Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
I think that's a little severe.
There are truly _no_ more fish to catch?
Of course there are still some fish left to catch. However, world
catches have declined precipitously and are still declining, world
fish populations are declining . . .
Right. Plus there is another issue that does not occur with economics
and the Laffer curve. When edible species are driven close to
extinction, other species invade their niche. For example, in Japan
in the Inland Sea, jellyfish have multiplied in huge numbers and they
now eat much of the food that fish used to eat before the stocks were
destroyed by overfishing. People do not generally eat jellyfish in
Japan (although actually they taste pretty good), so nothing stops a
jellyfish from taking over the whole ecosystem and killing off the
last of the fish that people used to eat. They are not an invasive
species; they have been there all along, but we have facilitated vast
increases in their numbers.
Also, once a species enters precipitous decline, it is sometimes
unrecoverable. In economics, you can always stop taxing people and
the economy will spring back to life, but I think there is little
chance the blue and right whales will recover, even though human
depredations stopped in the mid-19th century.
In North America there were several large species of land animals
20,000 years ago that were driven into extinction by hunting within a
thousand years after human beings showed up. In Easter Island and
many other Pacific islands virtually all species of birds and mammals
were destroyed, along with nearly all of the tree species, leaving
only chickens and people. We now have the ability to do the same
thing to entire oceans.
- Jed
