French Fishermen Finally Forced To Face Reality

French fishermen are caught .They are straddling a dock of rising diesel fuel price and an away- drifting boat of elusive, depleted fishing stocks. The fishermen are protesting the 30% surge in the price of diesel in the past 4 months. They want the price rolled back so they can go further out to sea for the fish that they have depleted from their coastal waters.

Their anger has taken the form of port blockades, sea traffic disruption and acts of vandalism on land. The government has offered a limited subsidy but the fishermen say it's not enough. And so the natural world and its laws are brought into sharp focus. I.E. the using of a diminishing resource to pursue a frgile resource has its limits.

Many fishermen will probably go out of business. And well they should. Their business model and philosophy was flawed from the launch. Fishing for dinner is one thing. But the wholesale slaughter of worldwide fish stocks to a mere 20% of their former numbers is a sin. Let the monkeys eat more snails.

Exxon, Valdez Captain Hazelwood Judgments: New Values Needed

What should be the penalty for the death and destruction of app. 500,000 seabirds, 5000 sea otters, 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 22 Orcas (killer whales), billions of salmon and herring eggs and a toxic residue of oil in the sea bed that will linger for hundreds of years? The Supreme Court has decided to hear Exxon's appeal of $2.5 billion punitive damages award against it for it's 1989 spill of 11 million gallons of oil in Alaska's pristine Prince William Sound.

Years ago, Captain Joseph Hazelwood of the tanker Exxon Valdez which ran aground and spilled the oil was accused of being drunk while in command of the vessel. He was cleared of that charge. But he was found guilty of a " midemeanor charge of negligent discharge of oil". For this violation, he was fined $ 50,000 and had to serve 1000 hours of community service.

That's woefully not adequate to the damage that he was reponsible for. This paltry penalty points out the overvaluation of the human in comparison to the natural world. With that kind of legal logic, it's only a matter of time before our natural world is sacrificed on the alter of the human's wrongly inflated opinion of itself. New values have to be reflected in our laws that down grade the human and upgrade the increasingly dwindling natural world.