A Very Inconvenient Truth - Commentary by Paul Watson

I consider myself a huge advocate of the oceans. As such, for many years now I have not eaten any fish products (not even Ceasar dressing). My reasoning has been that if I love to dive with and film the creatures in the sea, I should not be contributing to their rapid demise.

I am not a vegan or vegetarian. A recent commentary I recieved from Paul Watson has caused me to rethink this however. I consider myself reasonably well versed on the state of ocean fisheries and how these are being exploited. However, I am shocked to learn the extent to which fish are used in feed for livestock. As such, I am regretably still an accidental fish eater.

Regardless of your views on Paul Watson or vegetarianism/veganism, this commentary is well worth the read. At a minimum each of us can understand more how our eating habits are impacting our oceans. With all the discussion about carbon off-setting, making a smaller footprint and recycling, we should not overlook changing our dining habits which may be more destructive than all of the above.

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A Very Inconvenient Truth

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

The meat industry is one of the most destructive ecological industries on the planet. The raising and slaughtering of pigs, cows, sheep, turkeys and chickens not only utilizes vast areas of land and vast quantities of water, but it is a greater contributor to greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry.

The seafood industry is literally plundering the ocean of life and some fifty percent of fish caught from the oceans is fed to cows, pigs, sheep, chickens etc in the form of fish meal. It also takes about fifty fish

caught from the sea to raise one farm raised salmon.

We have turned the domestic cow into the largest marine predator on the planet. The hundreds of millions of cows grazing the land and farting methane consume more tonnage of fish than all the world's sharks, dolphins and seals combined. Domestic housecats consume more fish, especially tuna, than all the world's seals.

So why is it that all the world's large environmental and conservation groups are not campaigning against the meat industry? Why did Al Gore's film Inconvenient Truth not mention the inconvenient truth that the slaughter industry creates more greenhouse gases than the automobile industry?

The Greenpeace ships serve meat and fish to their crews everyday. The World Wildlife Fund does not say a word about the threat that meat eating poses for the survival of wildlife, the habitat destroyed, the wild competitors for land eliminated, or the predators destroyed to save their precious livestock.

When I was a Sierra Club director for three years, everyone looked amused when I brought up the issue of vegetarianism. At each of our Board meeting dinners, the Directors were served meat and only after much prodding and complaining did the couple of vegetarian directors manage to get a vegetarian option. At our meeting in Montana we were served Buffalo and antelope, lobsters in Boston, crabs in Charleston, steak in Albuquerque etc.

But what else can we expect from a "conservation" group that endorses Trophy hunting.

As far as I know and I may be wrong, but my organization, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is the only conservation organization in the world That endorses and practices vegetarianism. My ships do not serve meat or fish ever, nor do we serve dairy products. We've had a strictly vegan menu for years and no one has died of scurvy or malnutrition.

The price we pay for this is to be accused by other conservation organizations of being "animal rights." Like it's a bad word. They say it with the same disdain that Americans used to utter the word communist in the Fifties.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is not an animal rights organization. We are exclusively involved in interventions against illegal activities That threaten and exploit marine wildlife and habitat. We are involved in ocean wildlife conservation activities.

Yet because we operate our ships as vegan vessels, other groups, and now The media dismiss us as an animal rights organization.

Now first of all I don't see being accused of as an animal rights organization to be an insult. PETA was co-founded by one of my crew-members and many of my volunteers come from the animal rights movement. But it is not accurate to refer to Sea Shepherd as animal rights when our organization pushes a strict conservation enforcement policy.

And secondly we do not promote veganism on our ships because of animal rights. We promote veganism as a means of practising what we preach which is ocean conservation.

There is not enough fish in the world's oceans to feed 6.6 billion human beings and another 10 billion domestic animals. That is why all the world's commercial fisheries are collapsing. That is why whales, seals, dolphins and seabirds are starving. The sand eel for example, the primary source of food for the comical and beautiful puffin is being wiped out by Danish fishermen solely to provide fish meal to Danish factory farmed chickens.

This is a solid conservation connection between eating meat and the destruction of life in our oceans.

In a world fast losing resources of fresh water, it is sheer lunacy to have hundreds of millions of cows consuming over 1,000 gallons of water for every pound of beef produced.

And the pig farms in North Carolina produce so much waste that it has contaminated the entire ground water reserves of the entire state. North Carolinians drink pig shit with their water but its okay they say, they Just neutralize it with chemicals like chlorine.

Most people don't want to see where their meat comes from. They also don't want to know what the impact of their meat has on the ecology. They would rather just deny the whole thing and pretend that meat is something that comes in packages from the store.

But because there is this underlying guilt always present, it manifests itself as anger and ridicule towards people who live the most environmentally positive life styles on the planet - the vegans and the vegetarians.

This is demonstrated through constant marginalization especially in the media. Any organization, like Sea Shepherd for example, that points out the ecological contradictions of eating meat is immediately dismissed as some wacko animal rights organization.

I did not set the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society up as an animal rights organization and we have never promoted animal rights in the organization. What we have promoted and what we do is oceanic wildlife and habitat conservation work.

And the truth is that you can't practise solid and constructive Conservation work without promoting veganism and/or vegetarianism as something that promotes the conservation of resources.

A few years ago I attended a dinner meeting of the American Oceans Campaign hosted by Ted Danson. He opened the dinner by saying that the choice he had to make was between fish and chicken for the dinner, and what was the point of saving fish if you can't eat them?

Guest speaker, Oceanographer Sylvia Earle put Ted in his place by saying She did not think that he was being very funny. She said that she considered fish to be her friends and she did not believe in eating her friends. So neither Sylvia nor I ate dinner that night.

I met Sylvia again at another meeting, this time of Conservation International held at some ritzy resort in the Dominican Republic. Harrison Ford was there and the buzz was what could be done to save the oceans. I was invited as an advisor. I sat on a barstool in an open beachfront dining plaza as the "conservationists" approached tables literally bending from the weight of fish and exotic seafood including caviar. I looked at Sylvia Earle and she just shook her head and rolled her eyes.

The problem is that people like Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, or the heads of Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International and many other big groups just refuse to accept that their eating habits may be just as much a part of the problem as all those things they are trying to oppose.

I remember one Greenpeacer defending his meat eating by saying that he was a carnivore and that "predators" have their place and he was proud to be one.

Now the word predator in relationship to human beings has a rather scary connotation having nothing to do with eating habits, but for any human being to describe themselves as a carnivore is just plain ridiculous.

Humans are not and have never been carnivores. A lion is a carnivore as is a wolf, as is a tiger, or a shark. Carnivores eat live animals. They stalk them, they run them down, they pounce, they kill, and they eat, blood dripping, meat at body temperature. Nature, brutal red in tooth and claw.

I've never met a human that can do that. Yes we found ways to run down animals and kill them. In fact we've come to be rather efficient at the killing part. But we can't eat the prey until we cut it up and cook it and that usually involves some time between kill and eating. It could be an hour or it could be years.

You see our meat eating habits are more closely related to the vulture, the jackal or other carrion eaters. This means that we can't be described as carnivores. We are better described as necrovores or eaters of rotting flesh.

Consider that some of the beef that people eat has been dead for months and in some cases for years. Dead and hanging in freezers, full of uritic acid and bacteria. It's a corpse in a state of decomposition. Not much that can be said to be noble about eating a cadaver.

But a little dose of denial allows us to bite into that Big Mac or cut into that prime rib.

But that one 16 ounce cut of prime rib is equal to a thousand gallons of fresh water, a few acres of grass, a few fish, a quarter acre of corn etc. What's the point of taking a shorter shower to conserve water as Greenpeace is preaching if you can sit down and consume a 1000 gallons of water at a single meal?

And that single cut of meat would have cost as much in vegetable resources equivalent to what could be fed to an entire African village for a week.

The problem is that we choose to see our contradictions when it is convenient for us to see them and when it is not we simply go into a state of suspended disbelief and we eat that steak anyway because, hey we like

the taste of rotting flesh in the evening.

Have you ever thought why it is that with a person, it's an abortion but when it comes to a chicken, it's an omelette?

Does anyone really know what's in a hot dog? We do know that the government health department allows for an acceptable percentage of bug parts, rodent droppings and other assorted filth to go into the mix.

And now tuna fish comes with a health warming saying it should not be eaten by pregnant women or small children because of high levels of mercury. Does that mean mercury is good for adults and non-pregnant women? What are they telling us here?

Eating meat and fish is not only bad for the environment it's also unhealthy. Yet even when it comes to our own health we slip into denial mode and order the whopper.

The bottom line is that to be a conservationist and an environmentalist, You must practice and promote vegetarianism or better yet veganism.

It is the lifestyle that leaves the shallowest ecological footprint, uses fewer resources and produces less greenhouse gas emissions, it's healthier and it means you're not a hypocrite.

In fact a vegan driving a hummer would be contributing less greenhouse gas carbon emissions than a meat eater riding a bicycle.

Paulwatson@earthlink.net

Captain Paul Watson

Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (1977-

Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972)

Co-Founder - Greenpeace International (1979)

Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006)

Director - The Farley Mowat Institute

Director - www.harpseals.org

"Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only,

Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee and thou with me,

For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,

And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all."

- Walt Whitman

www.Seashepherd.org

Tel: 360-370-5650

Fax: 360-370-5651

Address: P.O. Box 2616

Friday Harbor, Wa 98250 USA

so true.

I think I'm going to print this out and hand it to people who grill me on why I am a vego, which by the way is 99.9% of people I meet!?!

Sometimes I wonder why people are so offended by vegetarians, I think people would be happier if you said you were a cannibal

That text forced me to do some serious thinking.

Thanks for posting it.

Wow - read this in more detail, and it is very sobering indeed. He is right to say we have never been carnivores but eating meat does not make one a carnivore; Homo Sapiens is actually an omnivore and we have been eating meat for hundreds of thousands of years mixed with a balanced diet of vegetables, fruit, nuts and fish etc.

Issue is sustainability of course ... big issue. How far are you prepared to support conservation issues and give up your established and comfortable lifestyles ....? How about giving up flying to those unspoiled dive sites?

Heather and I have cut back on meat and fish a lot over the years, probably eating a third of what we ate some 20 years ago. I can see myself cutting back a lot more perhaps but not entirely. Perhaps that is what we need to manage towards - enforced moderation, not complete abstinence.

I have no issue with vegetarianism as a choice at all, but I think it is impractical to think that the majority of people will stop ingrained behavior that is basically part of our physiological make up. It's like 'say no' to pre-marital sex - everyone agrees it's a good idea, but it's actually unnatural.

Now, if we could persuade everyone to eat 10% or even 25% of their current meat intake - wouldn't that make a huge difference?

As a non-meat eater, though not a strict vegetarian, this is food for thought, however some of the logic is absurd. This thousand gallons of water per pound is just one example and cowpoop being the source of all evil.

Cows hardly consume all our excess freshwater - they drink from ponds often you know - they pee and evaporate it back into the environment etc, etc. Hardly water lost forever. As for cow dung, well I see them walking around fields and stuff dropping some of this fertilizer, hardly an environmental disaster.

Sometimes statistics really can lie.

The REAL inconvenient truth is that there are simply too many of us. With a massive (and growing) population we will always have food production problems of one form or another. There are sources of ethically produced meat, but I doubt very much whether these could ever be viable on the scale required with today's population let alone the increasing population levels of the future. Whilst many of the statements are accurate, its simply too simplistic to assume ALL meat to be poorly produced or that there are not some sustainable fisheries. Problem is that we have to face up to the truth that the world cannot sustain an ever increasing population and that the kerbing of its growth inevitably leads to some very difficult decisions. Vegetarianism is not the answer to what will become an untenable population.

All good input. My point here was the absurdity of scraping our oceans clear of fish to feed livestock to feed us. Cows, sheep, pigs and chickens simply aren't meant to eat fish period. We are creating food production systems that are incredibly destructive. If we are to eat meat, lets not feed vegetarian animals ground up fish to accellerate their growth. If we are too eat fish, lets do so sustainably and not raise one fish that requires we kill 9 others to feed it and poisen a half dozen more with its by-product. I have to believe we can do better than that. Otherwise, we are racing toward mass starvation.

It is unfortunately a real Catch-22 situation. You are 100% correct in my opinion, population growth is the problem with regard to resources etc. Unfortunately on the other hand, there is strong data to indicate that population growth is required to sustain an aging population; most data indicate that a minimum of 2.1 or 2.2 children per family is required to in order to sustain the existing population, particularly in developed countries where some type of social support system is in place for an aging population including social security, health care etc. So reduction in population that is sustainable, would also require culling of the aging population. Hardly likely to be a popular concept. Especially because I am not so far from culling age.

The REAL inconvenient truth is that there are simply too many of us. With a massive (and growing) population we will always have food production problems of one form or another. There are sources of ethically produced meat, but I doubt very much whether these could ever be viable on the scale required with today's population let alone the increasing population levels of the future. Whilst many of the statements are accurate, its simply too simplistic to assume ALL meat to be poorly produced or that there are not some sustainable fisheries. Problem is that we have to face up to the truth that the world cannot sustain an ever increasing population and that the kerbing of its growth inevitably leads to some very difficult decisions. Vegetarianism is not the answer to what will become an untenable population.

Another possible approach to the issue of 25-50% of the world's fish catch being used for fish feed and other non-seafood products: Increase the human demand and the human market for those lower-trophic-level species. So, instead of ordering a boneless chicken breast --produced by buying a few pounds of herring from a fishery, turning it into pellets, and then feeding those pellets to a chicken--we could actually eat the herring, thereby reducing the pollution and waste generated by all the processing, shipping, and other elements of the livestock/agro business. The pollution/climate change angle of Watson's logic is that the livestock industries suck up vast resources and spew out tons of pollution, all for an inefficient repackaging of the protein that we could have had by eating the harvested fish (a possibility he seems to ignore). I agree with him that it is grotesque and stupid to feed fish to pigs that in turn give us polluted water, unhealthy meat, increased methane, etc. But rather than simply insisting that we all go vegan or vegetarian, Watson could also suggest that, if some of us must eat flesh, we would do less damage to the planet if we ate herring and sardines instead of feeding them to chickens, pigs, and cows.

Personally, I don't think there's anything objectionable about harvesting living organisms and using their dead remains to feed, fertilize, or yield other living organisms that we'd prefer (or need) to use. Pointing outthat farm-raised salmon require many pounds of wild marine fish to yield one pound of salmon meat is simply pointing out that few if any organisms have the ability to take up all of the matter they ingest and convert it into body mass. We could make the same observation of wild salmon! But when doing all of that actually ends up costing us--in terms of greenhouse gases, polluted water, economically, health-wise, and more--then it's obviously a bad deal. Suddenly the $0.50 fast-food hamburger actually looks like a ludicrous purchase compared to the $0.50 portion of sardines. I think we can all understand that, but we needn't become vegans or get into the murky issue of what our species was meant to eat in the first place to start making some positive adjustments.

The issue is that we are using way too much energy and spewing out way too much crap when we convert natural things (small, oily fish) into products that we prefer or find more appetizing (pork chops). Surely we can approach this issue without becoming vegans, sinking all our boats, and withdrawing our cities from the coasts. I get the feeling that Paul Watson won't be satisfied until his boat is the only vessel on the seas, and we've all adopted precisely one approach to living on Earth: Paul Watson's approach. I'm sure he feels quite pleased with himself that he and Sylvia Earle (who does commercials for an oil company) are so immune to hypocrisy and so free of Ted Danson's brand of inconsistency, but it is simply unhelpful and dogmatic of him to be such a scold and so hopelessly militant about who and what is "real" conservation. If we make people think that there is only one acceptable mode or way of being a real conservationist or having less of an impact on Earth, we will simply offend and turn off the majority of Earth's 6 billion people, many of whom cannot afford to make the choices that Watson would have them make. Maybe Watson has a reasonable criticism of the Ted Dansons of the world. But to the average Tongan fishermen who is feeding his family, or the average inner-city teen who's only visible dining options are McDonald's and Burger King, Watson's rigid dogma is insulting and counterproductive.

And let's not forget that livestock species and the livestock industry existed before people started using fish in the food for those animals. And they could certainly exist again if we did stop using fish as food for those animals. We can deal with the gross inefficiencies and other problems related to eating domesticated animals without pretending that we don't have canine teeth or telling carnivores that they are actual scavengers of rotten meat, just as we can approach the issue of car emissions without simply outlawing cars.

Some random thoughts....

I like to fish and, again, I only keep what I intend to eat. I've observed "old timers" catch buckets of fish only to bury them in the garden. They just didn't want to clean them. This makes me insane. Fortunately that type of behavior is disappearing (now rare) due to shame, peer pressure and education.

I love a good steak. But, I eat more fish and chicken than red meat. Wild game is not uncommon for us to eat as well. We only kill what we consume. I don't know or associate with any "hunters" that don't have the same philosophy. I abhor killing for trophies.

It perplexes some to find that those that kill and eat animals are actually very fond of the species they target. The American Duck Hunter is a prime example of this. Who has done more for the management, preservation and conservation of wetlands for waterfowl than Ducks Unlimited? No one. Waterfowl numbers are at incredible numbers despite generations of hunting.

We have more animals today than we apparently know how to manage. Just ask PETA (regarding how many cats they kill annually - for the good of the species).

But, I agree, responsible management and consumption are essential. Moderation is key as excesses always cause imbalance. This is where I feel animal farms are a necessary evil of sorts. I can live with it.

We intervene when we think it is the right thing to do. Except, sometimes, we cause more harm than help. Consider this: forest fires are essential to new growth. New growth spurs growth of smaller species. Smaller species feed the larger ones and so on. Disrupt the cycle and you get imbalance. Look at the increase in Cougar attacks on humans as an example. Lack of new growth has abated the growth of the deer population and thus the Cougars look to new food sources. This is happening in areas where humans are not permanently residing. So, human encroachment is not the problem. Besides, we currently occupy what? 5% of existing land space? Space isn't an issue.

The American Indian's understood this and were masters at harvesting and managing the land (utilizing controlled forest fires at times). But, for some reason we think we are smarter and also "care more". Thus, we continue to make bad decisions without considering the consequences (until they bite us in the rear - now sometimes literally). Then, "for protection" the problem animals have to be killed; due to our fear, ignorance, and arrogance.

I'll continue to eat, appreciate, and support the beauty god placed on our planet for us to utilize responsibly.

Fine with me, if you choose not to utilize it.

Dang it Daniel - your posting is just too reasonable and rational - that will not do :-)

Cheers

James

I really appreciate the moderation comments and if that were the path chosen by all on this planet we would be ok. Unfortunately over-population and greed have created a situation where we are excessively out of balance.

I was just in Bali this weekend visiting the fish docks and fish markets. Everything, and I mean everything was for sale. Buckets of baby groupers, tables of parrot fish, vast quantities of juvenile tuna, sharks, rays, octopus, just piles and piles. This is happening at thousands of markets every day. Our oceans are being plundered at a devestating pace. The fish are getting smaller and very scarse.

So, how do we respond when the entire planet is out of balance? When the stocks are plummeting and approaching commercial extinction, do we just take moderate steps?

Take the Bengal Tigers for example. They are on a one way extinction course right now. There was a time where regulated hunting would have not materially impacted their numbers. Now every tiger shot is one step closer to certain extinction. Should we have controlled hunts of tigers regardless when they all but extinct? There is a time and place when moderation is appropriate but not now. Immediate counter action is required to save these cats.

The oceans face a similar plight. 6 billion (and rising) people extracting every day to feed themselves, their livestock, their pets and their trophy walls is just not sustainable. Moderate action will just slightly slow the collapse. Balance must first be restored before moderate action is prescribed. When your house is burning you take immediate action to save your family and yourself. Once you are safe, you then consider moderate action to recover from the fire.

The fire is burning hot right now.....

But what is your plan for immediate action Shawn? The general populous will not rise to the challenge - even now I'm hearing of communities of vested interests creating a backlash against ‘the theory of global warming'. These guys rant in the face of mounting hard facts rather like the fundamentalists who resisted continental drift and seafloor spreading 'theories' until the data behind plate tectonics was totally incontrovertible.

If the general population will not go for extreme measures, the only other path is government intervention and unpopular mandates, and no government will even go there unless it costs them economically not to do so. Even if ‘influential’ governments like China, the US and the UK were to mandate measures there would be enormous resistance – my God the US can’t even agree on gun control!

Personal choice is a soft option, but any government mandate that attempts to fundamentally change the way people eat will smack of fascism and/or communism. Also we are not far from arguments like ‘what is more precious – a human life or a shark’s life?’ and we know that sort of comparison is futile ….

I really fear for the long term survival of many/most of the planet’s species that come up against ‘human nature’ (read avarice, ignorance, self preservation, procreation, eating etc). Wildlife sanctuaries for one, if well managed, will at least preserve some of the most interesting species for longer than otherwise might be the case. But why are we interested in preserving them at all; because like the Victorians we consider ‘zoos’ an intellectual stimulus, or because it is healthier in the long run for 1) humans 2) the planet 3) the species themselves or 4) all of the above?

Certainly the planet doesn’t really give a stuff – mass extinctions come and go with increasing (geological) frequency. It looks like we ourselves may be heading for a mass extinction of sorts, though I can’t think of a single event that would actually wipe us totally from the planet – at least not for a several more million years … so it seems we are stuck with ourselves, if not with many of the world’s most fascinating species and environments …

A recent article written by George Monbiot and published in the Guardian does an excellent job explaining how and why we are continuing to decimate our oceans while providing oursleves excuses to keep doing it.

Feeding Frenzy

Why is it still acceptable to eat the endangered large predators of the sea?

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 3rd April 2007.

To Ransom A. Myers, who died on March 27th.

"If these animals lived on land there would be a global outcry. But the great beasts roaming the savannahs of the open seas summon no such support. Big sharks, giant tuna, marlin and swordfish should have the conservation status of the giant panda or the snow leopard. Yet still we believe it is acceptable for fishmongers to sell them and celebrity chefs to teach us how to cook them."

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/03/feeding-frenzy/

I recommend reading this and thinking about how we can become part of the solution quickly before it's too late.

To Quote Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (senior prosecuting attorney for Natural Resource Defense Counsel) in response to the

Question "What's the most important thing people can do?"

His reply: "You have to be willing to fight - thats all. you have to be willing to fight."

Well his brother was the president and 'dating' many women while married to Jackie O... I'd be in a fighting mood too if I were him.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (senior prosecuting attorney for Natural Resource Defense Counsel) in response to the

Question "What's the most important thing people can do?"

His reply: "You have to be willing to fight - thats all. you have to be willing to fight.

NickJ we're not going to be extinct but a massive culling is in order due to lack of resources.

Certainly the planet doesn’t really give a stuff – mass extinctions come and go with increasing (geological) frequency. It looks like we ourselves may be heading for a mass extinction of sorts, though I can’t think of a single event that would actually wipe us totally from the planet – at least not for a several more million years … so it seems we are stuck with ourselves, if not with many of the world’s most fascinating species and environments …

this is a really interesting debate and one that makes plain and often repeated misconceptions about the

state of the world.

it is unrealistic to wish utopian veganism on every member of the planet. do you really think that

we can make a law, or even a unified wish and expect every fisherman on the planet to fall into line?

what is really lacking in this debate is a balanced management strategy. fisherman in most parts of the world live by subsistence means. they should be our point of concentration, one person in this debate has already pointed to changes within the sport fishing community through peer pressure and other means, it is not unrealistic, nor too late to implement such changes within commercial and subsistence practices. look at the remarkable changes that have happened in uk farming over the last ten years. it is nothing like the industry it was, and is 1000 times more eco friendly.

if you play the precentages game in a true and enlightened manner, you will see that management of our oceans could work, and such a strategy should be implemented with urgency.

no one has even attempted a census of south pacific marlin for example, whilst in the north atlantic, fishing practices of the marlin populations are guarded for sport fishing purposes only, providing incomme for those very same people went out in past years to catch unsustainable numbers. but will you ever hear a vegan propose such a policy? totalitarianism in any form is non productive and a waste of precious time.

writepic@gmail.com

Drew - RFK Jr. is JFK's nephew, not his brother.

And look for him to be VP candidate if Gore decides to throw his hat into the presidential ring. They'll be the "green" ticket but they'll probably be gunning for the Democratic nomination.

As for the Monbiot op-ed, this kind exaggeration drives me nuts:

"Since the large sharks were removed from coastal waters in the western Atlantic, the rays they preyed on have multiplied tenfold and have wiped out all the main commercial species of shellfish(4)."

Funny how he leaves out the part about the study being in Chesapeake Bay, and the shellfish species in question being among the main commercial species in that particular body of water. To read Monbiot, you'd think that the whole western Atlantic is just churning with rays and totally devoid of commercially-important populations of scallops, oysters, clams, lobster, shrimp, crab, and all other "shellfish". This sort of writing ends up doing more harm than good, because it reads like just another exaggerating screed from someone who can't even read a scientific paper without getting his facts wrong. A series of Myers papers and Oceana reports does not make for a very well-rounded review of fisheries management issues.

It seems you really missed the point of the article and chose one poor example to squable with. The message is entirely spot on regarding the inability to limit fisheries and the lack of concern by most people for the wellbeing of the oceans large predators. We all seem to find little data points to confirm our postition in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

"Tell someone something they know (and agree with) and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it"

Are you saying these issues are not very real?

It seems you really missed the point of the article and chose one poor example to squable with. The message is entirely spot on regarding the inability to limit fisheries and the lack of concern by most people for the wellbeing of the oceans large predators. We all seem to find little data points to confirm our postition in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

 

"Tell someone something they know (and agree with) and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it"

 

Are you saying these issues are not very real?

I think he's saying that generalities and vague, sweeping claims are both difficult to accept, and erode the effectiveness of the argument made. This is not a balanced presentation, it's an op-ed piece; the author makes some compelling points, but has a clear agenda, and stacks the deck to make his points. Some of the claims are downright silly, existing in a vaccuum (i.e., a steak costing enough biomass to feed an African village - kind of like the starving Ethiopians my mother used to warn me of, with the same problem - I couldn't send them my spinach either). Cows do a much better job converting cheap grass to human-digestible protein than we do. That's why they grow cows in Africa too. Ok, that might be too abrasive, but hopefully you see my point - it's pretty easy to find problems with that line of reasoning. The problem with making a fallacious argument is, it's too easy to expose the fallacies and thus discard what is good and true. It's also hard not to want to take the piss out of someone so self-righteous, to be honest (the author, I mean).

That said, please don't confuse criticism of the method with criticism of the message - I'm as concerned as everyone here about the unsustainable and egregious use of the world's resources. I do try to reduce my impact, educate others, and behave/shop responsibly. However, I'm honest enough to admit that I'm not yet willing to give up my wasteful Western lifestyle, and plan to leave my sooty carbon footprints all over my next expensive flying-halfway-around-the-world dive trip. Helps keep me from getting up too high on my horse.