{"id":7933,"date":"2015-01-14T15:50:15","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T20:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=7933"},"modified":"2015-01-14T15:51:40","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T20:51:40","slug":"peak-wild-fish-or-one-more-of-1000-plateaus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/01\/14\/peak-wild-fish-or-one-more-of-1000-plateaus\/","title":{"rendered":"Peak wild fish (or, one more of 1000 plateaus)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two kinds of historical turning points define our era.<\/p>\n

The first kind involves the retrospective identification of new forms of enclosure, exploitive intensification, or\u00a0system derailment. Debates over the beginnings of a\u00a0recession, or of a war, or — on a larger scale\u00a0— of the Anthropocene<\/a>, are about this kind of backdating: how far back do we trace the beginnings of a crisis we are well in the midst of, but which we have only belatedly come to recognize?<\/p>\n

The second kind identify “peaks” of a certain form of exploitation, such as “peak oil,” which mark the moments at which the viability of a crucial\u00a0resource begins to reverse\u00a0direction and force a scramble for replacements.<\/p>\n

To the latter kind we can now add 2014 (roughly) as the year of “peak wild fish<\/a>.” As the Breakthrough Institute<\/a>‘s Marian Swain<\/a> details in this Slate<\/em> article<\/a>, aquaculture surpassed wild capture as our main source of seafood for the first time this year. Swain accepts that there is no going back, and optimistically describes a scenario in the\u00a0“not-so-distant future” when consumers “may be aghast to find out that their sustainably farmed halibut was actually trawled from a commercial fishery.” What, not from a farm? Throw it out, then.<\/p>\n

That seems a bit like arguing that\u00a0fresh air sucks compared to the exhaust you breathe in the middle of Boston’s Central Artery Tunnel. But whether it’s preferable or not isn’t the point. The point is that we are crossing these thresholds regularly now, like salmon on their way to an ocean who won’t have a river\u00a0to spawn in when it comes time for that.<\/p>\n

No going back. (Notch up one more point for the increasing relevance of Whitehead, for whom there is only always the movement forward.)<\/p>\n

\"Salmon\"<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two kinds of historical turning points define our era. The first kind involves the retrospective identification of new forms of enclosure, exploitive intensification, or\u00a0system derailment. Debates over the beginnings of a\u00a0recession, or of a war, or — on a larger scale\u00a0— of the Anthropocene, are about this kind of backdating: how far back do we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[196],"tags":[123562,123559,123561,123560],"class_list":["post-7933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecoculture","tag-enclosure","tag-peak-oil","tag-peak-wild-fish","tag-transition"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-23X","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1231,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/06\/cinema-poetry\/","url_meta":{"origin":7933,"position":0},"title":"cinema poetry","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I just discovered the video blog Cinema Poetry, which has collected twenty (so far) of the most remarkable scenes in the history of cinema. The first of the two ride films below, the Lumiere brothers' rickshaw film from an Indochinese village, is beautiful (watch it in full screen with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/C5XlKaii0OE\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6546,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/03\/11\/sighting-oil\/","url_meta":{"origin":7933,"position":1},"title":"Sighting Oil","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"While it's been out for several months now, the current issue of Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, a special issue on Sighting Oil, deserves more press than it's gotten. The journal is housed at the University of Alberta, which makes it particularly well situated to critically observe the development\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.csj.ualberta.ca\/imaginations\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/3.2Cover-791x1024.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1143,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/10\/28\/where-the-wild-things-are\/","url_meta":{"origin":7933,"position":2},"title":"Where the Wild Things Are","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I loved Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, so I've compiled a list of some useful online resources about the film, book, and author (mostly for my own sake, so I can easily access them if and when I might get around to writing more about it). Just to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"wildthings.gif","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/10\/wildthings.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2865,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/03\/06\/plastic-planet\/","url_meta":{"origin":7933,"position":3},"title":"Plastic planet","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Discard Studies shares Max Liboiron's engrossing, and depressing, account of the ocean's toxic soup of plastics. A few quotes: \"The best conservative estimate we have is that there are 315 billion pounds of plastic in the ocean. For comparison, The Gulf Spill spewed roughly 2.5 million pounds of oil per\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1114,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/09\/01\/transition-culture-ecology-batailles-glorious-excesses\/","url_meta":{"origin":7933,"position":4},"title":"transition culture, ecology, & Bataille’s glorious excesses","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Reading about the growing \"transition towns\" movement back to back with a read-through of Design Philosophy Papers' latest issue on Bataille and \"Inefficient Sustainability\" has gotten me thinking about some of the unspoken premises that make their way into environmentalists' prognostications of the future. The transition towns movement began in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1371,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/15\/slouching-toward-the-cancun-bar\/","url_meta":{"origin":7933,"position":5},"title":"slouching toward the Cancun bar","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Peaksurfer's Albert Bates has a very good article up called The Great Change: Slouching towards Cancun. A few tidbits: Because of the huge outpouring of non-profit energy, money and effort at Copenhagen last year, and the subsequent meltdown of the Copenhagen round, the approach to this year\u2019s COP (Conference of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7933"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7975,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7933\/revisions\/7975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}