Re: [TheUWfarm] Eating whales to save the rainforest? Should an environmentally conscientious person eat fish?

i read an interesting thing in reference to the endangered sei meat which showed up in a california restaurant regarding japan's relationship with eating whale. apparently buddhist scholars believed that eating whale was a conscientious choice for providing meat, as you can feed more people per death. in a philosophic framework wherein one should minimize killing sentient beings, whale is preferable to chicken for providing protein.
of course, as a vegetarian, i get to sidestep the whole "deciding which animals to kill" issue. :)
which seems to me to be an important part that's missing here... it may very well be true that livestock require more resources than fish, and that some species of marine mammal are at high enough population sizes that one could open harvest on them without creating a large environmental impact. and it's also true that economies of scale can reduce impact/unit on the distribution of produce. but it completely ignores the greater impact of reducing consumption of animal products and increasing consumption from backyard victory gardens. where's the cost-benefit-analysis of converting x% of yards to gardens, providing x% of people with backyard hen houses or converting x% of people to vegetarian or vegan diets?
rsn

On Thu, 29 Apr 2010, Joel Kramer wrote:

> iS HE cRAZY?
> sEE YOU THERE,
> jOEL
>
> UW Aquatic & Fishery Sciences Quantitative Seminar
> Ray Hilborn
>
> EATING WHALES TO SAVE THE RAINFOREST? SHOULD AN ENVIRONMENTALLY
> CONSCIENTIOUS PERSON EAT FISH?
>
> ABSTRACT
>
> As world population grows and food demand increases, many wonder how the
> earth can sustain this growing demand. Different forms of food production
> cause different stressors on the environment. In this talk I will look
> specifically at the relative environmental impact of marine capture
> fisheries compared to terrestrial agriculture. Marine capture fisheries in
> general have less environmental impact than any form of terrestrial
> livestock production -- for instance to replace marine capture fisheries
> production by livestock grazing, the worlds rain forests would all need to
> be cut down 22 times over! Sustainable harvesting of whales could produce
> about 1 million tons of meat per year - this could save an enormous amount
> of terrestrial habitat, and reduce pollution in significant ways. Marine
> capture fisheries also have less environmental impact in many dimensions
> than small scale organic vegetable production. I will include some
> discussion of the relative impacts of aquaculture. I will also pose the
> question of why marine fisheries are held to totally different standards
> than terrestrial production. For instance if you replaced the word "marine"
> with "terrestrial" in the Marine Mammal Protection Act would we have
> anything to eat?
>
> Audience members are encouraged to bring sushi for after seminar snacks!
>
> APRIL 30, 12:30-1:30 FISHERIES SCEINCES 203
>
> (MAP)
> HTTP://WWW.WASHINGTON.EDU/HOME/MAPS/SOUTHWEST.HTML?50,50,240,695
>
> http://fish.washington.edu/quantsem/
>
>
>

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