It’s bad for the salmon (in terms of animal welfare) and it’s wrecking the local ecosystems. It’s not any sort of panacea.
We need to stop destroying ocean ecosystems, not just shift the damage around. Overfishing of wild stock, habitat destruction through bottom-trawling and intensive fish farming all need to be properly looked at.
You criticise, yet don't provide any suitable recommendations or alternatives.
People like to eat fish and have done so since the beginning of our species.
Living in unsustainable ways is ... well not sustainable.
If people have liked to eat fish since the start, then maybe we should leave some for the next generations.
Taxing externalities isn't about "guaranteeing everyone can have access to the resource": that's circular. Taxing externalities is about ensuring that those who profit from a public good, also pay the public for the value of that good.
Hypothetical: If tomorrow it turns out that eating beef is somehow the ultimate cause of environmental destruction, and every cow fart requires $1MM in cleanup fees or humanity goes extinct, then we should tax cows at $1MM per fart, full stop. "But not everyone will be able to eat beef!" is not an argument, unless you want to say "We would rather all eat beef than survive as a species."
Of course: in reality it's not so clear cut. But the principle remains.
Of course: once you've determined a price for the good and levied taxes, you can then either use that price to clean up / renew the resource, or just distribute the money directly to citizens (see canada's "carbon price") to effectively pay people not to consume the resource. Same difference.
Propose some kind of research into lab grown meat, extremely cheap feed, or some unthought of billion dollar idea solution.
Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously.
Why have governments pick and choose “winning energy strategies” when you can let the market do it?
Literally how it works in practice with carbon credits today, your assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.
And look where that rather gentle approach got us - we've had decades of people knowing there's a climate crisis coming and here we are still burning fossil fuels for power.
> Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously.
So in your mind it is better to drive the seas to complete destruction than to limit catches and thereby push up the price?
You know this is self-limiting, right? In that if we kill everything in the seas, those people still won't get cheap fish, and the 'rich' will eat the last few at great expense?
As for the actual tax rate, I will defer to the economic literature on this subject, but the answer will invariably be a pragmatic one.
Onshore fish-farming is being developed. I don’t know enough about it to have any idea whether it can be made compatible with animal welfare or environmental responsibility.
But it also doesn’t matter. Sometimes you’re just going to need to stop wrecking the place.
I’m suggesting we do that through conservation rather than decimation. But you feel free to throw your hands up and watch the seas die because “people are going to eat salmon”.
Perhaps those who are so insistent that behaviour cannot change could come up with a solution, instead of helpless capitulation to a future of dead oceans.
It may be in the future that fishing joins that list.
Abolition is the only alternative to immoral and unethical actions, but in terms of nutrition, there are plenty of ways to get the same nutrients, and ways to use seaweed to replicate some of the flavors.
I have always hated this take in any context I've seen it. Refusing to even acknowledge a problem as a problem unless presented with a solution is such an infuriating way to be dismissed.
The slaves are necessary to the economic welfare of the south and have been a corner of empire economies for millennia.
People like to drink wine sweetened with lead and have been doing so since we can remember.
How are we even going to get rain without the sacrifices?
Unless you're landlocked and your rivers have gone to shit too.
Both of these things can be true.
You don’t get to push away the environmental damage these things cause because you like a fish fillet and won’t hear otherwise.
All I’m saying (and what conservationists are saying) is that if we carry on down this path we’re going to destroy the ocean ecosystems, and if we don’t want that we should stop. You seem to be replying indignantly that we are going to carry on regardless. OK, well that’s the choice humanity faces, isn’t it?
Alternatives are definitely good, and yes, it will be easier to move people away from destructive practices with them in place.
My annoyance is that sometimes things are necessary regardless of their being an alternative, and saying "Herp derp unless you have a solution then shut up" isn't very helpful (I'm not accusing you of this).
It's not wrong to state "we have a serious problem, if we don't change course things are going to get bad" without having all the answers to changing that course.
Sometimes things that are necessary arent done.
> "Herp derp unless you have a solution then shut up" isn't very helpful
Saying something is necessary when it wont be done without a replacement isnt very helpful either.
> They are starting to work, in some countries, where it has been realised that these things are incompatible with sustainable fisheries.
My understanding is that China is by far the biggest culprit when it comes to bottom trawling and they will not stop without an alternative way to feed 1.4 billion people seafood.
Of course its right to point out the problem but I think it is also necessary to go beyond that. The problem will not be fixed without a solution, and eat less seafood unfortunately is not on the table.