The Shared Things that are no Longer Shared

There are things that do not belong to any one country. Rivers. Air. Fish in the sea. The climate. The weather.

My uncle fished the same stretch of coast for forty years. He stopped last summer. He said the fish he had known were not there anymore, and the fish that were there were younger and smaller each season, and he did not want to be the last man pulling them out. He did not blame anyone in particular. He said everyone doing the same thing, everywhere, at once, had done it. No-one person could stop, because stopping alone would only mean somebody else caught what you didn’t.

For most of history, these were so abundant that no country had to think about sharing them. There was always more river, always more fish, always more air.

There is not always more now. In a number of places, what used to be abundant has started to run out. Or at any rate, it has started to be taken faster than it can replace itself.

My uncle said, when I asked him, that he thought the fish would probably come back one day, long after he was gone, if enough people stopped. He said he was sorry he could not have been one of them. He said it quietly. He was eighty-three. He was not looking for forgiveness. He was just saying what he thought.