All they have to do ... is change their minds

From Andy Revkin, at DotEarth, comes this report, that maybe, just maybe, all the bad publicity combined with the pointlessness combined with the anachronistic characteristics combined with the fact that whale meat doesn't taste very good and we haven't needed cetyl palmitate (otherwise known as spermaceti) for decades upon decades...

... means that Japan, or at least residents of Japan, might be rethinking the need to continue their tradition of killing and harvesting whales in the name of scientific research. I mean, under the facade of scientific research.

Now, this may come as a surprise to the five of you who read my blog, but whaling as whaling doesn't completely bother me. There are probably some species of whales (sei, minke, fin) that have sufficient populations such that taking 200 or so wouldn't notably affect their overall numbers. In fact, reducing their numbers might alleviate a little competitive pressure on the whales whose numbers are pretty low and which are in serious need of a bounce-back.

But philosophically, they're beautiful and intelligent creatures. Should we be killing them to take their parts, to consume them? No -- not anymore than we should we do it to cattle, or chickens, or ostriches, or any number of animals that we consume.

But are whales different? Are they more intelligent, more beautiful, more wild? Are they different than bison or elk?

Put it this way -- I'm much more concerned about bushmeat poaching (which means killing and eating animals like monkeys, gorillas, chimpanzees, and several other pretty much endangered African fauna) than a few whales. Not that I like whaling; it's cruel, and it's pointless. But if we're going to get serious about being stewards of the planet, then there's a whole host of fauna that we should stop consuming, intelligent or not.

But back to the article. Apparently some Japanese are rethinking... but tradition may be holding them back. That, and the fact that nobody, and no country, really likes it when other entities tell them what they have to do. That's negative. Positive reinforcement works much better.

So here's the article:

Is Japan Seeing Internal Shift on Whaling?

and he's actually writing about this article:

Uncertainty Buffets Japan's Whaling Fleet

which says:

"The Japanese government is facing renewed pressures at home and abroad to drastically scale back its so-called research whaling. Yet, Tokyo seems paralyzed by the same combination of nationalist passions and entrenched bureaucratic interests that have previously blocked any action to limit the three-decade-old whaling program."

and also says

"While few Japanese these days actually eat whale, criticism of the whale hunts has long been resented here as a form of Western cultural imperialism."

and then it says THIS:

" “We can’t change now because it would look like giving in,” said Mr. Kodaira, a lawmaker from the northern island of Hokkaido. “Will we have to give up tuna next?”

(Might I mention that I think this is a good idea? Your consumption of tuna, Mr. Kodaira and your fellow countrymen, is far more likely to seriously affect the global and regional population of endangered tuna than taking a few whales!)

But anyway... oh d*mn, there's more of this:

"The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, one of the most secretive ministries in Japan’s powerful central bureaucracy, has also fiercely resisted any efforts to shrink the program. Among its crucial weapons have been Japanese journalists, who enjoy close ties with the ministry and have tended to dutifully report its claims that research whaling defends Japan’s traditional culture."

And the traditional culture of China that uses tiger parts in mystical medicines is probably the main reason there won't be any wild tigers by the turn of the century. To put it bluntly... screw your traditional culture. It was OK to be traditional when there was a lot less of us and a lot more of them -- meaning wild animals.

and it ends near this note:

"Even its proponents concede that the only real purpose of research whaling is to sustain the shrinking whaling industry, even though much of the meat piles up uneaten in freezers and the last private company dropped out of the Antarctic hunt four years ago. That, in turn, has led to a new round of criticism over the program’s failure to fulfill its own goals of preserving Japan’s whaling industry and traditional whaling culture."

Amen. Let it go, Japan.