Shameful Society

http://www.seachoice.org/files/pdf/SEACHOICE_alertcard09.pdf

Let me preface this by saying I'm extremely sleep deprived and my thoughts may not make sense to anyone other than myself. I'm fairly sure my depressed mood is from this class on top of the normal things but I've been down lately and can't seem to find as much good in anything as I used to.
What's been bothering me lately is our society as a whole. I honestly think that the decisions our society is making right now are going to be looked at in shame years from now. We are doing so many awful things and the part that makes it so incredibly awful is that we know it. The things that are happening every single day in the name of greed and money that are destroying our entire ecosystem is implorable. It's complete ignorance to claim not to understand the effects of our entire planet when you mess with oceanic populations, the effects of offshore drilling, pollution, and the list goes on and on. I don't want to sound like some eco-freak and spout facts about saving the whales, sharks and all other sea creatures but come on people! If we continue to decimate these animals (which are responsible for 80% of the earths oxygen) we are going to kill ourselves. They are not on this planet for no reason. Everything serves a purpose...EVERYTHING! There is oxygen in every breath we take that comes from phytoplankton. These little ocean plants use sunlight and carbon dioxide to make food. Oxygen is a byproduct of this photosynthesis. What is happening is that overfishing (or the hideous practices of shark finning and whaling) are decimating the oceans population. I assume everyone knows what shark finning is but in case someone doesn't I'll briefly explain: Fishermen catch (usually by long line fishing that kills many other sea creatures like sea turtles and seals in addition to sharks which are just discarded) sharks. They pull them up, cut off all of their fins and drop them back into the ocean alive. The sharks sink to the bottom of the ocean because they cannot swim. They lay there and starve to death because they cannot hunt and eat. They die slowly and painfully. All of this happens so their fins can be used to add texture to a soup called shark fin soup. This soup is made from chicken or fish broth and not even flavored by the fins as they don't have any taste. They merely add texture and it's served as a status symbol. The soup is expensive and is responsible for killing 38 million sharks a year. Yep, you heard me right....38 million. Sharks have no predators other than humans and have survived for 400 million years and have been the most successful vertebra's on the planet.
Sharks and other large predators eat small and medium sized fish that feed on the phytoplankton. If shark and other large predator numbers fall the numbers of medium sized fish multiply leaving less phytoplankton to absorb CO2. It's quite simple yet we continue to distort the natural order of things and let money rule. We do not own this planet, we are merely here to borrow it and future generations are going to look and wonder why we let this happen on our watch. We can't go on and just act like the things we are doing are okay. It's slightly hard to blame the fishermen who need the money to survive. It's hard (although not as hard) to blame the people who eat the shark fin soup and who eat the whale meat (tainted with mercury) because most probably don't understand the impacts. It is the people who are in charge of the multi-million dollar industries that are abusing our oceans and whose actions are going to affect all of us sooner or later. Government should be the ones stepping in and doing something about these practices that are doing such harm to our planet. I voted for Barack Obama but he is not doing enough despite running on an environmental ticket. This is America and we are obsessed with money and "success" but there needs to be more balance.