Every time there's a natural resource humans want to exploit, this is almost always been an argument, and it's almost always been wrong.

"look how many fishes are in the river! You can walk across the river by standing on the fishes!"

"Look how trees are in this forest! You can't see the end!"

Not to get all Derrick Jensen on this, but a red flag has been raised in my mind, as has my left eyebrow.