Earth Equity News

Kept Afloat on a Tide of Money. Commentary by George Monbiot, Guardian (UK), July 8, 2008. "The world's fishermen. They are on strike in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Japan and demonstrating [about the price of oil] in scores of maritime countries... [However,] just as the oil price now seems to be all that stands between us and runaway climate change, it is also the only factor which offers a glimmer of hope to the world's marine ecosystems. No East Asian government was prepared to conserve the stocks of tuna; now one-third of the tuna boats in Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea will stay in dock for the next few months because they can't afford to sail. The unsustainable quotas set on the US Pacific seaboard won't be met this year, because the price of oil is rising faster than the price of fish. The indefinite strike called by Spanish fishermen is the best news European fisheries have had for years. Beam trawlermen -- who trash the seafloor and scoop up a massive bycatch of unwanted species -- warn that their industry could collapse within a year. Hurray to that too. It would, of course, be better for everyone if [their] unsustainable practices could be shut down gently without the need for a crisis or the loss of jobs, but this seems to be more than human nature can bear... The fishermen make two demands, which are taken up by politicians in coastal regions all over the world: they must be allowed to destroy their own livelihoods, and the rest of us should pay for it."