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Robert Solow makes the point in his presentation “Sustainability: An Economist’s Perspective” that sustainability is often defined incorrectly and therefore goes on to define it according to his own belief systems; “An obligation to conduct ourselves so that we leave to the future the option or the capacity to be as well off as we are” (Solow,1991). I agree with this statement in the sense that sustainability as it is currently defined is an unrealistic expectation and in a way, requires true altruism from the current population. Which is unrealistic due to reasons I won’t get into. However, Solow later goes into the ways this idea is carried out, by availability substitutes. He believes that by leaving the abundance of current resources or substitutes for current resources, such as plastics vs wood, we leave the future with equal opportunities for success. This is not an idea I agree with. Simply by replacing a resource with substitutes does qualify as sustaining it by my standards. If we think about “sustainability” of an organism’s population in order to continue the population you must reproduce more as many of, or more of the original organisms of the species that are dying. This brings me to say that I do not believe that AquaCulture is not currently sustaining the world’s fisheries. By adding a new alternative to wild caught salmon we are creating an additional a substitute in a way, but are not maintaining the original set of resources we began with. Though AquaCulture fish may still provide future generations with equal opportunities to the present, I don’t think it qualifies as entirely “sustainable”.
You make a good point that AquaAdvantage isn’t a sustainable option to the depletion of wild salmon. However, to me it seems inevitable that we are going to have to find some way to sustain wild salmon. For the mean time AquaAdvantage may be the best option for sustainability.
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