My friend Phil asked that, in the flesh. I bumped into him this evening, sharing beers with three more friends by the boating lake; one advantage of the parks filling up is a heightened chance of chance encounters. I'd watched Seaspiracy the night before, and when I got back in tonight and everyone had gone home, I followed it up with 2014's Cowspiracy. The one follows the other almost beat for beat, and who can blame it? Some of those beats are glaringly dumb – for example, the title – but some are brilliant, and the former documentary's disputed revelations are now common talking points. Maybe the same will happen to Seaspiracy, whose claim that over forty per cent of the plastic in our oceans comes from fishing seems far less disputed. As with Cowspiracy, the documentary's most powerful moments might come from seeing the shadow of some higher authority fall over the faces of mainstream environmentalists when asked if anything should be done about this: the good guys fall silent for what seems like minutes, standing at a crossroads invisible to the viewer.
"He had a point..." is literally the voice over for this shot. However, also as with Cowspiracy, the documentary's dumbest moments come from awkwardly staging a moral awakening on the part of our innocent protoganist: "I left there feeling confused" becomes a catchphrase. I commend Ali Tabrizi's bravery, but literally every scene he appears in feels like a bad spoof, and one feels almost duty-bound not to take them seriously. But I'll probably stop eating fish anyway. And if this film's revelations end up having as strong an impact as Cowspiracy's, I won't even have to recommend it.
I hope Cowspiracy is part one of a trilogy, to be followed by Conspigacy and Conspirasheep.
ReplyDeleteNo
ReplyDeletesuch
luck.
I haven't seen it, but the large role of commercial fishing in the economy of British Columbia gave me a small foretaste of some of what it covers (massive overfishing, the devastation of seafloor trawling, the harmful effects of salmon farming) and I have greatly reduced my fish intake since – especially salmon; there is no ethical salmon. (Trout, however, is just as good and can be farmed on land, and their waste harvested for fertiliser ... can we have a trout renaissance?) And before that, the collapse of the cod fishery, and thereby the economy of Atlantic Canada, which has yet to recover. It's not a new problem!
ReplyDeleteThere was such a pescatarian movement when people started trying to eat more ethically, but it was just replacing one ignorance with another. How do you speak up against that? People are trying! Trying is something, right? Baby steps? How do you say 'this thing you're doing because you think it's helpful actually isn't helpful at all' in a positive, encouraging way? And how do you tell people that, if sustainability is what they're after, the most sustainable animal protein is battery-farmed chicken? Are they supposed to care more about the environment or animal welfare?
Anyway, no one was ever going to listen to one sour voice in the wilderness, but maybe a slickly produced documentary with have more reach, even if it does invite mockery (TBH I thought it was a spoof, just from the title and screengrabs). An Inconvenient Truth didn't directly change anything, but it got people talking, and the talking is, gradually, opening routes by which to change things, so maybe this, too?
The good news is, enough of the right people have been paying attention to this sort of stuff for long enough that there is some positive movement out there – the North Atlantic herring fishery, for example, is very tightly controlled for sustainability, and they're making advances with land-based salmon farming which might become economical soon. Millions and millions of salmon fry are hatched in labs and released in streams every year; with less demand on the harvest, they may catch up in a short time. But meanwhile, less fish is good.
Perfectly put. Thanks.
ReplyDelete