One less burger, one safer planet
Yep, we’re back on the eating less meat tip. Did we ever leave? The venerable International Herald Tribune ran an article today about the possible benefits of reduced meat consumption.
Livestock occupy nearly a third of the land on earth. Agricultural grenhouse gases are about 22 percent of all emissions around the world…A huge problem in wealthy nations is that even when people cut down or give up meat for health reasons, they often substitute increasingly endangered fish near the top of the oceanic food chain such as swordfish, tuna or shark or create a demand for shrimp and salmon that overwhelms the environments they are being raised in.
Isn’t that too true? In Canada, my country, the cod fisheries of the Atlantic coast collapsed in the 1990’s. There simply were no adult fish left…or not enough to allow the population to reproduce itself while the fishermen continued work. Here on the Costa Blanca, people eat a lot of fish. The pueblo was orginally a fishing village and there are still many who earn their living from the sea. There is a fish factory about 1km from shore where they raise certain types of fish, but there are also plenty of working boats. I know it’s a tough living and that they deserve respect, but when they’re pulling udersized fish out of protected waters on a daily basis, I lose my respect. Here are a few articles about illegal fishing in Alicante
La falta de vigilancia permite la pesca ilegal en la reserva marina del Cabo de San Antonio