Nations reach accord to protect marine life on high seas
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But, while the armchair activists bring nothing but despair to this discussion there are others who have worked diligently and with optimism to make a difference for many, many years[1]. So far, they’ve failed. But isn’t it a great YC truism that failure is learning? Those admirable folks (including my grandfather, a secretary of the IWC) will keep rising and trying, and someday may just win.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Convention_for...
The time for the ruling class to be given a pass for their failures is at an end. Funny thing is they are the ones calling for and end to complacency, but strangely enough that does not extend to complacency toward their corruption, incompetence, and greed
Today, somehow, peak coal is in front of us again and emissions promises have been revealed as flimsy half-truths that are gamed and lied about as part of domestic and international power struggles and political maneuvering, to the absolute shock and surprise of nobody who has paid the slightest attention to the behavior and trustworthiness of politicians and bureaucrats and their corporate masters at any time in the past 50+ years.
Which emitter would that be?
Because if you're talking about the US, it withdrew for ~3 months (11/04/2020 - 1/20/2021).
If agreements are negotiated to be that resistant to national politics, that seems like a design win.
I just don’t care about the latest agreement, good intention, or promise. I don’t care to find out where the loopholes are to make the just a showpiece.
I’m not going to celebrate politicians demonstrating some plan for how things are going to be, I’ll celebrate victories.
Too much these days is just celebrating and condemning appearances instead of actual results.
Love YC, might be wrong, but top 20 founders of the almost 10,000 that have gone through YC created majority on YC’s returns; this count doesn’t even include the 100s of thousands of applicants that never got in. And now have ever to my knowledge come close to changing way 8 billion people behave on a daily basis.
Least for me, I am not an arm chair activist, though unlike most activists, I (now) see activism largely as a waste of time. Not because it randomly makes progress, but because the progress made normally has nothing to do with actual changes to way people reason about the world, and everything about how the feel about the world.
To me, without changing way people reason, everything else feels like it’s not addressing the fundamental problem.
> The treaty does not regulate fishing on the high seas, which is managed by other international organizations.
This treaty seems to more about plastic and climate.
Frameworks essentially state "This is something we all want, and here are the boundaries of what we're agreeing to talk about."
Protocols build within existing frameworks and state "We agree to do these specific things in pursuit of the framework's bigger goal."
Rationale presumably being that it's easier to get a bunch of diplomats to agree on general goodness, and then everyone has already bought in when it comes time for the more difficult concrete negotiations.
This is a framework stating something like "Protecting marine life is good."
Third paragraph from the end? Talk about a buried lede.
This feels very similar to the Paris Climate Agreement. That is, lots of talk. Lots of agreement. But nothing binding. More faux progress.
Sad to say, typical.
Offhand, I'd love to be proven wrong (because this is an environmental issue that IMO is far more important and demonstrably real than the other thing) but I cannot imagine that certain countries (who cannot be named) would ever agree to a genuine agreement in this space.
the virus has finally arrived here? okay now we can close the borders
“With its own coastal waters depleted, China has built a global fishing operation unmatched by any other country.”
The worlds largest country with largest ship construction capability has the biggest fleet.
PRC distant fleet _underfishes_ per capita, especially relative to JP (3X more than PRC), SKR & ES (7x), TW (30x ~). All with their own subsidies and suspicious behaviours in others EEZs. At end of day, PRC with 1/5 of world population and relatively small EEZ is entitled to fish in international waters. Like emissions, it's the per capita that matters.
Entire PRC overfishing propaganda is US driven narrative to forward deploy coast guards against PRC interests. There's a reason why these articles never headlines with US east asian partners being significantly worst overfishers. In the meantime, no reason PRC fishermen or consumers should take a hit until others cut down to PRC levels.
:) Prolly would've preferRed if it happened sooner but it is NOww heppenINg.
I AM so glad!:):)
When conservation rules are ignored by 20-25% of the population (because they won't be the only ones) they can easily undo all of the efforts of the rest of the people. If I cut my impact in half they can wipe that out by increasing their impact by 20%.
There is only one ocean on planet earth and we all need to do our part to protect its ecosystem.
What do you think an international accord is?
This is false. Per capita, aside from Africa and South America, who both eat roughly half the fish per person as the rest, majority of world per person eats same amount of fish. Sure, Asian has more people, but do you really think telling the majority of people they need to eat less fish while everyone else is not told that is going to go over well?
Source:
- https://goodseedventures.com/worldwide-food-consumption-per-...
Besides the claim Asian countries not eating as much seafood is false. Per capita, China, South Korea, Japan are easily the top consumers, if you exclude small island nations and low population countries. [1] Vietnam and Myanmar would also be in the list, but their consumption is based more on fresh water fisheries and not ocean based.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-and-seafood-consumpt...
It's not about "rights", it's about actually making things happen. Telling China to consume less fish with the justification "you do the most damage because you have more people" isn't going to cause them to actually regulate it or do anything to curve consumption. It's childish playground behavior, but if the children have nukes, you won't get them to do something they don't agree to.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35815444
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/30/china-beijing-fishing-a...
Edit: Force should be used against antagonistic nation states when required, otherwise words are meaningless.
EDIT: You've edited your response a bunch of times from "hell yeah, I'm ready to die in a war" to whatever it is now. So here you go Internet Tough Guy(tm). Have fun, I guess https://www.goarmy.com/how-to-join.html
Am I missing something?
As for populations being irresponsible, please feel free to explain your reasoning behind this claim, since unless I am missing something, it’s missing from your comment.
Again, if it’s so easy to not do X then getting even small countries that are democratic should be easy; obviously not, in fact, this has nothing to do with countries and everything to do with cultural norms, or the lack there of.
What does this mean? If Japan split into 5 countries, each eating the same amount of fish per capita as now, would that somehow be more responsible?
If by "irresponsibly" you mean they failed to execute sufficiently draconian population control, it's hard to imagine anything more extreme than China's longstanding former One Child Policy - an exemplar of what you'd describe as responsible environmental behavior, right?
Who's more irresponsible? A Chinese family buying fish for 2 children or a Westerner buying twice as much food for themselves as they need?
You could see a country with a low population and a large amount of land as "greedily taking more land than necessary". Kind of akin to NIMBYism.
I'm not sure either is correct. I've heard statistics that living more densely is better for the environment.
Please wiki: (1) Mercantilism, (2) Colonialism, (3) Nazism to understand why your plan for equality leads to massive, inhuman levels of suffering. (Let's throw in Malthusianism just as a pivot to draw a circle around).
And this is how fishing legally is done: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/seafood-commerce-tra....
The only way you can have some sort of international agreement on things in general(outside of fishing) is if its fair to everyone. It's absurd to assume that Europe and the US can just consume as they want and "the rest" need to fish more responsibly. It also disregards that a lot of fish is actually imported from those countries.
This is akin to when in the UK Boris Johnson went to have Covid parties while telling everyone to lock down. Or when Gavin Newsom went to the French Laundry during the height of the pandemic while telling everyone to stay at home.
You lose all credibility and nobody wants to listen to you. There's a reason why "Rules for thee and not for me" is a saying.
The perverse incentives it creates for regimes to increase population and reduce living standards are ridiculous.
I strongly disagree on this. I believe instead that per-capita arguments are helpful because they make environmental hypocrisy painfully obvious.
> The perverse incentives it creates for regimes to increase population and reduce living standards are ridiculous.
My current belief is that this is a complete non-issue, for two reasons:
1) Meaningful population control is hard, expensive, unpopular and comes with a myriad of (problematic) side effects
2) Nations care *very little* about per-capita pollution in the first place
The very idea that e.g. EU/US would ever even entertain the notion of boosting their population for the purpose of improving per-capita CO2 emission numbers seems absolutely ridiculous to me.
What do you think about "world leaders" flying jets to meet at conferences and events to agree that commoners have to reduce emissions, when they could have used a telephone and video camera? In any case, the environment doesn't care who emits what ton of CO2 or what humans might be hypocrites about it.
> 1) Meaningful population control is hard, expensive, unpopular and comes with a myriad of (problematic) side effects
It's hard because of perverse incentives.
> 2) Nations care very little about per-capita pollution in the first place
They care very much about it when arguing why they should be allowed to pollute more.
> The very idea that e.g. EU/US would ever even entertain the notion of boosting their population for the purpose of improving per-capita CO2 emission numbers seems absolutely ridiculous to me.
They're absolutely trying to boost population numbers, they explicitly out and say it.
I believe we don't require complete elimination of air traffic to hit climate goals and would be restricting it LAST for government use anyway.
So this might be an indicator of too few incentives against air traffic at the very most.
> In any case, the environment doesn't care who emits what ton of CO2 or what humans might be hypocrites about it.
The environment does not care about where the CO2 is emitted, but WE need to if we want to reduce it effectively.
It is VERY obviously MUCH easier and viable to save 1 ton of CO2 per year for a single American (with a baseline of ~15tons/year) than it is to save 200kg each for 5 Indian rice farmers with a baseline of 2 tons/capita. Because for the rice farmer, that might be "no heating during winter", while for the rich westerner it means "a smaller second car for children/wife instead of another SUV".
As long as EU/US emissions are higher per capita they have absolutely ZERO moral standing to argue for harsher regulations in developing nations, and this is pretty much already clear to everyone involved.
> They're absolutely trying to boost population numbers, they explicitly out and say it.
Pretty much every "western nation" has close to zero or negative population growth pre-immigration. This makes the governments job harder because they have to deal with demographic change (=> pensions) and second order effects (like cultural rifts from compensating immigration). That is already more than enough motivation to keep population growth somewhat up, CO2/capita considerations never even enter the picture.
It is also EXTREMELY doubtful that boosting the population in EU/US would help with CO2/capita numbers in any significant way in the first place, because CO2 emissions mostly correlate with WEALTH much more strongly than population density or somesuch, which governments are typically not in favor of decreasing for highly obvious reasons :P
So you excuse the hypocrisy because teleconferences would have worked just fine. Interesting.
> As long as EU/US emissions are higher per capita
China has more CO2 per capita than EU, and yet they get concessions in those aforementioned hypocritical accords.
> Pretty much every "western nation" has close to zero or negative population growth pre-immigration. This makes the governments job harder because they have to deal with demographic change (=> pensions) and second order effects (like cultural rifts from compensating immigration). That is already more than enough motivation to keep population growth somewhat up, CO2/capita considerations never even enter the picture.
I don't know what you mean. Boosting population in the highest CO2 emitting societies in the world is not a good thing. They do it because of "the economy", because per-capita does obviously enter the picture. If they were actually interested in the environment, they would let population naturally reduce. It's the easiest thing in the world to reduce consumption by reducing population. You need zero new technology, and no changes to lifestyle, and you can achieve large reductions.
Not only in CO2 emissions but in all other environmental footprint. CO2 might have the limelight now, but there are many other catastrophic environmental problems and resource depletion that our massive global consumption causes which have no real solutions.
People aren't "irresponsible" for being alive, and nation-states aren't individuals who can exercise the kind of moral responsibility you're alluding to. You seem to be implying that countries like China should have gone even farther than measures like the inhumane and authoritarian One Child Policy.
The interesting thing here is that there is a lot of tension between on the one hand a graying population that would like to be supported by the next ones and a massive wall in the form of the number of people that we can sustainably support long term. If we don't find a way to support the existing population without a huge push for more people then eventually we'll hit that wall. And that won't be pretty.
At this point, we should be sustainably farming seafood instead of pillaging nature.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-and-seafood-consumpt...
and enforced? seens pretty worthless to me, though the intent is good.
We stuff our bellies with 100+kg of meat per capita per year (not counting fish, iirc), we produce a lot of dairy (we started in WW2 and stayed with it), fishing and fish farming is not sustainable at all as well, and the developing world is copying our ways - those people of course want to live like we do, they want to have the same stuff and same quality of life.
There are not enough Earths to sustain all people living this life, no planet B, C, D and E.
There is enough evidence that we drive wild animals to extinction, and animal agriculture / fishing is the culprit, ergo our eating habits are to blame.
No politicians will ever do anything meaningful, when everybody just wants to eat fish several times a week and meat everyday and will stone anybody suggesting otherwise.
No wild mammals? No fish in the sea? Maybe do something ... personally ... while there's time.
West has to make veganism cool and show the world how to save the little that still remains.
Without public support, nothing will ever happen.
I love the idea of it though.
I do think we could reduce the amount of meat we eat though.
We try do like 3-4 days / nights of week vegetarian, probably mostly vegan really.
If everyone started something like this and tried to do more of it it might help.
Realistically we just have to many people on Earth, we've also polluted a ruined a lot natural environments.
I believe the most healthy/ethical way to consume meat and fish would be if most people do their own hunting, fishing and farming, smaller scale. The problem is the river near my house is full of toxic pollution so I can't fish there, what do you do?
It might be worth trying again and seeing a doctor and getting blood work if you feel off.
First I've ate what my vegetarian girlfriend was eating. I too was always hungry, and soon gave up.
Later when I've decided to switch to veganism I've read a lot about it first (as always with anything new). I've started replacing my favourite recipes with their vegan variants. For few weeks I've counted calories and nutrients (there're apps for that) to make sure I'm eating healthy. I've learned to cook and replace meat products with their plant-based versions.
There are many ways how to eat vegan, not all of them are healthy (junk) or wise (raw / fruit only).
> healthy/ethical way to consume meat and fish would be if most people do their own hunting
10000 years ago there were only 5 mil. people on Earth, and they've managed to reduce wild mammals population from 20 mil. tonnes of C to 15 mil. tonnes. Can you imagine doing something similar today, with 8 billion of us?
> the river near my house is full of toxic pollution so I can't fish there, what do you do
Don't eat fish at all, and maybe take up on activism ... complacency won't save us.
Beyond Meat's revenue has actually been declining YoY, which was surprising. It turns out people aren't very excited about paying more for an imitation version.
The average person isn't going to give up the taste of meat. If you want to solve problems, work within the realms of the actual constraints. It's far easier to make plant based meat cheaper than to change the taste preferences of billions of people.
Just make nutritious non-meat food that’s delicious and doesn’t impact global ecosystem.
As a non-meat eater, I have zero desire to eat meat — unless I eat some plant-based meat, which then oddly makes me think meat would taste better, even though idea of eating meat literally makes me sick.
As a non-meat eater where the idea of eating meat literally makes you sick, you're not really qualified to talk about what the rest of us meat-eaters would need to switch to more plants. People would absolutely eat more of it if it tasted just like meat and was the same cost or cheaper.
They won't if it doesn't hit the same craving or is more expensive, as we've seen.
Don't forget that most of those non-meat eaters were in fact meat eaters before.
> They won't if it doesn't hit the same craving
Stop drinking sugary drinks, and cravings for them will, in time, stop. Stop eating meat and dairy, and those cravings will stop too. It takes maybe few weeks, but after that ... you may even find it repulsive, however alien that thought might seem to you now.
> or is more expensive, as we've seen
It may be, it depends on you and on what you choose to eat. You'd find most vegans in the poorest countries.
There's no reason why vegan diet should be more expensive than animal based one. The variety of available processed foods goes up, and prices are being driven down by increased production and demand.
If you're used to cooking your own meals, you can expect to lower your grocery bill. Beans, lentils, peas, tofu, all that is cheaper than meat. Cheeses and yoghuts are more expensive in my area, but you can make it easily from plant based milks youself (it's not so hard or time expensive).
There are plenty of cultures around the world for which cuisine plays a big role including being carnivore-based. There are festivals, arts, traditions, culinary heritage, etc.
I believe as said we could eat less meat, but I think taking an argument from a "moral supremacist" sort of stand-point isn't the right solution to get people over to that side.
You're totally right obviously that there are but also I think we're at a point in the history of humanity where we're informed enough to take the impact of our actions into consideration regardless of how long we've performed those actions.
And I've done that ... where exactly?
I ask because your solution seems to just get us to the same place diet wise: having to eat plants now instead of later. You could see why that alone wouldn’t be a motivation.
We will have to eat plants sooner or later.
But if we'll start sooner, we'll also may have the functioning land and sea ecosystems and a lot of biodiversity.
I know you wouldn't notice it on your plate, and maybe you don't see any value in that, but I'm hoping that many (or at least some) do.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
[1] https://veganslate.com/does-all-protein-come-from-plants/
It's hard to get excited about going vegan when that can of lentil soup costs the same as a can of beef stew despite one being 10x more energy intensive to create. Are you really reducing demand for meat or are you just making making meat cheaper for everyone else?
But most vegan foods are the cheapest ones in the supermaket ... I mean raw rice, beans, lentils, vegetables. If you cook that soup yourself, it won't cost more than a bag of lentils, 1-2 onions, veggie stock, few potatoes, salt, pepper, and 20 minutes in pressure cooker (I've done it today :) Delicious too, and you've got 5l of soup for ... 3 USD?
Eating meat has been part of our culture for a very long time.
It's affordable, yes. But it's not sustainable.
Can't think of anyone else, without a similar exceptional reason.
Massive water usage, lowering river levels drastically. Some don't even reach the ocean anymore (see the Colorado River, from Wikipedia: "Since 1960, the Colorado has typically dried up before reaching the sea, with the exception of a few wet years."). Aquifers are running low (here's some info on that from 20 years ago: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-103-03/).
Pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
Massive land use for mono-culture farms, displacing whatever wildlife and native plants were present before the farm. Add more farms and you'll have less wildlife.
Everyone switching to plant-based diet sounds nice, but is really not going to fix much. Unless you can change farming to not be so resource intensive? There are just too many people.
Do you really think that those things you've listed (water, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, displacing wildlife...) are solely a problem for plant farms? I must have misunderstand you.
> Everyone switching to plant-based diet sounds nice, but is really not going to fix much
We could save 75% of those lands. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
i've never seen any data to back up this viewpoint, and its always coupled with other alarmist messages. i'm skeptical of comments written this way.
[1]https://news.asu.edu/20190621-solutions-environmental-impact...
That's not true, sorry. https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/
> Salmon and tuna also ranked high for efficiency, but only when they were wild-caught.
Do they also account for by-catch? Do they account for the fact that 40+% of marine plastics is fishing nets & equipment? https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts
> most vegans still eat a lot of heavily processed foods, drive cars, fly on planes, have most of their food and consumer goods delivered to them via trucking
There are many things wrong with our society. But I don't agree with you here. Plant-based is one of the best things an individual can do the lower his carbon footprint (together with reduction of driving & air travel).
>That's not true, sorry. https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/
Please cite a neutral source on the matter.
In the end, the food you buy, clothes you wear, even the computer you're using right now, no matter animal based or not, is, as I said, almost certainly shipped to you by some sort of carbon-emitting vehicle, usually one, like a truck, that emits far more carbon than any car you might drive. The industrial processes involved to create these, everything in your life, emit carbon--certainly worse than that, your computer was built with rare earth minerals that were probably extracted with near or actual slave labor. Your existence, on this planet, as a human being, is harmful in some sense to the environment, there is no getting around the fact that you, as an embodied ego, has to cause some level of destruction to the life around you in order to continue living. And there is no getting around the fact that the industrial revolution has radically improved the quality of life around the world for the better, and that nobody, I assume yourself included, as you responded to me on an online forum, would ever abandon all the luxuries it brings. That doesn't mean that we can't improve things as they are. On the contrary, for instance, when you said:
>Plant-based is one of the best things an individual can do the lower his carbon footprint
That only applies to a developed economy. India has some of the worst pollution in the world on account of their backwards agricultural practices, and their population is something like 50% vegetarian, it is only on account of technology that we have been able to feed the large populations of the US and Europe without destroying local environments. When that technology is employed for the benefit of people who work together to improve their conditions, then society flourishes. But technology, scientific and social development are all developed collectively, and they are the only way to improve our environmental conditions--nobody alone, no individual responsibility, as I said, will change what the mass of society will do. If you let individuals alone to do what they like, on the sole condition they eat plant-based diets, I'm sure you will get something a lot closer to what they have in India than anything else.
> Please cite a neutral source on the matter.
I did.
American Dietetic Association
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.
NHS UK
A vegetarian or vegan diet can be suitable for everyone, regardless of their age.
British Dietetic Association.
It is possible to follow a well-planned, plant-based, vegan friendly diet that supports healthy living in people of all ages ...
World Health Organisation
For adults, protein from two or more plant groups daily is like to be adequate. For children, however, and especially those aged 6-24 months, each meal should contain wherever possible two complementary sources of plant protein
> In the end, the food you buy, clothes you wear, even the computer
We have to choose our battles.
> That only applies to a developed economy
Yes, I'm talking about western economies. No point talking about Ethiopia, for example. [1]
> we have been able to feed the large populations of the US and Europe without destroying local environments
Have you read about soil degradation [0] or that animal agriculture is leading driver behind tropical deforestation ? What's the point in celebrating of "saving" of local environments, when we're destroying rainforests in the process?
> no individual responsibility, as I said, will change what the mass of society will do
Yesterday I was clever, and wanted to change the world. Today I'm wise, so I'm changing myself. Or something along the lines ... No, one individual can't. But many together can. And that was my point.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/daphneewingchow/2020/06/24/eart...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...
In no world would I risk my daughter growing up nutritionally deficient because I didn't get the right supplements or yeast paste or whatever. It's far easier to give her a balanced diet and not worry.
Start yourself, learn and experiment. It's not so hard. But I warn you, it's addictive ;)
> because I didn't get the right supplements or yeast paste or whatever
Just B12 is necessary, either as supplements (vegan are also available) or in fortified foods. Also don't do junk food/raw version of veganism.
Other than that ... variety is the answer.
What to replace meat with? Try a search engine:
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=how%20to%20replace%20meat...
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=how%20to%20veganize%20rec...
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=%3Cmy%20favourite%20recip...
It's a complex and a time-consuming activity. My ex was vegan and buying groceries was not easy.
As far as I’m concerned, all harvesting or harming of wildlife sea or otherwise needs to stop. If a country or individual refuses to agree, should either be a life sentence or act of war. People are unable to handle any rule based systems other than black and white, zero impact.
China, US, Japan, etc - regardless of what they say, will never stop until sea, land, and air no longer has wildlife.
I am not saying humanity needs to protect wildlife because it is the “nice thing” to do, saying it because I sincerely believe Earth and humanity need’s wildlife to have a habitable planet; anyone is welcome to feel free to explain how this is wrong.
If business school taught me anything, is that the only revenue that matters to execs is the quarterly one.
Happy to try to understand, here’s even link to list of the percentage of workers per country that are union workers, though that’s obviously not a global count of the number of union members worldwide as a percentage of world’s population:
There is deep precedent for successful conservation programs. The anarchy of our international system makes this difficult. Filling the seas with toxic byproducts of war isn’t the answer.
The buggy has lost the trailer. What? Is the claim there is no hypocrisy in war?
You proposed violence as a solution to the problem. I’m arguing that’s untenable.
better to slowly increase the temperature
Possible I am mistaken, but 70% of world’s wildlife has disappeared past 50 years. Exactly how much time do you think is left?
>> they will kill you, doesn’t matter how right you are
Agree.
One thing that would be useful though is a super cheap test to check if someone has eaten meat recently.
- are not registered with a nation who is part of the accord
- have not signed the accord individually
...supposing the sabotage is done in a nonlethal way? It might create incentives.
But it wouldn't so much be about the practicality of the attack, it's just about messaging. All humans are put at risk by irresponsible fishing practices, so people that fish irresponsibly should have to worry about interference from any human--not just whatever agency would pull you over and give you a ticket.
I love bureaucracy and diplomacy... They make us look so productive while once in a while real change comes along.
Forgive my pessimism, but I've seen too many international accords that haven't been worth the paper they were printed on (with loads of media coverage and fanfare) during my lifetime.
Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (the basis for modern high seas piracy law) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_for_the_Suppressi...
Wellington Convention (prohibition on long drift net fishing in the Pacific) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Convention
1990 Chemical Weapons Accord (bilateral between US and Russia) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_Chemical_Weapons_Accord
UNFCCC (basis of UN climate negotiations) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Framework_Con...
Convention on Biological Diversity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Biological_Div...
Chemical Weapons Convention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention
Aarhus Protocol on Persistent Organic Pollutants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarhus_Protocol_on_Persisten...
Kyoto Protocol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (establishes the ICC) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute
... and then everything after 2000 too.
I know it's en vogue on HN to bash the UN/international diplomacy as useless, but it's illogical to expect a lot of smart folks, working hard for enough time, not to produce useful things. And there's a lot of tragedy-of-the-commons problems which the UN is an excellent forum to solve.
I think you, like many, mistakenly assume that there is some law or authority over all nations.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg and only wrt the environment. EU and NAFTA are also international agreements that have teeth, as is the Berne convention on copyright (even if you don’t like it). Unicode is the UN in action as is the boat that will pick you up if you happen to get stranded on a deserted island (and have the necessary, and standardized, beacon). If you’re a Mongolian in a Mexican jail or a Mexican in a Mongolian jail, your embassy will be informed and allowed to render legal support, thanks to an international agreement to that effect. If you’re being subjected to cluster munitions, your foe is one of the few people on earth that wouldn’t enjoy a trip to the Netherlands. If you find yourself being extradited to The Hague, the plane you’re traveling on will conform to internationally agreed safety standards. A kilogram, meter, second, or joule is the same as your trading partners‘, thanks ISO, and the T in NATO seems to be some mighty piece of paper, considering how it manages to scare the shirtless man shitless.
https://octogroup.org/news/paper-parks-why-they-happen-and-w...
https://www.cremacr.org/en/new-report-finds-costa-rica-is-fa...
Atlantic Ocean current is struggling to stay currenting. Honestly looks like the tides around the world will change from the warmer climates .. and now to tack onto this methane is starting to creep up as the #1 reason of planetary changes due to ice melting around the globe.. The world is in a scary estate over the next few years as we make the changes to renewable energy resources. Some are to ignorant to change until we have mass starvation periods in the next few years. Than what?
Optimistic view: the populace wakes the fuck up and demands that the madness stops, and we introduce carbon taxes.
Pessimistic view: the populace decides that any cut to their consumption and lifestyle is unacceptable and gets behind geo engineering in a big way. Next thing we are pumping new stuff into the atmosphere at one place to shield us from the sun, while at the same time pumping in ever increasing amouts of methane and CO2 thanks to moral hazard.
Left field view: A nuclear war wipes out a large part of the population, and the planet breathes a sight of relief.
I'm not sure if I've watched too many science documentaries, but the future looks grim from any standpoint. Even if this accord is upheld and protects the largest species, I'm afraid it's too little, too late to stop the environmental catastrophe.
The only thing that might slow things down is if we very aggressively stop burning fossil fuels. This is a political and economic problem that everyone needs to agree on, yet we can't even stop killing each other, so I'm not that hopeful.
At some point the rest of the world will need to take actual actions against China, but it won’t be anytime soon as long as the oligarchs are happy and China has them by the wallets.
The issue isn’t fishing, the issue is how they fish. China straight up does not care about the environment, or sovereignty, or frankly anything which does not directly help China. They operate in an incredibly selfish way towards the rest of the world.