Watch the SavetheWhalesNow.org PSA below.
Dear Mr. President,
Is it possible that the Obama Administration will capitulate to a proposed plan that permits Japan, Norway, and Iceland to resume commercial whaling?
As unlikely as it sounds, the answer is yes. The Obama Administration has indeed supported, behind closed doors, a dangerous new proposal to overturn the global whaling ban.
Since President Ronald Reagan first helped usher in the international ban on commercial whaling, every American President has reasserted our nation's strong leadership in the fight to save the whales.
From the shores of Cape Cod to the California coast and across the political spectrum, Americans love whales. Five national surveys commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) over the past decade show overwhelming majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents want these intelligent, gentle creatures protected for future generations. Voters of all subgroups - from rural, conservative GOP members, to urban, liberal Democrats - want our government to stop Japan, Iceland, and Norway from hunting whales.
All the more stunning then, to learn that U.S. government bureaucrats, together with fisheries representatives from a dozen other countries, have emerged from three years of closed-door meetings with a proposal to lift the ban on whaling. The proposal not only rewards Japan, Iceland, and Norway for flouting international law, but also gives these three nations "a license to kill" whales commercially. The group's final proposal, which was released on April 22nd (Earth Day!), and which will be voted on this June, is as unwise as it is out of the American mainstream.
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is an eighty-eight nation body charged with conservation of our planet's whales. In 1986, after whale populations were plundered to near extinction, the IWC declared a ban on commercial whaling. It remains one of the 20th century's most iconic conservation victories.
However, since the ban was enacted, more than 30,000 whales have been killed -- most in an international whale sanctuary around Antarctica. Why? The Government of Japan claims it kills whales exclusively for research purposes. It's an outrageous assertion rejected by the scientific community and undermined by the fact that Japan hunts whales on factory ships and sells whale meat commercially. Japan is now rumored to be seeking a new, state-of-the-art $100 million whaling vessel.
Iceland and Norway, emboldened by ongoing negotiations to undo the whaling ban, have recently ramped up their illegal whaling efforts to lock in higher quotas that will be made possible under this new agreement.
Even without this assault, whales face more threats today than ever before. Marine pollution, destruction of critical habitats, entanglements in fishing gear, collisions with high-speed ships, ocean noise pollution, and global warming remain dangerous hazards. Whales are only now beginning to recover from more than two centuries of commercial whaling which destroyed 95% of historical populations.
Like the situation in the water for whales, the situation inside the IWC is precarious. Conservation-minded countries now find themselves consistently outmanned by Norway, Iceland, and a fifty-person strong Japanese delegation flanked by a steady stream of small island states and landlocked developing countries recruited by the foreign aid to vote lockstep with Japan.
As a result, United States influence inside the IWC has waned. The Government of Japan has remained engaged and aggressive, inside and outside the IWC, in pursuit of its declared objective to hunt more whales.
Faced with this challenge, the Obama Administration has apparently decided to sound retreat. Five of the last six meetings to hammer out the final "lift-the-ban" proposal have been held on U.S. soil.
Instead of endorsing this sellout of the world's whales, the American government must work to end the savagery of commercial whaling forever. On April 16, 2008 then-candidate Barack Obama promised, "As President, I will ensure the U.S. provides leadership in enforcing wildlife protection agreements, including strengthening the international ban on commercial whaling. Allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable." But indeed, the proposed deal guarantees whaling for the next ten years.
For more than a decade Japan, Iceland, and Norway have worked harder to keep killing whales than our government has worked has to protect them. However, it is not too late to turn the tide. The Obama Administration must send a clear signal that it intends to end commercial whaling forever. "Change we can believe in" can then extend beyond our shores to benefit our planet's great whales.
Mr. President, please stay in the fight! Stop the sellout, and save the whales!
"Apparently you're supporting a deal that would decrease the number of whales murdered, and end the lie that these non-human persons are killed for scientific research rather than for the sale of their flesh.
If so, good. You will take some bad publicity, but saving a modest percentage of the whales currently murdered each year is well worth the political capital it will cost.
But make sure that's really what it is. If the deal turns out to be bad for whales, I will find out."
No. It's impossible for them to *resume* what they never stopped. They call it "research" whaling now, but it's commercial.
However, it's possible that the Obama administration will agree to a plan that permits them to stop lying about the fact that it's commercial, in exchange for lower quotas and better enforcement.
"Overall catch limits will be ... significantly below current limits"
http://iwcoffice.org/_documents/commission/IWC62docs/62-7.pdf
The proposed limits are in Appendix A, Table 4 of that pdf. (Search for "Table 4. Catch limits", since there are many references to Table 4 but none of them have the period and the words "Catch limits" immediately following, except for the table heading itself.)
Numbers of whales killed under the "scientific" permits in recent years are tabulated here http://iwcoffice.org/conservation/table_permit.htm, and the numbers allowed to be killed in "aboriginal subsistence" whaling are listed here http://iwcoffice.org/conservation/catches.htm.
The only acceptable "catch limit" is zero. But 1444 is worse than 834.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlWXP4ZQvY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwNvIM2W9Aw
What gives man unalienable rights? Why only man? Why not woman? Why not all thinking, feeling, socializing, self-aware beings?
The only downside is that instead of lying about it, saying it's "scientific research", they're going to admit that it's commercial.
It's time to start looking for Obama's replacement NOW. We only have 2 years to go. This time the internet must be used in a supremely effective fashion, employing viral videos to let a candidate without sales ties to big business have a good chance. This time we need to ask not what the candidate says s/he'll do, but HOW s/he'll do it.
The Reps are not an option. Neither is Obama. This country needs a Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy, a doer not a talker. Someone capable of admitting to mistakes and working to promptly fixing them. No more pretty boys and girls who wear their super expensive clothes with panache. Without this, the Great Depression will look like an amateur act.
Yes it seems that despite working for Obama and bankrupting myself with donations I have facilitated the 3rd Bush Administration. It wont happen again.
At the very least, whaling should not be done at an industrial scale, and since none of these cultures are like the Inuit, none of them should be whaling. They all do it with industrial methods from huge ships. They probably track the whales using sonar, and maybe bait them by playing their own songs to them. It's a nasty business and the USA should be opposed to it.