I leave you with a visual, and a word of hope.
Once we were innocent of the knowledge of how much and how quickly our resource demands took from the planet’s finite or slowly-covering stock of stuff. Now we can stop taking before it’s too late. We have eyes in the sky. I’ll feature some of them from time to time here.
This morning, it’s fishing pressure. We know where the boats are.
There are a lot of fishing boats in the sea–and now we can see them. OnEarth
From the opening image of the global fishing map, scroll down for the rest of the story. Its not just the NUMBER of fishing ships that is pushing fish stocks past tipping points. It’s the short sighted but very “efficient” methods of profit-taking that are more like the sub-surface strip mining of living things.
Having some objective measures of our impact on a failing resource that feeds hundreds of millions, there is currently serious talk of banning fishing on the “high seas”, leaving a sanctuary for some fish stocks.
“A study last year found that a ban would be a triple win: It would increase fishery profits, fishery yields, and improve fish stock conservation dramatically.
Since many fish caught on the high seas also migrate into coastal areas, closing fishing in international waters would both serve as a protected reservoir and cause “spillover,” therefore boosting coastal catches by at least 18%, according to Sumaila’s estimates. If that was achieved, overall catches globally would at least stay the same and probably would increase..” FastCoExist
This is the kind of pro-active thinking that just might allow us to re-order our economy as if the planet and people really mattered.
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That Skywatch is really a labor of love! I hope their tremendous effort bears fruit.