Industrial society is eating us out of house and home

It is this behavior that prompts me to question the morality of the captains of industrial fishing. These corporate managers live in ostensibly democratic societies, which employ "science" in everything they do. Yet despite their skills, or because of them, they have no respect for nature. When they fish, they mine the seas. Add to this catastrophe global warming and the poisoning of the seas by industrial wastes, and the oceans and us are at risk.

The result of such malevolent human actions is the extinction of both fishes and marine ecosystems, at rates matching the greatest extinctions in the history of the earth.

This terrible truth comes out of a 2011 global report of 27 scientists representing the International Programme on the Status of the Ocean and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. These scientists spoke in tragic terms:

"The speed and rate of degeneration of the oceans is far faster than anyone has predicted; Many of the negative impacts identified are greater than the worst predictions; The first steps to globally significant extinction may have already begun."

However, Sylvia Earle, an insider of the civilization effects on the oceans, spoke bluntly of humans being the most voracious predator, the factor decimating life in the seas.

Reacting to the bad news of the global ocean report, she denounced industrial fishing, which is dismembering the "fine-tuned ecosystems that are, in effect, our life-support system." She also said: "We are now [in 2011] appearing to wage war on life in the sea with sonars, spotter aircraft, advanced communications, factory trawlers, thousands of miles of long lines, and global marketing of creatures no one had heard of until recent years. Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species."

Earle is that rare of scientists who speak from knowledge and experience, cutting through the fog of official lies about "sustainable" fishing and the "protection" of the oceans by governments and the fishing industry. Instead, she directs our attention to another suicidal business of the military-industrial complex in its ruthless exploitation of the oceans, thinking not at all that such dismemberment of nature is also deleterious to us.

Time has come to listen to scientists like Earle. Create a global Environmental Organization with the resources and power to really protect the oceans, the land, water and air from poisoning and other human depredations. No economic or strategic interest should take precedent over the health of the earth, which is also the health of human beings.