Does the Government Care About the Future?

Still Shot from 'Losing Nemo'. Locals pushed out by the corporations who control the government

I can't believe it's been three years since we fought the fight to pass AB376, outlawing the sale of shark fin products in California.  It was an important battle in the war, but the war has just begun.  It's still quite easy to find shark fin products sold in restaurants and shops, and I don't just mean in China Town.  Some good news has resulted from the passing of the bill in the form of a few shark fin product perpetrators being busted and prosecuted.  But as we fight the local fight against those who will sell shark fins until there are no sharks left, we sadly have to worry about the federal government interfering (read here) on behalf of the fishing industry....a fishing industry that is about as sustainable and responsible as dropping nuclear bombs in lakes to catch trout.  Don't believe me?  Read this report from Oceana exposing fisheries that throw away 65% of what they catch, including all the cute and cuddly things that you actually care about, like dolphins, turtles, otters, whales, etc.  Yes, this is in the United States, not Mozambique.    

Let's skip over South Africa for the time being (seems to be an uphill battle on a slope covered in mud over there) and go to Australia, another first world country that "cares about the ocean".  Their feds are trampled all over existing laws and the opinions of its voters to push an expensive, ineffective, and ecologically disastrous slaughter of sharks.  Yes, by the government that simultaneously lists the animals its killing as protected and vulnerable.   From a shark's perspective I'd be thinking, "with friends like this, who needs enemies?"

We continue to spill oil although we haven't recovered from the last ones.  We pursue drilling in the arctic when it's already proven that the arctic is melting away from use of the very thing we're drilling for.  Rain forests are destroyed, proposals to dump sediment onto the Great barrier Reef, natives pushed off their land, poison allowed in approved food, and we worry about offending the cultures of people who's cultures seem to be hell bent on killing every last thing on the planet.  

Maybe the government knows something we don't know.  Maybe it really is too late.  Maybe it's better for them to help their buddies make as much cash as possible on the limited time left on this planet.  Maybe they'll be the ones who can afford a flight to an off-planet living facility.