Before I clicked on the "read more" link, I was all set to run off and write a post that was, in essence, your point #3.

Jason,

  Right on and well thought out. You are absolutely right in your observations of our human condition. Hopefully people will reflect on what you are saying. I caught myself being overwhelmed by the all the problems in the world and was wondering how can I as an individual make a difference. My best friend since the fifth grade had a Eureka Moment about creating a tortilla chip shaped like a Whale's Tail. He said we could create ocean awareness and provide funding for conservation. He was right.
 After only ten months  Whale Tails Tortilla Chips has reached our second milestone. Our first milestone was on Nov 11, 2005 when we  produced the very first bags of Whale Tails Tortilla Chips. The second milestone was achieved on three days ago when we reached across the International Border and made our first donation to benefit marine conservation.
 Chris Pesenti of Pro Peninsula accepted our generous donation. Chris of Pro Peninsula sits on the board of directors of Solis's Magdalena Baykeeper program in Baja California, Mexico Chris was instrumental in putting Julio Solis and Whale Tails Tortilla Chips together. We put the word out to the Whale Tails Advisory board, which is made up of scientists, researchers, teachers, conservationists, retailers and customers, asking for suggestions on what individual or group should be considered for the first ten percent. After reviewing all the suggestions, the decision to go with Julio Solis seemed to be the best fit.

Julio Solis's Magdalena Baykeeper (Vigilante de Bahía Magdalena) group has been around for over a year now , just a little longer than Whale Tails Tortilla Chips. Chris Pesenti says "I have been truly impressed with their works. Julio Solís is a longtime fisher and resident of Puerto San Carlos. He started the organization to confront the water pollution issues in Magdalena Bay. Magdalena Bay comprises one of the most important wetland ecosystems on the Pacific coast of North America. The bay provides shelter for Pacific Gray Whales to rear their young before making the long journey north to the Bering Sea. Julio Solis can definitely make a lot happen with a little bit of money. Paying for the gas that goes in the panga boats, so the group can go out and do their monthly water quality surveys would make a huge difference."

Rick Grant,my best friend, has spent many years surfing and traveling in Baja Mexico, put it this way. "We told everyone we wanted to give this first ten percent to someone who has struggled to get their conservation effort off the ground. just like we have had to do with Whale Tails Tortilla Chips. We were able to relate to Julio's request and then make it happen. Its the same type of help Whale Tails Tortilla Chips has received from retailers like Whole Foods Southern California, Whole Foods Washington, Jimbo's Markets of San Diego, the Birch and Monterey Aquariums, and small delicatessen markets like Pelly's Cafe in Carlsbad ,Olive Tree Market in Pt. Loma and Peoples Organic Food Store in Ocean Beach. Chris met us when we had a prototype and a dream. He has watched both us and Julio grow and I feel grateful that he put us together." Chris Pesenti's group Pro Peninsula will act as a "pass through" organization. That would mean that a US organization receives the money and passes it on to the Mexican group. Chris Pesenti said, after receiving the donation, " Both Whale Tails Tortilla Chips and Magadalena Baykeepers started with a desire to preserve our marine environment and I can't think of a better place to join together in that effort than 'Mag Bay' the birthplace of our California Grey Whale."

To find out more about Julio Solis and Chris Pesenti you can visit their website:  propeninsula.org

An Ocean of Thanks Ric Whale Tails Chips

Do environmentalists still need to come to terms with their anthropocentrism?  Looked at from the other way, though: Could there be a better refutation of the "charge often leveled against environmentalists," that old canard, that we "love animals more than people," than that Jason chose to ask this question, and to present it as he did?

To suggest that there is a real difference between wanting to save whales from Japanese and other whalers, and wanting to save people from dying of AIDS, a difference so great as to require a choice, is to misunderstand the ethics involved.  We human beings feel compassion toward other living beings, all of them; we human beings feel we have a responsibility for the welfare of our fellow living beings, all of them, above all those who are vulnerable.

To be sure, our compassion and our responsibility are rightly best directed to those whom we recognize to be closest to us, starting with our family, friends and neighbors.  And in principle at least, all human beings are "closer" to us than any non-human animal.  But in actuality, it is a very important, very humane part of daily existence that we uphold the interests of certain animals, especially those that we consider the moral equivalents of our family, friends and neighbors!  We have read countless stories about the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans a year ago, who preferred to stay behind with their beloved animal companions, rather than follow the command of the human evacuators.

Caring for the sick and the underprivileged in our own communities is all of a piece with being actively concerned for the welfare of strangers, such as Africans with HIV/AIDS, and the victims of genocide in Darfur.  And all that praiseworthy concern for human beings is all of a piece with being actively concerned for the welfare of animals.  All we should be asking one another to consider, is that we all follow where our heart leads, and we all do what we can.  It is totally off the mark, to engage in scholastic nit-picking and Calvinist finger-wagging about what is frivolous and what is serious.

Jason's use of "symbolic" in his fourth point rather puzzles me.  Although he talks the talk about how immoral is the prevailing ethic, that animals are good only inasmuch as they serve human desires, he does not explain why he thinks that is immoral.  Instead, he goes on to develop the frigid thought that apparently most matters to him, that our chiefest moral concern should be directed to the development of enlightened environmental policies, including presumably a wiser redefinition of the nature and value of "natural resources"; and that such environmentalist enthusiasms as wanting to save whales and other wildlife perhaps (not clear if he goes quite this far, though he seems to) can be said to have value only inasmuch as they are useful toward this end.

Bottleman makes an excellent observation about charismatic species, and the difficulty that so many people have in realizing that there are other animals that deserve our concern too.

Consider cattle and pigs raised in factory farms, and slaughtered in unimaginably horrendous and terrifying ways.  Cattle and pigs are both artiodactyls, or "even-toed" hoofed mammals (along with deer, sheep, camels, etc.).  As such they are fairly close cousins of cetaceans.  The ancestral cetacean was a hoofed, semi-aquatic predator, probably an especially close ally of the semi-aquatic hippopotamus, another artiodactyl.  So it strikes ethicists as an odd blindness, that many of the same people who are horror-struck by the Japanese slaughter of whales, as observed and recorded by, e.g., Greenpeace activists, do not have an equal concern for what underlies the meat industry.

Thank you, Rick Raszewski, for your wonderful story.  Best wishes to you and Rick Grant and Julio Solis and Vigilante de Bahia Magdalena and the gray whales.  Some day, I hope to visit Baja California; and also some day, I hope Whale Tails Tortilla Chips will find their way to the East Coast.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

All we should be asking one another to consider, is that we all follow where our heart leads, and we all do what we can.

I could not agree more. There are quite literally thousands of "good causes" in which we could or should invest our time, money, efforts.  If every time we take a positive step of, say, donating to Greenpeace, we then feel guilty about not donating to the ACLU, well we will only make ourselves crazy and I would think the end result is an eventual impotence and avoidance of any good work towards change.

To "follow where our heart leads" is the best advice I can think of... this direction may change over time as different world events come and go and our own heart's desire changes with life experience.  As long as the intention is pure, what does it matter whether our heart's desire is to save Monarch butterfly habitat or to cure cancer?  Much like environmentalist's own argument of the inter-connectedness of all things, we need people to care about saving the whales and we need people to care about stopping AIDS.  There can be no distinction between the relative importance (or lack thereof) of these two things in a balanced, harmonious Earth.

This plant of the Japanese government is of course most eloquent, and perhaps persuasive to some, but really is counseling evil.

Nobody NEEDS to eat whale meat to survive.  If you kill a whale, you are doing something utterly unnecessary.

Humpbacks are migratory.  Killing them in one part of the Pacific is no more tolerable than killing them in another part of the Pacific.

We are not at all confident that we know anything like population figures, and can calculate what is "sustainable harvesting" and what exceeds that.  It is chutzpah in the highest degree to throw out such pseudo-information.

As for the Greenpeace boat, yes, the Japanese whaler did not at all mind running it over.  In fairness, there were some courteous exchanges between the Greenpeace people and some of the Japanese whaling crew.

OK, gotta run.  More later maybe.  Meanwhile, I am not in the least won over by this disgraceful propaganda.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

1. Subsidies. Yes indeed. The Japanese Government funds the research programmes conducted today (the sales of whale meat offset some of these costs).

You mention the market for whale meat in Japan. The real reason for the decline in consumption in recent years is because of the commercial whaling moratorium strangling supply. At it's peak, the Japanese market consumed 220,000 tonnes of whale meat in a single year. The commercial moratorium destroyed almost all the supply chains for whale meat. Even if people wanted to eat whale meat, it simply isn't available. And it won't be until supply increases, and supply chains are re-opened.

Despite what you read in the western media, people in Japan do see a potential for increased whale meat sales (reducing dependence on US and Australian beef imports to a degree), particularly given the past appetite of the Japanese consumer when supply was greater. To put things in perspective, today whale meat supply stands at around 5,500 tonnes a year. This pales in comparison to the peak consumption of 220,000 tonnes.

Someone is feeding information to the western media that says no one in Japan wants to eat whale meat. I actually live here, and what I see on the menus when I walk down the road from my house tells me otherwise.

Whaling is most certainly a part of Japanese culture, just as whaling is a part of Norwegian culture. But we should not be fooled by false logic that says just because a culture is a minority one, it is ok to wipe it out without good reason. How would I feel if that culture just happened to be mine?

2. The scientific argument is not bogus, as the IWC Scientific Committee has acknowledged. I have already posted a link to a page at the IWC site that explicitly states that the JARPA research review by the IWC Scientific Committee in 1997 noted that the work had the potential to improve management under the IWC's RMP. If this is not the evidence you need, then I'm not sure what is.

It you'd like to delve into the actual scientific details, I'm more than happy to oblige, but I think it would be more productive if we review the fact that the IWC Scientific Committee review affirms what I am saying, and move on to the real issue.

3. > I FIGHT AGAINST ALL FORMS OF ANIMAL CRUELTY

Congratulations for that. Many whom I discuss whaling with are completely inconsistent on this point. Still, I do not feel it is fair that whalers should be picked on first because they are a smaller, easier target than the land-based agricultural farmers of the west.

I don't agree that it is valid to focus on the killing method. I for one would rather be born a free wild animal and run the risk of being hunted in sub-optimal conditions (but more probably die a natural death), than be born into captivity before certain slaughter at the hands of humans. But that's just me. Incidentally, TTD statistics for modern whaling operations are constantly improving.

I don't personally see anything "morally repugnant" about whaling.

> In summary, you obviously want to support whaling

I support the principle of sustainable use in general. I'm not prepared to sit in my sofa and tell people on the other side of the world how they should live in their environment.

> I think your arguments are ultimately unpersuasuive.

The feeling is mutual :-)

> I, for one, will continue to argue for the complete elimination of all whaling,

That's a stronger position that even the most anti-whaling governments. They at least accept subsistence whaling by people in Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Would you have them stop their whaling as well? And particularly with regard to the people in the Arctic circle, after banning whaling, what would you have them eat?

I have no problem with the couple of whales that Native Alaskan Indians take each year - I have no problem with whales being killed when the meat will be eaten, the oil used for fuel, the bones as building materials, the teeth as raw material for art, jewelry, etc.

The problem, IMO, is that the whaling industry in the 19th century was hardly sustainable or wholistic.  Whales were harvested primarily for the valuable oil (prior to the discovery/development of petroleum). Much like Canis' argument in the ivory thread, killing whales simply for the oil, and nothing else, is tantamount to killing elephants simply for the tusks, and could be considered "morally repugnant."

What do you think will happen if petro-oil really does start to run out, and a single baleen whale will fetch enormous prices on the black market simply for the oil it produces?  Far-fetched?  Probably.  Will we start running our cars on whale-oil?  Seems pretty unlikely. I'm simply pointing out that you are embarking upon a slipperly slope when you go back to commercial whaling, and I don't think "people need to eat" is a valid reason for commerical whaling.

You say your problem is with "industrial whaling", but subsistence whaling is not an issue.

I find this to be quite a dangerous statement in terms of conservation.

What do you suppose we do the day subsistence whaling is no longer sustainable?

Iceland's position is that there are only two types of whaling - sustainable whaling, and un-sustainable whaling. Iceland supports the former, and is against the latter.

You are quite right that the whaling industry in the 19th century (indeed right up until the 1970's in fact) was not sustainable.

Modern whaling is quite a different kettle of fish.

Two specifics:

No one is whaling for oil today (and you are right that killing whales just for oil is a waste of good meat)

Catch limits were not set in line with sound scientific advice in former years.

Today people hunt for food (and their appetites are not as great as was the hunger for oil), and today the IWC is now in a position to be able to set catch limits in accordance with sound scientific advice (see the RMP again). Providing they do so, whaling will be sustainable.

Young Jason has become the perfect orchid!  He has become the perfect blue butterfly on the perfect orange orchid!  I am so happy!  Here I have been hating him so long!  Silly me!

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

> I cannot prove that my value system is better than yours, but only convince people that it is and hope that they change their ways.

Agreed!

> Your statement about excepting nature as it is seems vapid to me, because there is no way to do this

I do not understand what is difficult about accepting that in nature, lifeforms consume other lifeforms to sustain their existence.

- we affect nature in every way imaginable

All species are part of the complex web of interactions that occurs on this planet, yes, but we can not control nature to the extent we would like (at least, not yet). No one likes to suffer from Tsunamis or earthquakes, just as people don't like to be killed by sting-rays, just as I can imagine whales don't like to be killed by orcas and humans, and fish don't like to be killed by whales. The real version of Nature is different to the Disney version, and I for one am comfortable with this.

> almost every evil can be sustainable

As we have agreed, what is "evil" differs between us based on our individual value systems.

> I see no rational reason why these inalienable rights shouldn't be extended to other highly evolved organisms that have families, suffer pain, experience pleasure, etc.

The problem I see with this idea is that humans are the only species that could potentially recognise these rights (and at this stage we don't even have agreement within our species on this).

For example, we might stop killing large baleen whale species, but the Orcas aren't going to comply for the sake of some human imposed ideal of "whale rights".

We cannot change the fact that death is an inherent part of nature. It would be an exercise in futility.

I believe we should accept nature and our place within it, and ensure that our children also have the same ability to enjoy our existence within nature's confines also.

> human evolution is favoring my worldview

I see the reverse is true.

We have today a range of international documents and agreements that enshrine the notion of sustainable use of natural resources in accordance with local cultures and traditions.

"Agenda 21", "Caring for the Earth" (dated now admittedly), the WSSD, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the IUCN also supports sustainable use... I think I could be missing some obvious ones.

I believe the notion of "sustainability" will be one of the big achievements during the 21st century, and sustainable whaling has the potential to be just such a success, after the failures of the 19th and first part of the 20th century.

Anyway - I think we have said all we really have to say, and I thank you for your time and comments :-)

Thank you, dear Jason, for upholding a clear moral attitude on whaling.  Well done.  I look forward to your next contribution.

DavidinTokyo makes a number of ethical errors, e.g. relativism, the reduction of human conduct to the state of a "natural" force absent morality, falsely representing the interests of indigenous peoples, falsely representing "traditions," falsely representing the interests of baleen whales themselves, and truly representing the false and discreditable pseudo-scientific organization known as JARPA.

Andrew Sharpless, and Sarah van Schagen, tell us: Does JARPA have any standing among serious cetologists?

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

JARPA is not an organization, it is the name of a recently completed research programme. The organization that conducted the JARPA programme is the ICR. You also completely ignore everything I have noted about the review of the JARPA programme by the IWC Scientific Committee, which is a gathering of the world's leading researchers in the field.

As I mentioned earlier: "people may like to consider whether they are knowledgable enough about the topic of whale management to actually form an properly informed opinion on the validity of the research. I get the impression that a large number of people out there who dismiss it do not even have basic knowledge of the objectives of the research."

I wonder what can you tell me about the stated objectives of the JARPA programme...

Est-ce que vous parlez anglais?

Est-ce que vous pouvez l'ecrire?

FYI, "knowledgeable" should probably be spelt with an "e."

Thank you very much for considering me ignorant.  I shamefacedly but honestly acknowledge that indeed I am terrificly ignorant, about all sorts of things.

I rub my face in mud.  I allow rats to run along my back.  I allow cockroaches to make homes in my ears.  I invite swallows to consider building a nest, beneath my very long nose.

Nevertheless, I know enough, to trust neither you, nor the publications of that false "programme" JARPA.

You wrote, challengingly,
<<
I wonder what can you tell me about the stated objectives of the JARPA programme...
>>

I expect you have made clear enough by all you have blathered on us already what those objectives might be.  If there remains some ethical treasure that you have been hiding from us for so long, Shame On You!  But by all means you are most welcome to add to your so far not very impressive record.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Putting my typos aside (but focus on it all you like if it boosts your self-esteem), I think your last contribution strongly affirms what I suspected about people expousing opinions about research programmes that they evidently know nothing about.

If on the other hand, you are interested in learning about the objectives of the JARPA research programme, simply follow the JARPA review link that I posted earlier, and read through the first pdf document at the top of the page. It explains the JARPA programme objectives. Certainly true what they say about leading a horse to water...

To readers who actually care about balance, rather than pre-determined positions, do go ahead and read through those objectives. Once understood, these objectives make it quite clear why groups of people interested in making for the development of the whaling industry would seek out such information. You might like to seek out information about Iceland's research as well.

Understanding the goals of the research is one thing - agreeing with them is quite another.

It's certainly quite valid to be against whaling in general, and yet accept and understand the goals of these research programmes for what they are.

Forming an opinion about the validity of scientific research programmes based on one's personal ideas about whaling in general, however, is simple intellectual dishonesty. Indeed, if one truely believes in one's moral argument against whaling, there seems to be no reason to try to supplement that with misinformed opinions about the research.