mo ago

Fishermen are weirdly powerful in the EU for an industry that employs few people and doesn't make a lot of money. I'm not clear how that works, I'm guessing because it's a job the public understand and has macho overtones. Fishing was a major part of the advocacy for Brexit despite being a smaller source of revenue than Warhammer.

balderdash 2mo ago
I don’t know about the aggregate - but people make big money in fishing (check out Salmmar). I think the bigger thing is that fishing tends to be big business in rural coastal communities - which means that an outsize number of politicians are closely aligned with their interests (in the way farming, ranching, timber, etc is near and dear to many rural politicians).

imtringued 2mo ago

This isn't on the politicians. If you look at it from the perspective of a politician, if you enact a strict fishing quota, you've personally decimated jobs in the industry. You've saved the industry, but said industry will never forgive you and will always hold the job loss against you. If overfishing causes job losses, that's on the fishermen, they're the ones to blame.