I love salmon

The Alaskan wild salmon fishery has been threatened by overfishing, fish farming, and climate change

I mean it. Salmon is my favorite fish- but wild salmon only. Now, it along with several other fish I enjoy are off my table. Mercury, toxins, fish farms have limited my consumption, but now there just aren't any fish. Wild chinook salmon have collapsed. Last week California and Oregon announced what some had been speculating for the last month - the chinook salmon had collapsed, and the coho population was about to collapse. Less than 6% of the normal run is expected this year. All commercial fisheries are closed (putting many fishermen out of work) and the sport fishery is going to be small, and extremely regulated. How did we get here? We have known about declining salmon runs for years.

And why wasn't this tragedy screamed across the headlines of North America? In a time when sustainability is heard on every street corner, why didn't every newspaper pick up this story? Instead, I heard about it in a class, and then an astute student, Robert Walker, brought an article to my attention. Thank you Robert.

The collapse is being blamed on ocean temperatures and the use of water in California (irrigation) along with the usual culprits: destroyed habitats and pollution.

Many biologists believe a combination of human-caused and natural factors will ultimately explain the collapse, including both marine conditions and freshwater factors such as in-stream water withdrawals, habitat alterations, dam operations, construction, pollution, and changes in hatchery operations.

Fish varieties live best in a narrow range of temperatures. Though overfishing had a great deal to do with the collapse of the cod in the Grand Banks 15 years ago, the no-show return of the cod has been blamed on the change in ocean temperatures. Cod have a very narrow range, and the Grand Banks have changed, and scientists are learning more about why the cod are not repopulating the banks. global warming, ocean temperatures, and wild annual fluctuations of fish - all of this encompassed within theories of the non-linear progressions of weather and its relation to global warming, have caused havoc in the seas. Now salmon could also be another victim of global warming.

And California's need and lack of water. With 38 million people (1/8 of all Americans) and the largest agricultural economy in the nation, the need for water has always been a stumbling block for the state. Despite years of stealing water, diversions, and conservation, the state has found itself in a drought again (the state has a history of droughts), and water and fish have been victims. The state and federal regulators are diverting so much water to irrigate the farms, the fish have been dying.

The Bush administration says that the reason for the sudden collapse of the Sacramento fall Chinook stock is "not readily apparent," but fishing, tribal and environmental groups point to massive water exports from the California Delta in recent years and rapidly declining water quality in Central Valley rivers as the key factors behind the fishery collapse. Although the ocean conditions were undoubtedly poor, many of the fish never made it to the ocean because they were sucked into the massive state and federal export pumps in the Delta or starved as they migrated through the estuary, due to the collapse of the Delta food chain.

Where are we heading as a civilization? Should everyone read Collapse and get the message? How many more signs do we need?

• cod collapse
  
• deforestation
• desertification
  
• Arctic pollution
• Arctic warming
• rising prices
• resources exhaustion
• oil peak
• global warming
• extreme weather events
• weakened immune systems
• human population explosion
• honey bee collapse
  
• salmon collapse

According the Diamond's Collapse the reasons for collapse are

1. Environmental damage caused by humans
2. Climate change
3. The presence of hostile neighbors
4. The absence of trading partners
5. The nature of a society's response to points 1-4

What do you think? Is living sustainably an answer? Can sustainability reach far enough, deep enough in to the minds of people to make the changes that are necessary in the time that we have?

Chinese Smog in LA

That is LA down there. I return to LA each year and the smog is still there. But did you know that some of that smog is coming from CHINA?

For years now the United States has sent its polluting industries out of the country, Why? Because it would be AWAY and not HERE. We all know that there is an invisible wall that stops all pollution at the national border. Well, here is the rub. The invisible wall isn't there.

It seems that Los Angeles smog, which is of course, caused by the insane amount of cars on the road, is caused by the insane number of cars, BUT that is not the only reason. The smog is being imported along with all the other things we import---from China. That is right, coal burning power plants in China are creating so much pollution that it is being carried by the winds across the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of America. China is the most polluting country on earth.

Experts once thought China might overtake the United States as the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases by 2010, possibly later. Now, the International Energy Agency has said China could become the emissions leader by the end of this year, and the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency said China had already passed that level.

While China is the fastest growing economy on Earth, it is also the most environmentally devastating. Just read about what the country is doing to make the Olympics be somewhat healthy, and what some athletes have done when they realize how unhealthy it is.
Click image for larger graphic

As we already know (at least I hope so) pollution from coal-burning power plants is damaging to health. For human health it harms the respiratory system, causes cancer, causes thousands of premature deaths. The land and air fare no better. It causes acid rain, sterilizing lakes, rivers, and streams.

There is a Dickensian feel to much of the region. Roads are covered in coal tar; houses are coated with soot; miners, their faces smeared almost entirely black, haul carts full of coal rocks; the air is thick with the smell of burning coal.

Yet, even as the air is filled with soot, and cancer rates have soared, the Chinese (and perhaps America if Dick Cheney has his way) continue to build more coal-burning plants. And they continue to do exactly as we did as our industrial might grew - subsidize the plants, the electricity, the lifestyle, so that they can grow all that much more. While they grow they cause more pollution, more global warming, more climate change, more CO2 more of the problems that threaten our lives in the twenty-first century.

At what point do we all just get it? When do we start to realize we all live on the same planet and there is no "away."