Word: codding
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...Then the signs were unmistakable, like the pall of smoke over the Amazon rain forest, where farmers and ranchers set fires to clear land. Finally, as the new millennium drew near, it was obvious that Earth's pain had become humanity's pain. The collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery put 30,000 Canadians out of work and ruined the economies of 700 communities. Two years ago, deforestation worsened China's floods, which killed 3,600 people and left 14 million homeless. Population pressures and overcrowding raised the toll from last year's rains in Latin America, which killed...
...there is a difference between current production and capacity, which is the amount of grain or fish the globe can produce indefinitely. Fishing fleets, the report says, are 40% larger than the ocean can sustain. At that rate, more fisheries are bound to collapse, as did the North Atlantic cod grounds. We're borrowing heavily from our children's future...
Fishing annually extracts more than 80 million tons of sea creatures worldwide. An additional 20 million tons of unwanted fish, seabirds, marine mammals and turtles get thrown overboard, dead. Overfishing has depleted major populations of cod, swordfish, tuna, snapper, grouper and sharks. Instead of sensibly living off nature's interest, many fisheries have mined the wild capital, and famous fishing banks lie bankrupt, including the revered cod grounds of New England and Atlantic Canada...
...should expand our concept of zoning from land to sea. Instead of an ocean free-for-all, we should designate some areas for fishing only with traps and hooks and line, and others as wildlife sanctuaries. As we've seen with once rich cod grounds, if we don't declare some areas closed by foresight, they will declare themselves closed by collapse. The map of the land has many colors, while in most minds the sea is still the blank space between continents. Let's start coloring in that blue expanse and map a more sensible future...
...Tourists headed for Cape Cod this summer should leave their cigarettes at home. The ban on smoking begins...