Fishing helps save rain forests. Did you know that? Ray Hilborn knows, and he thinks you should pay attention. This is an example of a useful idea taken to a silly place. Let's compare the impacts of ocean fishing with land-based agriculture (a useful idea) and then set up a straw man of plowing the world's rainforests to replace all fishing.
What do we really learn from this comparison? That we should carry on with bad fishing just because other things are worse according to a certain set of assumptions and methods of comparison?
The real message is that there is fishing done wrong and fishing done right, and doing it right is better. End of silly comparisons. Tweet
