We're destroying our local ecosystems for a quick buck, and a cap on exports would be the quickest fix. In the long term we should turn more to fish farms.
Fisheries would be one example, agriculture which a sibling comment mentioned, another. But it's also pollution, labour laws, access to housing.
It's tricky because the US is literally the most powerful economy ever, so it must be doing something right, equally it seems other countries care more about their citizens. Not China or North Korea ofc but Europe or Canada etc.
The US’s wealth is in it’s people not it’s fisheries.
Who would have thought spreadsheets and magic market numbers had little material connection to the resources extracted to extrapolate those numbers.
But the whole premise of technology is that you can break the zero-sum and reach arbitrarily high levels.
For example Deuterium–tritium fusion runs on hydrogen that's pretty common to find. Yes, if we learn to exploit it, we will one day run out, but by then we'll have new sources of fuel. Similarly solar energy is just 'free' energy that rains down on our planet.
We could use that energy to farm fish or cultivate natural populations. We don't do that which is bad, but it's not some impossibility.
In many ways these arguments of "there's free energy from hydrogen fusion" feels similar to arguments about solving invasive species with another species because we haven't figured out that the new species will be invasive yet. And in a similar fashion, the local ecology may eventually re-balance (indeed, likely will) but what time scale are we looking at? Humans need human time scales.
For example, most of the energy from the sun that hit our planet are just basically wasted. Meanwhile, the sun uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the planet.
The reason why fisheries are collapsing is because we don't spend much making our environment more habitable and pollute or use up what's already there.
> Eh, only within the current context of society and technology.
> For example, most of the energy from the sun that hit our planet are just basically wasted. Meanwhile, the sun uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the planet.
You can't magick away the problem with sci-fi fantasies. Those technologies don't actually exist and (with a fairly high probability) may never exist.
And in any case, a bigger finite does not an infinite make.
We don't have the technology to pave the planet in solar panels, because we don't have the technology to make it cost effective. Also the solution to the "problem" of "most of the energy from the sun that hit our planet are just basically wasted" is to literally destroy the environment in an industrialization project.
Solving the "problem" of "...the sun uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the planet," is also limited by that cost effectiveness problem AND the problem of we don't have the technology to do anything with energy collected by satellites, especially ones half-way around the solar system. Then there's the issue of putting up a few trillion solar power satellites still would allow the sun to "uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the planet."
We'd need only 254x254 km of solar panels for the whole world.
https://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/inst... - page 25
While interesting, that's an answer to a different problem/challenge than I was responding to.
At the expense of *most* of its citizens. I know people who make a shocking amount of money fishing in Alaska every summer. The problem with the US is that it always prioritizes a few of its citizens getting rich, to the diffuse and often intangible detriment of the rest of us.
A good representation of the people I found were Native Alaskans, immigrants, or felons who were attracted to the job because it was one of the damn few available to them. It was brutal work to eke out a basic existence.
Not sure about the natives. Their way of life was wrecked by western influence and fishing even on a modern vessel is about the closest thing they have to continuing their way of life while making some income near their home. I have no idea what they would shift to if they moved.
In any case USA's highly regulated Bering Sea fishing industry is shared with Russia. Even if we eliminated/downsized our fishing it'd have to be done in concert with Russia to get the desired outcome, otherwise we'd just be handing the lions share of our catch to Russian fisherman.
Per capita we’re still doing ok but far from #1.
Seriously, the highest population in any state with a higher GDP per capita than the US is the UAE.
#1? Maybe not, but it's certainly pretty close in any useful discussion.
Remove resource extraction and financial services from all economies and the list does look different, but the US’s position is still far from #1. Also, PPP comparisons between countries are rather suspect as costs for housing, food, etc vary widely across the US. There’s plenty of ways to run these numbers but the results are surprisingly arbitrary.
Consider the fact that when the US was colonized, the native population was small and had a significant technological disadvantages - also true to some extent for central/South America. That gave the colonists a whole continent for virtually free, whereas in their territories of origin they would have had to compete with large incumbent populations that had similar technology, from weapons to the administrative organs of states.
If youg et a huge resource boost you will surely find ways to profit, just as if you received a billion $ to play with. But getting thins for free - especially land - also means you can afford to care less about externalities, because you don't have as many neighbors or you are not jammed as closely together. And so it's easy and natural for people in that situation to prioritize resource extraction and profit maximization. California's gold rush is a relatively recent example of the same phenomenon.
My pet theory is that when you do this on a continental scale, you end up with a culture that defaults to thinking of economic inputs as infinite, and even if they're not, to maximizing output for as long as possible and then moving on. It's slash-and-burn agriculture's mentality (with a side dose of captive labor) but on an industrial-technological scale.
Fast-forward to the present, and there's an awareness that the civilizational free lunch is over, resources and livable territory are finite, and pollution has a nasty habit of ending up somewhere, but where it's still profitable to do business with the attitude described above. A lot of the bitterness in contemporary politics is due to the economic calculus being increasingly obvious thanks to widespread availability of scientific data and network infrastructure.
Incumbents and wannabes whose economic interests/preferences tend toward extraction of resources or rents cannot publicly admit the validity of data about the downsides of their economic activity, because then they would also have to admit that they simply don't care and prefer making money in the short term to any sort of sustainability in the long term. Though numerous, they are too few in number to sustain such a position in face of broad opposition, so they maintain a set of policy arguments (and a polity) based around different but more emollient axioms. The more questionable or untenable those axioms, the more fervently they must be upheld, to maintain the support of their polity.
In the US, the hardline extraction position has a significant overlap with Chrisitan Nationalism, a belief strongly held by ~10% of the population and accepted/supported by another ~20%. The CN position, when you get down to it, is that mankind was meant to exert total dominion over the Earth by divine fiat, and that in the not-too distant future the divine power will return and re-establish itself on earth following a period of apocalyptic upheaval.
Those neighborhoods don’t get renewed - their cheaply-built houses just get passed down the economic ladder, while the previous residents buy bigger, nicer houses further out in a new subdivision.
The Dominionist worldview is, as you said, quite common in my home region, and I was told in church youth group that environmentalism was basically paganism.
I nearly turned down my JHU admission because there was no on-campus parking and freshmen were strongly discouraged from having cars - I couldn’t fathom life without a car. One of the first people I met at freshman orientation was a guy from NYC who not only didn’t have a driver’s license, much less a car, neither did his parents! We managed to throughly culture shock each other, as he’d never met an Evangelical or a Texan before, and couldn’t understand why I was so apprehensive about not having access to a car.
Resource constraints can have appalling results (I live near Nuremberg, so I’m well aware), but no sense of them (what I and many middle-class and up Texans grew up with) carries its own dangers to oneself and one’s world.
Well this rather neatly explains New Orleans East as well.
If you were to look at the details, I do not doubt that it would be the same in Europe. Please don't think that any of the 'developed' countries are holier-than-US.
If you buy "stuff", you participate in the exploitation of nature.
1. "Addition of a carbon" tax is highly misleading because it was enacted almost half a decade ago, and while there was an increase in carbon taxes during an inflationary period, that was scheduled years before.[1]
2. Dropping carbon (or similar) taxes to fight inflation is terrible policy. It's untargeted, benefits rich people more (the more gas you use the more you benefit), and encourages more consumption by lowering prices. If you want to provide relief, targeted subsidies work far better.
3. Carbon in the atmosphere is fungible so whether there are trees or not in your country is irrelevant. If your country is pumping 20 tons (or whatever) of carbon into the air, that's still 20 tons of carbon that's heating the atmosphere, or 20 tons that a developing country can no longer emit.
4. Forests are "carbon sinks" in the sense that if you keep them around you'll keep a lot of co2 from entering the atmosphere, but mature forests don't suck much carbon out of the atmosphere (on net).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada#2020:...
I think the size and heterogeneity of the US is under-appreciated.
Canada is a 1/10th the population of the US. Europeans are more likely to identify as Germans, Italians, etc. and see to their national interests before those of the EU as a whole.
The US is the 3rd most populous country after China, India - ahead of Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil... And the 4th largest by landmass after Russia, Canada, and China.
Herring season was interesting since all the herring roe went, apparently, to Japan. A Japanese inspector would arrive and test the herring that the cannery had stored in large brine vats, stacked around the facility. Only when he said it was "ripe" would we begin processing (separating) the roe from the herring.
The non-egg part of the processing was, I was told, to become crab bait or cat food.
It seems very few of my friends kept fishing in Alaska as we got older. I suspect that is normal, but a few friends still go up to work summers. Sometimes I wish I had gone up to do it.
They also have a giant vacuum cleaner type thing four stories tall as loud as two jet airplanes. People casually walk the small village as the "herr rn sucker" deafens everyone.
https://www.statista.com/chart/2280/the-global-fish-farming-...
China's being smart about it too - they are farming fish which are ubiquitous and easy to farm (Carp and Tilapia):
https://thechinaguys.com/aquaculture-in-china/
China could do a much better job at regulating their fishing industry though...
In the West we eat Tilapia, but we probably should learn to eat Carp. Unfortunately as a family of fish, it gets a bad rap for a few reasons (Americans don't like bones, Carp has a low-class association, Carp can be "muddy" if not raised and prepared right).
I will have to pick up some smoked carp if I make it to said area. I've never seen it for sale. The only time I've seen Carp for sale period is in Asian supermarkets.
https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/11/f...
Here is an article I found about it:
https://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/cast-iron-chef/ritters-fis...
Asian species are a different story - some of them are filter feeders. Some other European species don't have bottom feeding mouth parts as well (Crucian, Prussian).
The popularity of lobster went up first when canning technology allowed boats to cook and package them up immediately after they were caught but they were still a cheap source of protein. It didn't become the delicacy it is today until after the great depression when the economics allowed fishermen to specialize in lobster fishing and keep them alive until they reached the customer.
That set of circumstances is difficult to repeat for other species
Edit: I was thinking saltwater fish, freshwater fish is a different story.
2019 figures:
* U.S. commercial fishermen landed 9.3 billion pounds of seafood * Americans consumed 6.3 billion pounds of seafood
Given imports are more processed than exports, a part of that difference is presumably waste & less desirable byproducts. So it seems fair to conclude that the US eats pretty close to the amount of seafood that it produces.
In $ terms (because of the value add of processing), US seafood imports are roughly 4x exports.
Source: https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/2021-05/fus-2019-fact-sheet...
> Based on USDA data for 2021, only 3.9% of all U.S. hay produced and 6.4% of all alfalfa hay entered the export market.
[0]: https://www.hayandforage.com/article-3825-Year-end-hay-expor....
The problem is that due to the system of water rights and allocations, California is effectively subsidizing Saudi Arabia by selling water to local farmers at below market rates. Thus we have a water shortage which impacts everyone while benefiting only a tiny number of farmers.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/contributors/valley-...
> Alfalfa's deep roots are capable of extracting water from deep in the soil, thus much of the water applied is not wasted. Additionally, deep roots enable the crop to survive periodic droughts.
> Perenniality—The fact that the crop grows for 4-8 years, grows quickly with warm conditions in the spring is a major advantage of alfalfa—it can utilize residual winter rainfall before irrigation is necessary. This is unlike summer-grown annual crops that need to be replanted each year (water use efficacy is low during this time). In many areas, the first cutting of alfalfa of the year requires zero irrigation– supported only by rain and residual soil moisture.
> Very High Yields—Alfalfa is a very high yielding crop, and can grow 365 days a year in warm regions (such as the Imperial Valley of California and southern Arizona). Its biomass yields are very high—we can get up to 12 cuttings per year in those regions, and growers with top management can obtain more than 14 tons/acre dry matter yields. High-yields create higher water use efficiencies.
> High Harvest Index, High Water Use Efficiency—Alfalfa's Water Use Efficiency is not only due to high yields, but because nearly 100% of the above-ground plant material is harvested (known as the harvest index). In most seed-producing and fruiting crops, only a portion of the plant is harvested (typically 30-50% of the total plant biomass).
[0]: https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1772...
The problem is that farmers are being blamed for poor city planning and management. Los Angeles, for example, lets tens of billions of gallons of fresh water flow into the ocean. [0]
The farmers are at least using the 40% share of the water they get and in return Californians get affordable food.
> According to the Pacific Institute, California's urban areas are letting between 770,000 and 3.9 million acre-feet of water spill away every year (depending on how dry or wet the year is).
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/us/california-drought-sto.... [1]: https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2023-01-16/ess....
We need to move towards a free market solution where all water users pay market rates instead of subsidizing politically favored sectors. If that means that prices rise for certain water-intensive crops then so be it. That's preferable to a water shortage.
There isn't a water shortage. Cities are wasting their fresh water through mismanagement. They could syphon off 10% of the runoff to little to no environmental effect, but they don't because there is no political capital to be gained.
And water rights are attached to land, it isn't just "given", farmers need to buy, own and maintain the land to preserve their water rights. Which has more free market qualities than any proposal I've heard coming out of the California legislature.
One complexity with this plan is that the vast majority of the seafood processing occurs overseas. We export fish to China to be processed, then ship it back.
Sadly, that happens all over the world. 'We' prefer to not see long term effects for having a 'better' life now.