ECONOMIST: Ban Of High-Seas Fishing Saves $2 Per Person On The Planet

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/economist-ban-of-high-seas-fishing-saves-2-per-person-on-the-planet-2014-2


US Coast Guard prepares to board a fishing vessel while on patrol in the Pacific Ocean off of the coast of San Francisco on March 7, 2013

Fishing the high seas is a losing investment, an economist told political leaders, corporate kings and environmental warriors Wednesday, backing calls for protecting the open seas.

McKinsey & Company director Martin Stuchtey subtracted politics from the equation and laid out numbers showing that a ban on high seas fishing would cost $2 per person on the planet, while returning $4 per person.

"You would need to spend the two dollars to get the four dollars; that is much better than anything the bank offers you right now," Stuchtey told AFP after an on-stage chat at a World Ocean Summit organized by The Economist weekly newspaper.

A handful of nations spend lots of money subsidizing fleets that must range farther and farther at sea for fish as stocks are depleted. The bulk of their catch goes to developed nations.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/economist-ban-of-high-seas-fishing-saves-2-per-person-on-the-planet-2014-2#ixzz2uWsKqeZJ

[Laelth]

1. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[hunter]

2. I wish we'd stop doing things for ethical reasons, not for "economics."

Depleting the ocean of fish, uneconomical or not, is an unethical thing to do.

Burning coal for electric power is an unethical thing to do.

Etc..

[kristopher]

3. That is also "economics"

The field is "normative economics".

Why?

Because there are trade-offs and dilemmas in ethics also. Contrary to what most people believe, "economics" isn't about money, it is about decision-making.

[hunter]

4. I'm very familiar with medical ethics and economics.

But I see where RMI, for example, takes "normative economics," and I don't like it at all.

In the coal -- nuclear -- "natural gas" debate it leads to irrational decisions, like filthy gas as a "bridge" fuel, solar panels covering the deserts (or stranger, green places like Germany), or increasing swarms of "more efficient" cars.

Symptoms are addressed, not root problems. We get increasingly sophisticated and subsidized iron lungs, not polio vaccines.

Fossil fuel world is death by catastrophic systems failures. Floods, drought, crop failures, and all the other horrors of climate change

"Renewable" energy gadget world is death by a thousand cuts.

The path we are following now is a combination of both.

A truly sustainable modern technological human society would look nothing like the society we have now.

I daresay the greatest forces for environmental improvement are those that empower women, reduce infant and child mortality, promote birth control, and provide comfortable retirements for elderly people, even those with no working age family.

These are not things that can be put in a box and sold.

[kristopher]

5. That makes as much sense as I'd expect ...

...from a pronuclear** anti-technology activist working through the internet.

If you don't think you are engaging in "normative economics" every time you make a value judgement, then you don't know what you are talking about.

**I threw that in for your unsurprising attempt at twisting the issue to try and make RMI a villain - which is one of the nuclear industry's favorite pastimes.

[hunter]

6. Nuclear powered or solar powered an iron lung is still an iron lung.

Nuclear powered, solar powered, fossil fuel powered, an automobile is still an automobile.

There isn't any gadget, or combination of gadgets that will pull us out of this mess.

If we don't want to damage wild fish populations, we can stop fishing.

If we don't want to burn fossil fuels, we can stop extracting fossil fuels.

The root problem is we don't stop.

More people, using more resources, that's what got us into this mess.

I think it's possible we could have fewer people using fewer resources living more comfortable, more leisurely lives.

But everywhere you look there's someone selling more stuff.

[kristopher]

7. And yet you nonetheless promote nuclear whenever you have the chance.

Which, of all the energy technologies, unquestionably provides the greatest incentives for increased consumerism.

That's a point that has been well made by Lovins at RMI in fact.

Your contradictions are legion.

[hunter]

8. ?

I'm indifferent to nuclear, hostile to fossil fuels, with extreme prejudice.

I would be horrified by cheap fusion but thankfully it's still beyond clever shit-throwing monkeys like ourselves.

My own "business plan" sucks. It always has. First (officially) logged onto the internet in 1979. Not wealthy. Fucked up, rejected any "insider" wealth. Often.

Quit ARCO Solar.

If WalMart or the U.S. Air Force asked me for advice (and they never have) I'd still tell them to go fuck themselves in some potentially fatal manner. With a Cholla Cactus is something I sometimes say.

I'm not fit for politics or big business, never have been. I'm the burner of thesis advisors (three of them) and multiple people who accepted me as "intern."

That's how I learned to be a pacifist and observer. Whatever will be will be. Take a walk on the wild side. Gently. I gave up bite-hands-off wild thing.

In the end we humans are just an interesting layer of trash in the geological layers of Earth.

I have quite a bit of training and experience as a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. Tar and dirt on bones. Nasty solvents. A paleontologist got me readmitted to college when I'd struck out twice...

Math? Doesn't scare me. I'm not so great at that but have monomaniacal OCD friends and acquaintances who are.

Yep, I've met Amory, Hunter, Helen, Buckmister, and god damned fuck I was pissed when the Hardins offed themselves. I probably hurt more now than they ever did, me getting out of bed this morning, but in their defense this may be one of my Catholic issues.

I welcome you to p.m. me.

[kristopher]

9. "I'm indifferent to nuclear"

No, you aren't.

You assist in promoting it while trying to greenwash yourself as an anti-technology warrior - on the internet no less. I mean seriously, what kind of environmentalist is "indifferent" (to use your inapt phrase) to nuclear power while actively opposing renewables? Especially when you also claim that you're anti-consumer and nuclear is the worst technology driving over-consumption and renewables drive conservation?

Everything you say you believe is ass backwards from the technology you endorse.

[hunter]

10. I see no PM yet.

Talk to me.

[kristopher]

11. I judge people strictly by the posts they make.

If you have an issue with what I'm seeing in what you post I don't know what to tell you except I don't know you from anyone and have no reason to misrepresent the actions you take with your words.

If you want to talk, we are in a place to talk right now.

[hunter]

12. Skim my journal here on DU.

Search my posts.

This is me.