Thanks for all the fish - Rear Vision

The program Rear Vision of Australia's ABC is a very good history of current events program. It digs into the necessary background information you need to have in order to get a proper historic grip on what goes on in the news.

One of its recent issues addresses a specific problem with the oceans: fish depletion. There is more with the pollution that, according to what I have heard on other podcasts (for example on an LSE Event about the Costs of Climate Change), with climate change make that the ocean are almost beyond salvation. With this in mind the history of fish depletion leaves you bereft of hope. Rear vision doesn't touch upon pollution and the greater climate problems at all; it just maps the way humans have devastated the fish population by over-fishing.

It is not just technology and increased demand that goes to explain this. Rear vision shows also how the developments of industrialization and capital investment created an industry that was impossible to get a grip on. The fact the oceans are vast and nobody's direct property or responsibility, only added to the matter. And this means that when by the 1960's the first signals of depletion became clear and attempts were made by policymakers to counter-act, their efforts were largely ineffective. It is just one more story that shows we have to radically change our perception of our environment and our responsibility for it.

More Rear Vision:
Follow up on Iran and Versailles,
Versailles 1919,
Iran 1953,
Coffee,
Fiji.