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Less than a month ago, a North Carolina petition to reduce shrimp trawling in New Bern was denied. The reason? Fishermen claim that they will lose their jobs.

Now this is a fair point, and I'm not arguing that they are saying anything wrong. But when it comes to this, people need to become more flexible. I realise sacrificing your job is asking you to be a bit more than "flexible", but job security can no longer be used as an justification for environmental degradation.

Fishermen are notorious users of this particular excuse, claiming a heritage of fishing, and the lack of ownership of the seas. For some reason we seem to sympathise with this plight. Don't get me wrong, I certainly understand where they are coming from, and the struggles they would endure were they to stop fishing, but what do you think would happen if everyone used this argument?

In China shark finning is justified through tradition (a rather short tradition in the grand space of time, but that's another point), in Japan whaling is done in the name of "scientific research" (another discussion for another time), and seal hunting continues to be practiced in Canada and several Scandinavian countries. All around the world animal cruelty and environmental degradation is somehow validated by excuses. Because that's all they really are.

But the argument coming from shrimp trawlers, and other fishermen, probably gets me the most riled up. What if all the textile workers claimed they would lose their jobs during the Industrial Revolution (in fact they did, but that's not the point). But, let's imagine, we listened to them. What if we shut down the first Spinning Jenny, and the first steam engines so that manual jobs could be preserved? What state would humanity be in today? Would we be content to remain in the dark ages for the sole purpose of keeping the status quo?

Of course, advancement will be a struggle for some, people will lose their jobs, people will be forced to accept change, but are the benefits not far greater than any of these sacrifices? The fishermen protesting in North Carolina, need to embrace this change. For it they insist on living in the past there's is no telling what the world will look like tomorrow.