For years I tried to only buy "sustainable" fish. It's almost impossible. Different lists give you different criteria. So much fish is endangered. So much fishing happens in ways that fish that's not even desired gets caught and thrown back in dead. Worth, some fishing techniques even damage the sea bed itself. On top of that most fish in stores is mislabeled making it downright impossible to enjoy fish without ruining the planet.

I completely disagree. We are reaching a point where it would be incredibly difficult to do more harm than inaction. If we continue the way we're going now, there is going to be a moment in the future where a thermonuclear war would have been less harmful in the long run because it would have put a damper on our industry. It'll eventually get that bad, as horrible and unthinkable as that is. Wouldn't that just be unbearably ironic? If we end up regretting that the cold war never went hot because our daily habits are even worse on a long timeline?

We've already done damage that's difficult to even comprehend. There's dead zones all over the map, where there's nothing but a bunch of algae and isopods crawling around in the mud and bones on the sea floor. These are enormous amounts of surface area, but they also represent a huge depth, so it's actually a volume of completely ruined wilderness. It's many, many times worse than an equivalent amount of acreage on land turned barren. We don't really have the daily context to understand what a loss that is. If we cause a collapse of the ocean ecosystems, we are truly and fully ruined.

People like to think that rational responses to situations are always moderate and level-headed, but that depends on context. The rational response to what's happening in this context is to freak the fuck out. Literally any sacrifice is going to be worth averting this kind of catastrophe. We are quite literally like the frog which is slowly boiling in the pot; we are slowly boiling ourselves, but it's a generational process so nobody ever thinks it's time for drastic measures. We're not looking at a choice between winning or losing; we're looking at the difference between extinction and cataclysm. The choice between a death toll of merely hundreds of millions vs. billions. It's extremely likely that this situation is going to end both of our family lines at some point in the next several generations. It's awful, but unless we figure out time travel these are the choices we have.

We could just pay fishermen to not fish, just like we pay farmers for fallow land.

How would it harm, and how will ceasing voluntarily while there are still fish in the ocean be worse than stopping once the oceans are completely dead?

>that would be an over reaction that will harm more than it helps.

Explain.