estebanana -> RE: Living National Treasure (Jan. 14 2016 2:56:21)
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I have to agree to an extent about Chinese abuse of the environment. A joking thought came to me as I read your comments Bill; When I was in China I never saw any wildlife, I don't remember seeing any animals other than those in cages waiting to be eaten. To be fair, and to really look at the whole picture, China is supplied by other countries' private industry. Right now Costa Rica has a fleet of ships that are "finning" sharks, finning is the term for the practice of removing the dorsal fin and throwing the shark alive overboard. The Costa Rican fleet has been conducting devastating forms of fishing, and several other countries as well, in the interest of supplying China. The deep Southern Ocean is very difficult to patrol and many fleets go there to poach, many SE Asian countries included. Shark is known in the temperate oceans, but deep cold water fish are being taken illegally in the SO. It's also easy to blame, and be angry, but you can change the way you buy fish and more people who begin to buy smaller more sustainable species, the less there be will be a drive for larger apex species to be caught. Mc Donalds company and other large corporate fish packers which supply frozen fish fillets are getting Toothfish stock from Patagonian waters, really this as degraded that regions breeding stocks of fish. This is part of the way that fish is consumed worldwide that needs to change. Consumers all around the world eat fish that is from another part of the globe that has been prepared to be boneless and convenient, this frozen prcessed mode of eating is a major reason why there is such pressure on certain fishing grounds. Yes the Chinese cultural practices don't belong in a modern world in which globally we need to think about how to manage fishery resources, but until we curb the legitimate looking practice of Filet O' Fish sandwich eating we don't have a great deal of social traction to take an ethical high ground on environmental issues. However, I must say the Chinese practices of shark finning has been especially nauseating for me to think about as I have been interested in this particular form of environmental abuse since the 1980's. The shark has been much and unfairly maligned in popular culture, Jaws hollywood and ignorant tabloid articles, but in actual biological fact the sharks are a very essential part of natural systems in the pelagic zones of the oceans. The sharks' among other natural duties they perform, clean the seas. Anyway, I hesitate to write a lot about this kind of stuff simply because when one begins to call out certain countries for bad environmental behavior, including my home country the US, it often puts people off. I have a conflict between being critical of nations environmental practice and being a cool guy who never speaks ill of anything. Usually the critic in me gets the focus of my output of words and thoughts, and I've been told this does not make one a popular figure as a craftsman. There seems to be an unwritten code of conduct for those who make guitars, that is something like what used to be prescribed to children; you should be seen and not heard from. I feel better about the opposite action of being heard and not seen. Recently I was told by a nervy participant in a guitar makers forum that they prefer their guitar makers to be a kind of silent monk who devotes 24 hours a day thinking about a making guitars with a religious fervor. Well, one could argue the reason a person can make an instrument today is because you make yourself aware of the pressures on the environment, on wood supplies, and a myriad of other concerns which are salient to the safe stewardship of this muddy planet. I've seen a wide gamut of guitar makers from bad to good and fancy to elemental, but I seldom see one that is insensitive to the environment. It is part of the job to become aware of how natural systems work. In the process of learning about where ones wood come from, one might learn things about how the supply line works that are unsavory both environmentally and socially. Apologies for the typos, I am now working on a small keyboard tablet with a massive 10" screen as my lovely first world 15" MacBook Pro died a sordid and gasping death.
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