Things I learned from a very small fish (TEDxBeaconStreet presentation)

Abstract

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. A notorious story about a small endangered fish that traveled far through the corridors of American government; also a parable about citizen action, a parable perhaps even more useful because it’s true.

Deemed “The Most Extreme Environmental Case Ever”, Zygmunt Plater and a team students in Tennessee used the endangered little “snail darter” fish to help several hundred family farmers and fishermen block a pork-barrel dam that was going to destroy far more—in economic and ecological term—than it ever could produce. A double takeaway: “Good Ecology equals Good Economics” and “The governance of society is too important to leave it up to those who govern us.”