I WAS going through a National Geographic magazine the other day, and the cover story was Exploiting the Ocean’s Bounty – Diminishing Returns. It’s a veritable horror story of vanishing fish stocks, of empty seas and empty fishermen’s nets and baskets. It quotes a scientist, ‘We’ve come to our reckoning, the next 10 years are going to be very painful, full of upheaval for everyone connected to the sea’.
Towards the end of last year I wrote a column about this very subject, introducing it thus: ‘It’s doesn’t take a team of top investigative journalists to work out that there simply is not as much fish around as there used to be, at the fishmongers or in the sea. There are a number of good reasons for that: over-fishing and maximum harvesting, loss of habitat, worsening pollution and climate change’. I go on to detail the status quo of the world’s fish stocks, and it’s a very depressing picture.
I’ve just had a quick look on the Internet and found a recent United Nations Environmental Project report that says, ‘There will be no fish left to catch by 2048 – all marine fish species will collapse’. So, 2048, that’s just 30 years away – I won’t see that situation, but the vast majority of the people alive today will. I flip back to my National Geographic and look at the date – 1995, 19 years ago. The message is clear, we have learnt nothing.
But someone has been learning something about something else, as a report on my desk indicates. The Haitian authorities have established the world’s largest-ever solar powered hospital in the capital Port au Prince. The facility is entirely powered by solar energy, with no reliance whatsoever on conventional electricity, which is just as well as only about 20 percent of Haitians have access to electricity.
It’s pointed out that on moonless lights most of the island is in darkness, except the hospital, presumably. Since it was opened the hospital has attended to 60,000 patients and safely delivered 800 babies.* Haiti was hit by a Force Seven earthquake in January, 2010, which destroyed much of the island, leaving at least 150,000 dead.
Finally, it’s Earth Day next week. I noted with interest on the television news the day after Earth Hour about three weeks ago that the world had indeed marked the occasion in style. The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben in London were blacked out, as was the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Sydney Opera House and other great landmarks around the world. Our own Eskom even announced that it had saved quite a lot of electricity that night. Well done all concerned, now what happens on Earth Day? Cheers!
PS: The reason for going through old National Geographics is because we give them to the SPCA, they love them for their shop in Uvongo – 039 312 0962.
* The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media, London.
