Recycling to Save the Environment

What to Do with all those Nuclear Submarines

The world is cluttered with junk left over from the cold war - ICBMs, nuclear subs, etc. Most of it is trash, of course, but some of those subs could still be useful. One major threat to the world's sustainability is deep sea trawling. (Time: Laying Waste to the Deep Sea)

Far out on the high seas, on any given day, hundreds of fishing vessels drag huge nets, big enough to snag a 747 jumbo jet, across the ocean bottom, vacuuming up 150-year-old fish, flattening ancient reefs and destroying everything else in their paths.

Only the biodiversity of tropical rainforests rivals that of the deep sea — our planet's largest wilderness — an aquatic wonderland that is now being systematically razed by what is likely the world's most environmentally destructive business. The fishing occurs mostly around the ocean's most unique topographical formations — submarine canyons, mid-oceanic ridges and tens of thousands of seamounts (most are extinct volcanoes) — which support a stunning profusion of endemic species, many of which are yet to be discovered. Trawlers reduce these habitats to rubble in minutes, undermining the viability of the very fish that brought the vessels there in the first place. A "rapidly growing number of scientific studies documenting [deep-sea] trawling impacts led to the unmistakable conclusion that bottom trawling is the world's most harmful method of fishing," says the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, which comprises leading environmental NGOs around the world and advocates an immediate moratorium on the practice.

All but a few nations have signed on to a moratorium:

After three years of negotiations among roughly 40 countries, the United Nations General Assembly agreed in December 2006 to a new regulatory regime for high-seas fisheries — but Japan, Russia, Iceland and Canada objected to a complete moratorium on unregulated bottom trawling.

Collectively, they pose a much bigger threat to the US and the planet than all the Islamic Jihadists in Iraq (or the World), and they are a much easier target. One nuclear sub could probably sink all the deep sea trawlers in the world in a few months. If business got slow, they could take out a few of those Japanese "scientific" whalers, too.

If nothing else, it would be an object lesson to others.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more