Yes, fisheries in decline means that, voluntarily or not, we will lose our cedar plank salmon and our sushi-grade tuna. We will instead talk up the pleasures of the sardine, its ennobling humility and its clean taste, but it will be self-delusion covering up an obvious sense of loss, just as celebrating a birthday on Zoom is a pathetic loss no matter how much we try to put a happy face on it.
We are all getting a taste of what it feels to lose things, maybe lose them for good. This is the experience of our parents and grandparents, survivors of war, refugees, people thrown into sudden poverty. It's a common experience around the world, but many of us have forgotten it. It's time to get reacquainted. Families who lose everything in stock market crashes and hurricanes look at the wreckage of their lives and ask, "Is this satire?"
In 40 years, I fully expect to be an out-of-touch antebellum grandma, talking of lost pleasures to people who've never tasted coffee or traveled across the Atlantic, the same way I have never ridden in a phaeton or tasted ortolan.