A rebuttal to China crashing soon

Minxei Pei writes an interesting article in The Diplomat titled "China's Economy: Seizure or Cancer".

In it he outlines a number of the obvious features that have been discussed on this blog about China's overall economy.  He dissects the current situation and asks whether there will be an immediate heart attack that hobbles the beast or a systemic cancer that eventually kills it.

He refers to a "heart attack" scenario where a cascade of events, precipitated by a slowdown and excess debt, cripples China.  In his perspective China's communists will force the banks to defer losses and provide a backstop to prevent further contagion.  He states:

But China is different. Because the banking system is effectively owned and controlled by the state, a banking crisis won’t materialize unless the state itself is insolvent and Chinese depositors have completely lost confidence in the state’s sovereign guarantee of its banks. This unique character of the China’s state-owned financial system is the cause of the country’s inability to allocate capital efficiently. However, in the short term, this structural flaw may turn out to be an asset in averting a seizure of the financial system.

As in the global meltdown of 2008 and earlier banking system upsets in China, this approach has worked.

On a second level, if the economy doesn't crash immediately over the course of the next several months, the author perceives a potential "cancer" in the nature of the communist-capitalist hybrid.

Despite the threat of a seizure in the near term, the greater danger to the Chinese economy is its structural inefficiency, which is deeply imbedded in a state-led development model...

The investments made by the Chinese state may have given the Communist Party a lot of prestige (think of the country’s modern infrastructure and ambitious high-tech plans), but delivers preciously few real benefits to its people. Chinese state-owned enterprises have thrived because of their access to practically free capital, but their efficiency remains abysmal compared with domestic private firms or their Western rivals.

No country can keep pouring unlimited amounts of capital into unproductive infrastructure projects. China doesn't have the ability to keep blowing this current bubble and then dismissing colossal financial losses when the bills come due.  With Europe sinking into recession, America limping along, and much of the emerging market turning negative, there is little reason to believe they can pull the same rabbit out of the hat again.

The Dismal Science Redefined

Current economic theory is less a science than an ideology peculiar to a certain period of history, which may well be nearing an end...

[Economists are] the jilted lovers of the science world – the more rigidly they approach their subject, the more it mocks them with spurious and headstrong behaviour.

Since this blog started, I've been constantly commenting on the dearth of empirical evidence that lies behind many of the attributed economic theories of our time and the persistent irrationality, if not complete fraud, of proponents of modern economics.  Many noted persons who are economists, like Paul Krugman and J. Brad DeLong, have likewise stated how the field has become a self-serving entity, that is in many cases polluted beyond the point of usefulness.  The above quotes, culled from a Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece by Brian Milner titled "Economists and their fairy tale world of prognostication," is another indictment of the dismal science's ability to actually be a science.  The central basis of any science is its ability to factually explain natural phenomenon, testability of theories, reproducibility of experiments, and its ability to predict future events.  Economics, or at least that set of dogma pedalled in the MSM, doesn't pass any of the above criteria. 

If economists want their profession be taken seriously, then they should start actually calling out those on their side who have perennially gotten it wrong and banish them.

The entire fable of sustainable capitalism is disintegrating all around us like the dreamscape in the movie Inception.  The communists of China, through their mercantile and corrupt practices, are acquiring natural resources across the globe and buying friends everywhere.  The new globalization that peaked in the last decade is slowly devolving.  The financial system that imploded in 2008, has only been patched together with band-aid remedies and awaits further paralysis in the near future.  China, Europe, and America are all betting against the odds, that growth will magically return and the masses will defer sharpening their pitchforks until another day.

Peak Oil: The Germans and British Understand the Outcome

A series of recent reports have been released by both the German and UK governments on the implications of Peak oil.  Jeff Rubin, former chief economist of Canada's CIBC World Markets, discusses both reports in his Globe and Mail blog.  In it he summarizes that the emerging global consensus amongst policy makers and long term government planners is that deficiencies in accessing and utilizing petroleum will lead to severe economic disruptions, social instability, and a collapse of the current global trade arrangements.

Rubin disputes the reassurances made by governments and industry supporters that peak-oil is not a concern.  As I've outlined in previous blog entries (here and here), many persons who have had a close examination of the situation believe that we reached peak-oil in 2005.  The German study states that there is "some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later."  Rubin concedes that while we may not have reached "geological peak-oil" from the economic perspective we certainly have.  As global oil prices maxed out at near $150/bbl it became abundantly clear that our current economy and way of life is completely incapable of sustaining these costs.  Furthermore, it is only at these very high levels of crude that many of the untested extraction technologies and difficult to obtain reserves can be made to be profitable.  Hence, in reality, accessible global oil reserves are not growing any further.

Der Spiegel International, outlines a series of potential situations that may arise:

1. Oil will determine power
2. Increasing importance of oil exporters
3. Politics in place of the market
4. Global market failures
5. Relapse into planned economy
6. Global chain reaction
7. Crisis of political legitimacy

Altogether, the implications of this fact are severe.  Rubin summarizes:

The German study paints a bleak picture of the post-peak world: political power quickly shifts from major oil-consuming economies to major oil-producing economies. Less and less oil is traded on the open market, while more and more is traded between nation states, with national oil companies entering into long-term supply agreements that are tied to broader political and military considerations. And military alliances coalesce around the security of energy supply, rather than between countries with shared political or economic principles.

In the UK, the Guardian newspaper also heralds the dangers associated with a post-peak oil world in an article titled "Peak oil alarm revealed by secret official talks."  Previous estimates by the International Energy Agency indicated that there would be "sufficient reserves to meet demand till 2030 as long as investment in new reserves is maintained."  However, major industry players, economic skeptics, and government analysts believe the situation could be considerably less solvent.

But an internal IEA source said: "Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible, but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources."

Coupled with climate change concerns, which includes the possibility of severe drought, famine, resource scarcity based conflict, and socio-economic collapse everywhere, we are not just talking about a realignment in global powers, but the possibility of wholesale disintegration of human civilization.

Quote of the Day: Tom Ricks on 9-11

Tom Ricks is an author and a Pulitzer award winning journalist who has covered the Pentagon and military affairs for the WSJ and the Washington Post.  In his Foreign Policy blog he succinctly summarizes the whole post-9/11 and Iraq debacle in one paragraph:

I've long thought that this country was knocked off balance by 9/11, and that instead of steadying us, as leaders should, President Bush and Vice President Cheney led the panic, and so intensified and lengthened the period of disequilibrium. The Iraq war was one result -- and also a cause -- of the length of this period, because the hundreds of billions of unnecessary spending led to a huge borrowing splurge by the federal government. Essentially China paid for the war, and our children and grandchildren are on the hook to pay it back.

Maybe the sheeple will remember that it was was their own intellectual laziness and dismal understanding of world affairs and economics that led to the election of a president who previously had never left the country, and permitted that same president to pursue two Middle eastern wars while cutting taxes; the latter a first in the history of the republic.  This morasses is as much the fault of the belligerents and corporate toadies in the White House and US congress, as it is the idiotic and feeble minded dolts who consistently failed to ask the right questions and hold those in power in check.  These red-baiting dunces, who decades ago were shrieking of the terror of global communism, have handed the butchers of Tiananmen Square and the communist hierarchy in Beijing the financial and political leverage that forty years of cold-war posturing could not accomplish.

A Sign of Things to Come: Rare Minerals & Made in China

China's prominence as the world's second largest economy now poses a substantial threat to the continued growth and development of Western economies.  Over the past two years, the Chinese government has been developing policies that "prohibit or restrict exports of rare earth metals that are produced only in China and play a vital role in cutting edge technology, from hybrid cars and catalytic converters, to superconductors, and precision-guided weapons," according to news reports.

Nearly 95% of the world's rare earth minerals are extracted and processed in China.  A year ago, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology called for a complete ban on trade to foreign nations of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium.  A subset of other metals, such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum, would be limited to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year; a value substantially below current global needs.  An article published last week in Chemical and Engineering News elaborates:

China has maneuvered effectively since the mid-1980s to establish a worldwide monopoly on rare-earth resources. Aiding its effort to corner the market is China’s tremendous rare-earth mineral wealth. U.S. Geological Survey reports indicate that China possesses roughly 52% of the world’s known rare-earth reserves. By comparison, the U.S. is believed to have the second-largest share, at about 13%. Russia and Australia each have 5–6% of the known reserves. India, Canada, Greenland, and a few other countries also have appreciable quantities of rare-earth minerals.

A summary of current uses of rare earth metals is listed below:

Each Toyota Prius uses 25 pounds of rare earth elements. Cerium and lanthanum are used in catalytic converters for diesel engines. Europium is used in lasers... Blackberries, iPods, mobile phones, palms TVs, navigation systems, and air defence missiles all use a sprinkling of rare earth metals. They are used to filter viruses and bacteria from water, and cleaning up Sarin gas and VX nerve agents.

A couple of months ago, the Chinese People's Daily reported that the Chinese government had created an internal cartel to prevent the undervaluing of minerals.  Peng Bo, an analyst at Guosen Securities, states, "The pricing mechanism, if put into practice, will effectively buoy rare earths' undervalued prices and give Chinese producers more say on the global market."  The Chinese newspaper bluntly states that prices in rare earth minerals, such as neodymium, have skyrocketed and that Japanese and American markets are completely dependant on China for their needs.

Recently, America's Government Accountability Office (GAO) prepared a report on rare-earth materials as it pertains to America's military preparedness.  The report found:

that rare-earth materials play important roles in numerous defense technologies, including radar, missile-guidance systems, lasers, and night vision equipment. The Department of Defense is now conducting an internal assessment and is expected to devise strategies to protect against rare-earth supply interruptions.

It's not just the minerals per se that China will now limit, but also the development, production, and distribution of the attendant technologies that are dependant on these minerals. The indolent and short-term thinking of America's leaders in government and business, have created a untenable situation, in which a foreign government now has the ability to limit and control the development of not only the West's existing technologies, but future technologies, such as "green-tech," that were supposed to transform America's depressed manufacturing landscape.  If innovation is the source of future prosperity, then that wealth will be exclusively controlled by the communists in Beijing.  Coupled with America's need for the Chinese to continuously purchase Treasury bills and flood their markets with cheap disposable consumables, the future has become substantially more complicated for those in Washington D.C.

Quote of the Day: ECB Austerity Proponents are Dunces

The ECB’s arguments look to me like scraping the bottom of the intellectual barrel. The truth is that it is not fear of government bankruptcy, but governments’ determination to balance the books, that is reducing business confidence by lowering expectations of employment, incomes, and orders. The problem is not the hole in the budget; it is the hole in the economy.

- Robert Skidelsky, "Fixing the Right Hole", Project Syndicate

Matthew Simmons, Peak-Oil Proponent dead at 67

Matthew R. Simmons, long time oil industry analyst and author of the much discussed book Twilight in the Desert, which proposed of the idea that we have already passed peak-oil, was found dead at his home in Maine from an apparent heart attack.

Bloomberg elaborates on the theme of peak-oil, which Simmons is most associated with:

On a tour of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in 2003, Simmons was inspired to estimate the world’s largest oil reserves, and from research that included poring through neglected engineering data, determined that the country was close to or nearing peak output, Peter Maass wrote in his book, “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.”

"He built his own energy firm and, having done that successfully, used his knowledge of the industry to challenge one of its biggest accepted truths -- that there are nearly unlimited quantities of oil in the world.”

The concept of peak oil, (which I discussed in an earlier blog entry) is a function of the availability of crude reserves in relation to both time and cost.  As easily extractable sources of crude oil are consumed and more nations transition to first-world levels of industrialization and production, demand increases.  Shortly after peak oil, there will be insufficient supplies of petroleum causing global cost inflation, on nearly everything, and diminished availability.   M King Hubbard, first predicted that North American oil production would "peak" between 1965 and 1970; a physical event that did occur and is not disputed.  Simmons estimated that on a global level we reached peak oil in 2005.  While the actual date is of debate, there is little doubt based on quantitative analysis, that peak oil is real and we need to understand the immediate implications of that fact.   The first graph below, outlines global petroleum extraction levels versus time, consistent with Hubbard's (and Simmons') predictions. 

The second graph provides a timeline of America's actual proven petroleum reserves.

Given that virtually all transportation, manufacturing, and major military activities are related to the use of petroleum based products, volatility in its availability and price pose severe concerns to modern society.  The OPEC oil embargoes of the early 1970's, both Persian Gulf wars conducted by the Americans, pre-2008 agricultural commodity bubbles, and numerous revolutions in the 20th C. were a direct result of oil politics.

There are numerous opponents to Simmons' view of peak oil, who refer to his modelling as too simplistic and biased towards Malthusian conceits.   However, even if that was the fact, how long are we as a civilization going to continue to utilize oil as our primary energy source, when it has been proven that its use is causing climate change and destabilizing ecosystems across the globe.  These critics, which are primarily bankrolled by the oil and gas industries, constantly dismiss the scientific consensus on this matter and employ bogus libertarian arguments on the intrusion of "big-government" to persuade the masses that there is no climate change occurring or worries about peak oil.  Unfortunately, because these corporations and their handmaidens in politics have either ignored the facts at hand or dithered, we are well past the point of no return on both these matters. 

Available petroleum will continue to decline, the planet will continue to get hotter, and people will persist in deluding themselves that nothing needs to be done until it is too late.  As Rorschach, from the movie The Watchmen says:

[They will] shout "Save us!"... They had a choice, all of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men ...Instead they followed the droppings of lechers... and didn't realize that the trail led over a precipice until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice. Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody Hell.

The Definition of Human Selfishness

Representatives of the human race have voted and decided to liquidate another species in the name of Mammon and short-term economic gain.

Delegates from 175 countries, representing the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, voted on a series of measures to eliminate international trade on the Bluefin Tuna and a variety of other animals that are posed for extinction.  According to the Washington Post,

The adult population of eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna has declined 74 percent over the past half-century, much of it in the past decade, and the population has dropped 82 percent in 40 years in the western Atlantic.

The proposal originally initiated by Monaco and agreed upon by the USA and several EU states, failed to achieve a majority position at the Doha, Qatar conference; with 20 nations in favor, 68 against and 30 cowards abstaining. 

Japan the greatest consumer of worldwide Tuna, imports nearly 80 percent of commercially traded Atlantic bluefin.  Similar to its extensive campaign to dissuade any international body from preventing it from harvesting whales, Japan has used its considerable economic clout to prevent limitations on any trade embargo or harvesting constraints in international waters.  Few deny that the motivations behind their stance are purely commercial.  As Susan Lieberman, director of international policy at the Pew Environment Group said, "This was a case of just plain ignoring the science for short-term economic gain."

Japan is not alone in its posturing; however.  Canada, a country that has made itself into an environmental pariah by its fealty to dirty oil-sands production and the persistent refusal by its conservative government to acknowledge and address climate change, has actively sided with the Japanese on the tuna issue.  Canada's Minster of Fisheries, Gail Shea, applauding the defeat of the trade ban and touting Canada's own policies, which have permitted over the decades the devastation of Atlantic fisheries and the current collapse of Pacific Sockeye Salmon.  So when Canadians say they have a plan to manage fishery stocks, you can be certain that that species will be decimated.

To highlight the absurdity of the entire trade system, consider how Bluefin Tuna is cultured in Spanish waters; as relayed by the BBC.  The fish are initially kept alive in off-shore pens, where they are fed vast amounts of expensively caught fish (around 10-kg of feed fish serve to make the tuna put on 1-kg of body weight).  They are then harvested by hand using divers, packaged at a purpose-built factory, and flown -on the same day- to Asian markets.  All this so some silly twit can eat sushi with his/her choice of dipping sauce.

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Additional background stories and commentary on this subject can be found here, here, and here.

The Chinese Deception: GDP numbers don't add up

For the majority of this year I have been warning that the numbers being offered by the Chinese are not credible (as in my blog post "The Great Scam of China") and anyone who believes that their economy has expanded by 8% annually, when every other trading block has seen massive contractions or virtually no growth, are probably the same persons who told you to invest in dot-com companies in the late 1990's, lauded Enron, and told you that it was impossible for the housing market to precipitate a recession. While the image of the Chinese economy from an external perspective may seem robust and healthy compared to the stagnant wasteland that is the American and Eastern European economies, claims made by and about China have always been more fanciful than empirical.

Beijing's state economists announced recently that gross domestic product grew by 8.9% in the third quarter of 2009 compared with the corresponding period last year and that growth for the first three quarters was up 7.7%. A majority of international analysts still blather endlessly about the Chinese miracle and how we'll all be kowtowing to Beijing's dictatorial whims in the near future. For example, one news article predicted that, "India, China, Russia, and Brazil will become the world's richest nations over the next 40 years." Have you ever been to any of these countries? They're vast slums run by petty dunces, dictators, and pick-pockets, who reign over societies that are enmeshed in colossal corruption, incompetence, and in the cases of China and India, massive racial and ethnic strife that is only moderated by the brute fist of the federal state. CNN's Fareed Zakaria, who in my opinion has always been high in rhetoric but sparse in convincing data, declared that China was the real winner of the recession, by investing in infrastructure and technology.

However, the gig is up and more than a few peripheral critics are now being heard. Andy Xie, an independent economist who called both the US based housing collapse and global recession early in 2007, was recently quoted in the Economist magazine describing the entire Chinese stock market as a “giant Ponzi scheme.” How do you say Madoff in Mandarin? Gordon Chang, a Forbes magazine columnist, recently dismissed China's numbers. He asserts

The economy, for example, is still dependent on exports: Before the massive government spending, about 38% of GDP was attributable to sales abroad. Yet exports tumbled 23.0% in July, 23.4% in August and 15.2% in September. Another important indication of slowing activity was the third-quarter drop in imports. They fell 14.9% in the first month of the quarter, 17.0% in the second and 3.5% in the last.

Furthermore, he asks, "How can a country have robust consumer sales, nagging deflation and rapid monetary expansion all at the same time?" He concludes,

The answer is that Beijing's statisticians have gone back to their old tactic of making up figures to support the Politburo's predictions. The Chinese economy is probably growing due to state-led investment, but it cannot be doing so at the rates claimed. Wen Jiabao's stimulus plan is, above all, grossly inefficient. For all the money he is pouring into the economy, the country is getting a small return in economic output. That's why Premier Wen, despite the high growth numbers he's been reporting, consistently refuses to end his stimulus program. If his numbers were real, he would be worried about overheating. But he's apparently not.

Even the Chinese people themselves, who are best situated to evaluate the economic data, deride the statements as sheer propaganda and farce. An article in BusinessWeek summarizes the current opinion:

The People's Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, reported in July that the public reacted with "banter and sarcasm" to NBS figures showing average urban wages in China rose 13% in the first half of 2009. It quoted an online poll showing 88% of respondents doubted the official data and many thought wages had actually fallen.

There used to be an old saying around my college dorm, "There are two things that smell like fish; one of them is fish." At this juncture, I'd add the Chinese economic statistics as a malodorous and strong second.

Corporate Socialism: Agribusiness Subsidies

Despite the loud and perennial denunciations of creeping socialism by right-wing protesters, for decades American agribusinesses have been receiving prodigious and what some would call obscene levels of subsidisation through legislative machinations. This is a bi-partisan effort, pursued by both Democrats and Republicans and executed across all regions of the nation, and meant to insure excess revenue for already large and very profitable corporations. In fact, agribusiness, after the military-industrial complex and most recently the bailed out banking industry, is the nation's largest recipient of corporate welfare. The implications are not trivial for they entail not just the gross misuse of public money, but result in excessive taxes levied on individual citizens, unfair competition for small farmers, and the nation's food supply and production being placed under the control of multi-national companies seeking less regulation, cheap labor, and ever larger annual profits.

These bills are sold to the public under labels like the "Farm Security Act" and the "Agriculture Conservation and Rural Enhancement Act" and are subject to heavy lobbing efforts. Despite the claim that these bills are meant to improve the status of rural family farmers, the reality is much different. According to the conservative Heritage Foundation,

two-thirds of all farm subsidies go to the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients while the bottom 80 percent of recipients receive less than one-sixth of farm subsidies. A full 60 percent of America's farmers do not qualify for any assistance. In 2000 alone, more than 57,500 farms received subsidies totaling over $100,000, and subsidies of at least 154 farms topped $1 million. Among these beneficiaries are fifteen Fortune 500 companies, including Westvaco, Chevron, and John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, which receive as much as 58 times as much as the median annual subsidy of $935.

In what is described as a "plantation effect," family farms across the country are being bought out by corporations, which are converted into tenant farms. According to available statistics, 75% of the nation's rice farms are tenant farms and the ownership of other monoculture based farms is trending in the same direction.

The US is not alone in its trade protectionist and 'free trade' charade. The video above by Nobel Prize winning economist Joesph Stiglitz, provides a sliver of the hypocrisy conducted by all the major economic powers relating to farm subsidies. The EU as an example, provides "13 billion euros, about a quarter of the £47.5 billion spent under the EU's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP)... to big business and industry, not farmers." The Economist magazine evaluates the overall situation in the industrial world as of 2008:

The OECD estimates that its member countries spent $265 billion on farm subsidies in 2008. This was slightly more than a fifth of their farmers’ total earnings. Last year’s increase in food prices ensured that such payments were at their lowest level since records began in the mid-1980s. But handouts still made up more than three-fifths of farmers’ gross incomes in Norway and South Korea between 2006 and 2008. In contrast, they were less than 1% of farm incomes in New Zealand and under 10% in both Australia and America. But the size of America’s farm sector meant that it spent $23.3 billion on subsidies last year. The European Union was by far the biggest subsidiser, forking out $150.4 billion.

Agricultural practices conducted by corporate plantations and food conglomerates as portrayed in the recent documentary Food Inc., "are endangering health, allowing appalling cruelty to livestock and putting the food supply in a dangerously vulnerable position." For example, the number one subsidised crop in America is corn. In particular,

Corn syrup... is an ingredient in high-calorie, low-nutrition junk foods that have created the obesity epidemic. Corn is stuffed into animals that were not evolved to eat it, promoting the evolution of E. coli bacteria and requiring antibiotics that are passed on to unwitting consumers. Given that one fast-food hamburger may involve meat from literally thousands of cattle, the effects are inescapable.

Under the guise of providing supplemental income to family farmers, the US government has allowed corporatized feudalism to become the 'norm' in the agricultural industry and permitted the domestic population to become subservient to the rapacity of these multi-nationals, without a single bullet or invasion occurring. As always, beneficial socialism for the wealthy and fuck-you-very-much capitalism and for the rest of us.

Tuna: you can almost taste the extinction in each bite!

Tuna fish, (not to be confused with actual “chicken” or ‘chicken of the sea’ as in Jessica Simpson’s case) is one of the great marvels of the oceans. It is considered one of the most evolved fish in the world. Bluefin tuna, for example, can reach speeds of up to 88 km per hour. Along with Mako sharks and Great Whites, the bluefin tuna are homoeotherms; animals that are capable of internally regulating their body temperatures. They are capable of elevating their body temperatures by as much as 25 degrees above the water they swim in, thus making them particularly effective as predators. Bluefin Tuna can migrate across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, then turn around and do it again.

The bluefin tuna, and to a lesser extent, the yellowfin, are among the most sought-after of big-game fishes. Tuna is the most popular food fish in the world. It is eaten raw, cooked, in sandwiches, in salads, and in cat food. The total worldwide tuna harvest is four million tons. Commercial over fishing, almost exclusively to feed the insatiable Japanese sashimi market, has endangered all populations of bluefin tuna.

The WWF (not the wrestlers you idiot) are predicting that Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna will be extinct by 2012. They have stated that, "The population of tunas that are capable of reproducing – fish aged 4 years or over and weighing more than 35kg – is being wiped out." Ransom Myers, a marine biologist from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has pointed out the fact that industrial fishing took no more than 10-15 years to virtually liquidate and imperil any new fish community it encountered to a tenth of its previous size. "From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna, and from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial fishing has scoured the global ocean”. In fact, scientists predict that the collapse of all ocean fish stocks by 2048.

In a 2003, Dr. Myers published an article in the journal Nature and stated,

Most people also don't know how bad it is for us to be eating so much fish, not only because of the destruction of an ecosystem vital to survival but also because the big predatory fish are full of the toxins and other pollutants that we cast into the oceans. It's not as healthy to eat fish as most people believe.

Due to the ferocious demand for bluefin tuna from Japan where bluefin tuna are considered a delicacy and are used in sushi and sashimi, overfishing is posed to drive the species into extinction. The Economist magazine has an article stating that Monaco, with support from European allies France and Britain, along with the USA are pushing forward in 2010 to have an international ban on the sale of bluefin tuna.

As Prince Albert, Monaco’s ruler, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month, “The forces of selfishness and stupidity that wiped out the great whales and the northern cod in the last century are steaming ahead at full speed... The bluefin tuna is as endangered as the giant panda and the white rhino.”

Once the oceans have been systematically deprived of life and ecosystem after ecosystem begins to fail, terrestrial environs will also collapse and human civilization too will cease due to our own greed.