Page 217 - Tributaries Catalogue
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cannot be balanced against humans is to preserve the ocean.
irreversible species loss (extinction). Finally, he argues, there just is no
Further and more broadly, while the sound evidence that the human
ocean and its inhabitants would be population cannot be fed
far better off without humans, sustainably with careful use of land
“humans do depend on the ocean,” resources. Buchanan concludes that
and for something far more the time has come to call for a
important than food. We depend moratorium on all forms of fishing.
on the ocean for “oxygen (the real As he puts it, “like rising CO2
lungs of the earth isn’t the Amazon emissions, plastic pollution, and
forest, it is the ocean which supplies logging old growth forests, it has
more than 70% of the air we become one of those
breathe), ambient temperature and environmental concerns that can no
weather systems, particularly rain.” longer be ignored. Any proper
In other words, it requires a false ethics of eating the ocean must at
dichotomy to weigh human needs least take into consideration the
against those of the ocean and its possibility that it is time we stopped
inhabitants. We are in this together, eating the ocean.”
and even from an anthropocentric
perspective, the best way to serve (Photo right: Heather Snow)
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