Wilful Ignorance

Fact-checking George Monbiot’s ‘Stop eating fish’ opinion in The Guardian

Last week George Monbiot published an op-ed in The Guardian titled: Stop
eating fish. It’s the only way to save the life in our seas. It
has been shared over 20,000 times across social media spreading
misinformation and fearmongering far and wide. Our contribution to clean
it all up was a fact-checking of many of Monbiot’s ridiculous
statements. It sometimes feels petty to publish these things, but
Max does a nice job explaining the importance of fact-checking in the
first few paragraphs of his piece.

A refreshing opposite
to the lack of science in The Guardian is the New York Times. They
recently published a large online (and print)
infographic and article about the climate impacts of different kinds of
food. They used figures from one of my recent papers and cited some of
our reference pages on SustainableFisheries-UW.org. The article does
an excellent job linking climate change to food choices. Kudos to them.

If you see any fisheries misinformation in mainstream media that warrants
a response, or examples of good, evidence-based fisheries reporting worth
highlighting, send them to us. You can get in touch by messaging us
on Twitteror Facebook or through
the website directly.

Lastly, some of you who have gotten previous newsletters forwarded to you
have reached out asking how to sign up for this email list. The link to
sign up for this email list is here.