Why be left out? Believe it!

(from the March, 2008 issue of National Fisherman)

John Tierney’s New Year’s Day column in the New York Times, “In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm,” dealt with global warming and the impact that the pronouncements of a relative handful on scientists and the highly focused media attention they have generated have had on the public’s perceptions of what’s going on with the world’s climate.

I’m not about to enter into any debate on global warming or climate change or the role that our activities are or aren’t having with what is or isn’t happening there. I have more than enough to do keeping up with fisheries. However, Mr. Tierney’s examination of the roots of the media’s global warming “frenzy,” an availability (or informational) cascade, should be required background reading for anyone with an interest in fisheries policy formation.

He wrote that “activists, journalists and scientists” have initiated and are propagating a global warming “availability cascade.”  In the words of Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein, who first used the term in the 1999 paper Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation in the Stanford Law Review, “an availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse.” They continue “availability entrepreneurs--activists who manipulate the content of public discourse-strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas.”

Ring any bells? In spite of an overwhelming amount of information to the contrary, the public perception is increasingly that our fisheries are collectively on their way to hell in a hand basket, and they’re on that journey because of commercial fishing. Stocks are increasing, effort is declining and gear is becoming more selective, yet the anti-fishing efforts of the anti-fishing activists haven’t abated a bit.

And why is that? Because the anti-fishing community’s very own availability entrepreneurs, are masters at manipulating the content of public discourse. And, of course, because they have really deep pockets as well.

One of the most interesting facets of the concurrent anti-fishing and global warming campaigns is that they both seem to a very large extent to be orchestrated by the same organization, Our Favorite Charitable Trust. The Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Sun Oil heirs and etc. that direct them, have kicked many tens of millions of dollars into global warming and anti-fishing campaigns. And it almost goes without saying that Fenton Communications, the public relations giant that cut it’s eye teeth on the Alar apple scare, an availability cascade that’s still one of the holy grails of availability entrepreneurs, represents many of the entities that are playing a central role in both (your assignment for this month is to go to the Fenton website and dig into how such campaigns are brought about).

But these cascades aren’t limited to national or international “causes” funded by multi-billion dollar foundations. Fish-wise, such affronts to equitable and effective resource management as the Florida net ban, the creation of “gamefish” by legislative fiat, the banning of menhaden harvesting in various states’ waters and other similar actions are all the results of successful cascades, with no basis in fact but as responses to “political” pressure.

And the effectiveness of such cascades, and their potential to do harm, is exacerbated by the internet, where any statement, no matter how malignantly wrong, may be taken as fact by the uninformed, as long as it’s consistent with their self-serving agendas. This can generate an overwhelming amount of pressure on elected officials who are unaware of the truth, or on those who are aware of it are but so much more interested in the next election than in doing the right thing.  

How can availability cascades that are based on wrong information, be countered? As Kurin and Sunstein wrote in 1999, “insofar as people appreciate the mechanisms discussed here, they will know that public opinion can be both misinformed and deceptive. As Alexis de Tocqueville recognized, the notion that the majority is not necessarily right collides with one of the building blocks of modem democracy: the principle of majority rule. To ascribe moral authority to numbers is to instruct individuals that if they are outnumbered they are likely to be wrong and deserving of criticism. It is also to signal to the majority that it has a moral right to intimidate dissenters. As compared with people socialized to believe in the virtues of majority rule, those who understand the mechanics and consequences of availability cascades will be more resistant to their informational and reputational signals.

Nils E. Stolpe