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The Spinoff
01-08-2025
- General
- The Spinoff
Why I don't eat fish
Ruth Shaw is the acclaimed author of Three Wee Bookshops at the End of the World, as well as a sailor – in this essay she explains how and why she made the decision to stop eating fish. The last question I was asked during my session at the Auckland Writers Festival in May was 'What is one thing we can do to help the environment?' My answer? 'Stop eating fish.' This is easy for me to say as I have been a vegetarian for over 40 years, although I admit that while sailing the east coast of Australia, I was still catching the occasional fish to eat — and to give my shipmate, a cat named Hoffy, a fish head to chew on. Rachel Carson wrote two books that left a lasting impression on me: Silent Spring, published in 1962, and The Sea Around Us, published in 1951. Both books were controversial bestsellers that revolutionised how we thought about our environment and, more importantly, made me aware of what I was eating. In 1999 I read Cod by Mark Kurlansky. This small book about the history of cod fishing (cod was one of the most profitable and soughtt-after fish for centuries and was pushed to near extinction) would become a bestseller. Two of the cornerstones of my life have been books and the protection of our environment. When my husband Lance and I purchased our vessel Breaksea Girl and started running multi-day trips on the Fiordland coast, and down as far as the subantarctic islands, we both agreed that one of the most important decisions we could make was to have a 'no fishing' policy on board. Bill Ballantine, director of the University of Auckland's marine laboratory at Goat Island, is recognised as the founder of marine reserves in New Zealand. He established the first marine reserve at Goat Island in 1975, which was opened to the public in 1977. For Bill, the answer to protecting our underwater environment was to establish 'no take areas with full protection'. The opposition to his idea was staggering. Thankfully we now have 44 marine reserves along the coastline of Aotearoa. Before being employed by the Department of Conservation, Lance was a commercial fisherman. It was there he witnessed the decline of fish such as groper, blue cod and crayfish inside the fiords. After diving at Goat Island and seeing how the area had recovered, he too realised that the way to protect our underwater environment was through the establishment of marine reserves. In 1995 the Guardians of Fiordland Fisheries was established, later known as the Fiordland Marine Guardians. They were formerly established as an advisory group under the Fiordland (Te Moana o Atawhenua) Marine Management Act 2005. This legislation also created eight new marine reserves and other protected areas throughout Fiordland known as 'china shops' because of their delicate nature. Through their commitment to manage and protect the marine environment, the Fiordland crayfishing industry is now one of the healthiest and most sustainable in our country. But how does this lead to me stating publicly that we should stop eating fish? In the 1970s, when the commercial fishing of orange roughy started, it was believed that they only lived for 30 to 40 years. By the mid-1990s marine scientists estimated that they lived between 125 and 250 years, the longest-lived commercial fish species. They don't breed until they are between 20 and 40 years of age and, even then, not every year. By the end of the 1990s, three of the eight New Zealand orange roughy fisheries had collapsed and were closed. I was astounded. We were led to believe that it was a sustainable fishery practice, when in fact it was based on incomplete scientific information. That was when I made the decision to stop eating fish. We talk about sustainable fishing, but the orange roughy and the Atlantic northwest cod are just two examples of commercial fishing that were not sustainable. We are also faced with a decline in penguin colonies. One of the reasons they are struggling is that they no longer have access to enough food to rear their young, due to the demand of commercial fishing fleets. Combine this lack of food with loss of habitat, pollution, disease and climate change, and we can see why many of the world's penguin species are endangered, including our own yellow-eyed penguin which is considered the world's rarest. A third of the world's studied fisheries are currently pushed beyond their biological limits, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. We have been fighting to SAVE THE WHALES, but what about SAVE THE KRILL? Without krill, which is being heavily overfished, a number of seabirds, whales, fish, penguins and albatross would starve. Millions of krill are scooped up from the Southern Ocean to be made into pet food, food for fish farms and health supplements. My stand not to eat fish is based on solid ground, and there is more than enough evidence to prove that we need to look after our oceans. Read Colin Butfield and David Attenborough's latest book, Ocean: Earth's Last Wilderness. Like so many of the books on our oceans, the reading is harsh and confronting. I am not saying that everyone should stop eating fish. Take, for example, communities who rely only on fish for their protein. Generally they have, or did have, low impact, traditional fishing techniques. What I would like to encourage is for more people to consider the health of our oceans which have over 80% of the world's biodiversity. Having dived in Fiordland, I have seen a world which is full of beauty, colour and life forms that could be out of a science fiction book. I have seen the stunning colour of inquisitive blue cod, witnessed the cheeky behaviour of girdled wrasse, and watched in wonder as dolphins and seals interacted with us. I want my grandchildren to witness the magic of our undersea world, and the only way I can do that is to help protect it by not eating fish. I know I have made the right decision for me.
LeMonde
06-07-2025
- Science
- LeMonde
Nice's Contemporary Art Biennale explores the city's unique relationship to the sea
The first United Nations conference on the need to protect oceans took place in New York in 2017. The third and most recent was just held in Nice, on June 13. But for nearly 75 years, it has been common knowledge that humans' horrible habit of polluting the seas that surround and sustain them could lead to disaster. This was revealed in 1951 by The Sea Around Us, a groundbreaking book by Rachel Carson (1907-1964). A marine biologist, Carson was also the author of S ilent Spring (1962), which, for the first time, linked the rise in cancer cases to the widespread use of pesticides. For this contribution, Carson was considered a trailblazing environmentalist and is credited with the ban on DDT. These themes are at the heart of the sixth Nice Contemporary Art Biennale, organized by Jean-Jacques Aillagon and Hélène Guenin. The artists and organizers have spared no effort, with 11 different exhibitions linked to the event, all spread across the city. Though uncommon for a biennale, these exhibitions are not limited to contemporary art but also tell the unique story of the city's millennia-old connection to the sea. For example, did you know that the Baie des Anges (the Bay of Angels) owes its name to a strange fish − a half-ray, half-shark − that once thrived there? The angel shark (Squatina squatina) has now been decimated, notably because of trawling, and is currently listed among the 100 most endangered species worldwide. A (very small) taxidermied example can be found at the Villa Masséna at the exhibition "Nice, du rivage à la mer" ("Nice, From Shore to Sea"). If allowed to grow, the animal can exceed 2 meters in length.
Boston Globe
29-06-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
John Robbins, author of ‘Diet for a New America,' dies at 77
Advertisement The book's message, Mr. Robbins wrote, was 'that the healthiest, tastiest and most nourishing way to eat is also the most economical, the most compassionate and least polluting.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy in 1988 compared 'Diet for a New America' and its impact on the way we think about food to Rachel Carson's classic 'Silent Spring' (1962), which warned how the unlimited use of agricultural pesticides like DDT had contaminated the soil and water and threatened the health of wildlife and humans, and which helped spur the modern environmental movement. Through the years, food writers for The New York Times have described 'Diet for a New America' as 'groundbreaking.' But Mr. Robbins's methods of raising awareness of the healthful effects of a vegetarian diet drew some criticism from Marian Burros in a 1992 Eating Well column in the Times. Advertisement 'Much of what Mr. Robbins has to say about diet in this country,' Burros wrote, 'is unremarkable: We eat too much meat and dairy products. Much of what Mr. Robbins has to say about the inhumane treatment of animals on factory farms is correct. But Mr. Robbins undermines his case by exaggerating; facts mix with factoids and anecdotes.' Burros cited experts who challenged Mr. Robbins's contentions that raising cattle was responsible for the deforestation of the United States, and that meat and dairy products contained more pesticides than plant foods. Mr. Robbins, quoted in the column, acknowledged that his message was 'a little complicated for the bumper-sticker mind and the sound bite.' John Ernest Robbins was born on Oct. 26, 1947, in Glendale, Calif. His father, Irvine, was a founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream company with his brother-in-law Burton Baskin. His mother, Irma (Gevurtz) Robbins, ran the household. The family pool was shaped like an ice cream cone. At age 5, John contracted polio. He was in a wheelchair for about six months, his left leg was impaired, and he walked with a limp as a boy, Ocean Robbins said in an interview. But through yoga, exercise, and a healthier diet, Mr. Robbins as an adult built his body to the point where he could run the equivalent distance of a marathon and complete the swimming, biking, and running stages of an unofficial triathlon. Mr. Robbins worked in the family ice cream business in his younger years, helping to concoct a popular flavor, jamoca almond fudge, and to popularize Baskin-Robbins' distinctive pink spoons. But, as a devotee of Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman, he later mutinied against materialism, telling the Times in 1992 that, in his family, 'roughing it meant room service was late.' Advertisement He also said that he wished his father had spent more time with him and less time on his company; sometimes, he said, he thought that 'my primary importance to him was that I would carry on the business.' Months after Baskin died of a heart attack in 1967, Baskin-Robbins was sold to the United Fruit Company. Irv Robbins remained with the company until he retired in 1978. According to Ocean Robbins, his grandfather had offered not to sell the company if his son would join him in business. But John Robbins declined. He was concerned, he said in a 2019 interview with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, that the consumption of large amounts of ice cream, loaded with saturated fats and sugar, had contributed to Baskin's cardiovascular problems, and also concerned about the treatment of cows at commercial dairies, where they produced ice cream's primary ingredient: milk. 'It broke my heart to see them treated so poorly,' he told PETA. 'I found the idea of profiting from such cruelty to be appalling.' Irv Robbins was angered by John's rebuff, Ocean Robbins said. 'He thought he had fallen prey to the hippie counterculture world where you just reject everything.' Upon graduating in 1969 from the University of California Berkeley, where he studied political philosophy, Mr. Robbins sought a simpler life. He and his wife, Deo, moved to Fulford Harbour, British Columbia, where they built a one-room log cabin that was later expanded to three rooms. Advertisement Ocean Robbins said that his parents did not own a car and lived on $500 to $1,000 a year, teaching yoga and meditation classes, growing what crops they could and taking one delivery per year of food they couldn't grow themselves. By the mid-1970s, John Robbins had reentered academia. He received a master's degree in humanistic psychology in 1976 from Antioch College (now University) in Ohio through its affiliation with Cold Mountain Institute in British Columbia and began a career as a psychotherapist. The family moved to the Santa Cruz area of California in 1984. Around that time, Mr. Robbins began reading books about the treatment of animals at factory farms, which led to further reading about the links between food, health, and the environment. From that sprung the idea for 'Diet for a New America.' In 2001, Robbins wrote a follow-up, 'The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World.' In 2012, he and his son founded the Food Revolution Network, an online education and advocacy organization dedicated to healthy, ethical, and sustainable food that claims more than a million members. In 2019, Ocean Robbins said, his father began experiencing symptoms of post-polio syndrome, losing strength and suffering chronic pain in his legs and later enduring sleep and cognition issues. In addition to his son, Mr. Robbins is survived by his wife, whom he married in 1969, and two sisters, Marsha Veit and Erin Robbins. In the late 1980s, his son said, John Robbins reconciled with his father: Irv Robbins, suffering from weight issues, heart disease, and diabetes, was given a copy of 'Diet for a New America' by his cardiologist. The doctor had no idea that the book had been written by his patient's son. Advertisement Irv Robbins read the book, gave up sugar, reduced his meat consumption, lost weight, improved his golf game and lived another 20 years, Ocean Robbins said. He died in 2008. It was confirmation, John Robbins liked to say, 'that blood was thicker than ice cream.' This article originally appeared in
LeMonde
29-06-2025
- Science
- LeMonde
'Petrified,' by Joshua Wodak: Facing a global climate rupture
Most of us are now frighteningly familiar with the genres of writing devoted to the topic of climate change and ecological collapse: any number of excellent, intelligent and well-researched books from the last decade back to Silent Spring [by Rachel Carson, published in 1962]. They told us what we needed to do, then what we should have done, then what we actually did, and now what we must do, if we wish to have any hope at all of survival. I suspect many of us stopped reading them years ago, not because we do not care and not because we do not recognize the problem, but because we simply can no longer cope with this collapse that seems so far beyond our individual power to change. Petrified. Living During a Rupture of Life on Earth, by Joshua Wodak, a lecturer on ecology at several Australian universities, is not one of those books. It summarily bypasses the idea that we can now somehow salvage what we have put in motion and also assumes that our future desperate attempts to save ourselves will not engender any fundamental changes to the anthropocentric attitudes that got us here in the first place. Instead, it asks us a simple question: How, as sentient humans, do we want to live here at the end of life on earth as we know it? How can we come to terms with both our collective guilt and our individual remorse? How can we face down the imminent collapse of the ecosystems that support us and every other lifeform on the planet and remain humane, sane, optimistic and kind? What useful, compassionate posture can any human being adopt now that we are already this deep into the rupture? And why, in fact, does our posture matter? Culture pop Petrified is a highly unusual meditation, part science, part philosophy, part pop-culture acid trip, on how we as humans might choose to live during the current rupture. It almost entirely ignores both the academic and popular vocabularies we have become accustomed to when discussing the Anthropocene, rather taking the reader on a sometimes disorienting and sometimes exhilarating rollercoaster ride that swerves from traditional and pop-cultural foreshadowing of this and other ends-of-the-world to hard science and philosophy and back again to our real, lived experience of the rupture as it unfolds.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion: Will the ‘Abundance' agenda change politics?
Every few generations, a controversial book is published that sparks a dramatic shift in political trajectory. Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' (workplace and food safety reforms), Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' (environmental activism), and Milton and Rose Friedman's 'Free to Choose' (the Reagan Revolution) are a few examples. We suggest that 'Abundance,' authored by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, may be such a tome. 'Abundance' dissects how progressivism has crippled innovation, housing and essential development. The liberal authors artfully recommend a liberalism that protects and builds. Although causing a rift in the Democratic Party, could this signal a shift in the trajectory of national politics? COWLEY: Reminiscent of Princess Leia's plea to Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Abundance agenda is Democrats' 'only hope.' Government is getting in their way, stifled by layers of self-imposed regulatory burdens. Government should be judged by its outcomes, not the rigid principles it follows. Process has been prioritized over product. Stymied public projects are merely symptoms of a larger illness within the Democratic Party. They have countless militant factions, each fighting for their niche issue to be pervasively included in all facets of government. Environmental activists demand prairie dog protection from new transmission lines. Clean air advocates want mass transit to be carbon-neutral. Even Biden saw how his infrastructure spending bills didn't have a meaningful impact because a large chunk was gobbled up by red tape and compliance costs. Imposing restrictions on their own desired outcomes results in money spent, time wasted and little to show for it. They cannot be all things to all people. Leadership is sometimes saying no. Although not entirely the fault of Democrats, upward mobility and the American Dream are becoming relics of the past. In 1940, children had a 92% chance of out-earning their parents. By 1980, it fell to 50%. If we don't build and innovate, economic opportunity dwindles. AI is the next frontier for discovery and development. This global race is one that Americans cannot afford to lose, and both parties should be paying attention. PIGNANELLI: 'The formation of ideological factions within political parties — starting among intellectuals and writers — is a staple of American history.' — Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic I remember when Friedman's program promoting the free market aired on PBS (that's right) in January 1980, when President Jimmy Carter was beating Ronald Reagan 65%-31 %. In November, Reagan won in a landslide. Ideas have power. Abundance philosophy has existed for years. But this book compiled supportive documentation into a mass communication vehicle. The well-intentioned government programs established 50 years ago are crippling housing and the implementation of technological innovations. The authors argue that progressives are focused on process and litigation rather than achieving results that benefit society. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden passed massive legislation to fund projects in healthcare, technology and alternative fuels that were impossible to initiate due to regulatory barriers. Severe left-wing opposition to abundance advocates underscores their fear of losing influence. Indeed, pundits predict a civil war within the Democratic Party between the far left and moderates eager for a new ideology. This demand for competent, efficient government can attract independents and moderate Republicans. America is amidst a major political realignment, and abundance is a new dynamic. We are witnessing history. Utah is well governed. But are there aspects of 'Abundance' that could be utilized to promote the objectives of our state officials? COWLEY: Utah understands that less is more when it comes to government. The Legislature is actively removing government barriers to innovation. For example, Utah's regulatory sandbox allows entrepreneurs to seek regulatory relief in their businesses while serving as laboratories of innovation. Look at the speed with which nuclear power is coming to Utah. Yet, more could be done on permitting and zoning to address Utah's significant housing shortage. PIGNANELLI: Gov. Spencer Cox appropriately notes that Utah has performed DOGE-like functions for years. Senate President Stuart Adams is promoting clean nuclear energy. Speaker Mike Schultz and lawmakers pursued a similar objective by mandating that the Utah Higher Education reallocate 10% of state funds to more productive uses. Despite public grumbling, insiders are grateful for the political protection that compels them to readjust resources. These goals also apply to conservatives to discourage their policies that inhibit housing and economic development at the local government level. Abundance should not be beholden to any political party, but rather a mindset that if government is used, it must be practical and not an interference. Will 'Abundance' be a campaign issue in the future? COWLEY: The Abundance agenda may help Democrat candidates become more appealing to Utah voters as the battle between progressives and moderates wages on. The real question is if they see the existential crisis befalling them and what will they do to avoid extinction. Staying the course doesn't have an upside. There is no drama-filled Twitter spat or blunder big enough that Trump could commit for the millions of Americans who voted for him to suddenly support the progressive agenda. Democrats need to loosen the stranglehold activists have on their party in order to rack up wins. PIGNANELLI: Abundance will be weaponized against moderate Democrats by left-wing progressives in internal battles. Democrats and Republicans in swing districts will advocate for this philosophy.
