The coronavirus outbreak certainly gives one pause, and time to think about what we are doing to the biosphere and to ourselves. It also makes one wonder about the wisdom of killing and eating wildlife. I have been reading a book about a different disaster, the struggles of the crew of the ship Essex, back in 1820. This Nantucket-based factory ship was hunting whales in the middle of the Pacific when, in an ironic, yet all too-rare turn of events, a huge male sperm whale rammed and sank the mother ship as the smaller whaleboats were out killing its relatives. Months of drama, extremity, and cannibalism ensue, (for the humans), after which a fraction of the crew survive to tell the tale. It seems to us now bizarre, and beyond wasteful, that street lights in Nantucket were lit with whale oil, and that people would sail all over the world's oceans just to kill whales for the oil in their heads and blubber. Humans have an instinct for survival, and for the most concentrated source of various goods, and, whether under the colors of capitalism or simple greed, think little of externalizing costs, no matter how brutal and far-reaching, whether eating each other, "fishing out" some rich source of food, causing extinctions, or setting Charles island of the Galapagos ablaze in an inferno (another episode that occurs in this ill-starred history). One must be "hard" in this business of living, after all.
Well, we can do better. Now, two centuries on, we are still abusing the biosphere. Some ways are new, (climate change, plastics, insecticides), but others are old, such as over-fishing. Factory ships are still plying the great oceans of the world, vacuuming up wild animals so that we can eat them. And not just do they derange whole ecosystems and litter the oceans with their waste, but they also kill a lot of innocent bystanders, euphemistically called "bycatch"- sea turtles, albatrosses, dolphins, whales, etc. Albatross populations are in steady decline, from very low levels and heading towards extinction, for one main reason, which is the fishing industry.
This simply has to stop. It is a tragedy of the commons, on a collossal scale, all for the atavistic desire to eat wild animals. Human overpopulation, coupled with technology, means that no wild animals stand a chance in an unregulated environment- not in Africa, not in Brazil, and not in the international oceans. We are killing them by a thousand cuts, but do we also have to eat them, as the final indignity and form of waste?
If we want to save the biosphere from utter impoverishment, humanity needs a change of heart- an ethic for keeping the wild biosphere wild, rather than running it like so much farmland, or so much "resource" to be pillaged, whether "sustainably" or not. Obviously, eating meat at all is a fraught issue- ethically, and environmentally. But surely we can agree that wild animals, and wild ecosystems, deserve a break? Conversely, where we have so screwed up ecosystems by eliminating natural predators or introducing invasive species, we may have to kill (and yes, perhaps eat) wild animals in systematic fashion, to bring back a functional balance. Go to town on feral hogs, boa constrictors, Asian carp, etc. (But try to do so without poisoning yourselves and the evironment with lead.) The point is that we are stewards of this Earth now, like it or not, and ensuing generations over the next hundreds and thousands of years deserve an Earth with a functioning biosphere, with some semblance of its original richness.
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- It's the same old Pakistan.
- Astronomers take a whack at the virus.
- What to do after the protests. And then prohibit public employee unions from corrupting political campaigns. And then prohibit all other special interests from corrupting campaigns as well, for good measure.
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