Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for January 2006

How This Blog Rates

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If you want to know how popular a blog is you can go to Alexa and check its rating.

A week or so ago blogger Tim Lambert listed the ‘Top ten right-wing Australian blogs’ based on their Alexa-rank.

The lower the number the more popular the blog.

Tim Blair blitzed the field with a score of 50,087, followed by Catallaxy at 225,663 and then Gravatt.org at 488,606. Number 10 at a whooping 3,394,951 was the Australian Libertarian society.

A reader of this blog sent me an email asking why I wasn’t listed.

Based on this morning’s rating I would have apparently come in third, with an Alexa rating of 477,565 (and 311,301 in the last week).

I reckon I wasn’t listed because this is not a right-wing blog.

Tim Blair has done a list of popular left-wing Australian blogs and I’m not there either. Then again this is not really a left-wing blog.

This has really developed into a blog for progressive environmentalists.

After all, as Professor David McKnight has explained, the good guys are always the progressives.

Fishing: Could It be Banned?

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Members of a Murray River recreational fishing club took me fishing soon after the IPA published my controversial Backgrounder ‘Myth and the Murray: Measuring the Real State of the River Environment’. They wanted to pick my brains on various issues including the future of fishing along the Murray.

That afternoon I remember one of the group John, showing me the Murray Cod he had just caught. He had this fish, about the size of a 3 month old baby, cradled in his arms and he was bringing it up to his face to give it a kiss in the same way a mother might kiss her baby. I thought it was gross, but he clearly adored the fish he had just caught and killed.

According to today’s ABC Online,

The Federal Government says an animal welfare bill introduced by the Democrats could mean the death of recreational fishing in Australia.

Under the the National Animal Welfare Bill the ‘capture and killing of wild animals for the purpose of entertainment and sport’ would be outlawed, a concept federal Fisheries Minister Ian Macdonald says will mean the end of outdoor sports like angling.

“It would mean a lot of people along the West Australian coast, a lot of families who love to go fishing together as a family, wouldn’t be able to do that any more,” he said.

However, Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett says the bill has nothing to do with fishing.

“The legislation seeks to outlaw things such as tail docking of dogs, cock fighting, it does not mention fishing in any way shape or form,” he said.

The bill is currently before a Senate Committee and a report is expected by the end of June, for more information click here.

Is fishing hunting? On Monday, ABC Online published a piece about hunting lions in Africa:

Regional governments and conservationists have agreed on initial steps that need to be taken to save the African lion, which has been pushed to the brink of extinction throughout much of its range.

The strategies were worked out at a workshop on lions in east and southern Africa, which wrapped up at the weekend.

“The reduction in the lion’s wild prey base, human-lion conflicts and habitat degradation are the major reasons for declining lion populations and need to be addressed,” the World Conservation Union (WCU), one of the workshop’s organisers, said.

Government officials, local community representatives, lion biologists and safari hunters attended the meeting.

“Regulated trophy hunting was not considered a threat, but rather viewed as a way to help alleviate human-lion conflict and generate economic benefits for poor people to build their support for lion conservation,” the statement said.

Trophy hunting of lions already takes place in several African states including South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

But expanding these lucrative operations to other states is bound to be opposed by animal welfare groups, which view hunting as cruel.

With its iconic status as “King of the Beasts,” the hunting of the lion is an emotive issue sure to stir controversy, even if it does generate revenue for poor rural communities from licensing fees and jobs created.

Other strategies agreed on at the meeting include: action to prevent the illegal trade in lions and lion products; developing management capacity; and creating economic incentives for poor rural folk to live close to lions.

The lion’s overall situation is dire in the face of swelling human populations on the world’s poorest continent.

“Over the past 20 years, lion numbers are suspected to have dropped dramatically from an estimated 76,000 to a population estimated to be between 23,000 and 39,000 today,” the WCU said.

“Across Africa, the lion has disappeared from over 80 percent of its former range.”

In West Africa, lions number fewer than 1,500.

Conflict between humans and lions is a huge problem with attacks on people on the rise in Tanzania and Mozambique.

For those still reading this long post. Here are a few ideas to ponder:

1. Animal welfare, animal rights (including animal liberation) and conservation are three independent issues, which are often in conflict. Boundaries need to be placed on each to better understand their role in different context?

2. Society can justify pursuing animal welfare on anthropogenic grounds (benefits to people). It does not require any commitment to biocentric philosophies. Science is and will continue to be the most effective tool in improving animal welfare, so actions aimed at constraining research with animals may have limited utility in advancing animal welfare?

3. The core business of animal welfare is the reduction of unnecessary pain and suffering in captive and wild animals within different contexts. It should be objective and scientifically-based. Different contexts will always involve different levels of pain and suffering. When assessing the right to exist of individual contexts, such as the live export trade, battery hens or hunting, animal welfare is but one of many variables that society needs to consider?

Contrasting Views on Global Warming: James Lovelock versus Patrick Moore

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According to Michael McCarthy writing in The Independent today:

“The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia – the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.

In a profoundly pessimistic new assessment, published in today’s Independent, Professor Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late.

The world and human society face disaster to a worse extent, and on a faster timescale, than almost anybody realises, he believes. He writes: “Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

In making such a statement, far gloomier than any yet made by a scientist of comparable international standing, Professor Lovelock accepts he is going out on a limb. But as the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on Earth since Charles Darwin, he feels his own analysis of what is happening leaves him no choice. He believes that it is the self-regulating mechanism of Gaia itself – increasingly accepted by other scientists worldwide, although they prefer to term it the Earth System – which, perversely, will ensure that the warming cannot be mastered.

This is because the system contains myriad feedback mechanisms which in the past have acted in concert to keep the Earth much cooler than it otherwise would be. Now, however, they will come together to amplify the warming being caused by human activities such as transport and industry through huge emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2 ).

It means that the harmful consequences of human beings damaging the living planet’s ancient regulatory system will be non-linear – in other words, likely to accelerate uncontrollably.

He terms this phenomenon “The Revenge of Gaia” and examines it in detail in a new book with that title, to be published next month.”

What a different view to that of Patrick Moore! Patrick Moore, was quoted a few days ago (13th January) in The Honololu Advertiser suggesting global warming might be a good thing for Planet Earth. Sean Hau wrote :

“Global warming and nuclear energy are good and the way to save forests is to use more wood.

That was the message delivered to a biotechnology industry gathering yesterday in Waikiki. However, it wasn’t the message that was unconventional, but the messenger – Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. Moore said he broke with Greenpeace in the 1980s over the rise of what he called “environmental extremism,” or stands by environmental groups against issues such as genetic crop research, genetically modified foods and nuclear energy that aren’t supported by science or logic.

Hawai’i, which is one of the top locations nationwide for genetically modified crop research, has become a focal point in the debate about the risks and value of such work. Friction between environmentalists and other concerned groups and the biotech industry surfaced most recently in relation to the use of local crops to grow industrial and pharmaceutical compounds. Last year that opposition halted a Big Island project planning to use algae for trial production of pharmaceutical drugs.

Zero-tolerance standards against such research by environmental groups delay developments that could help those with unmet basic needs, Moore said. Instead Moore called for compromise rather than confrontation on the part of the environmentalists.

“There’s no getting away from the fact that over 6 billion people wake up each day on this planet with real needs for food, energy and materials,” he told those attending a luncheon at a three-day Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy.

The event was sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization. Sponsors included Dupont, Carghill and the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, which spent $15,000 to support the conference.

In direct opposition to common environmentalist positions, Moore contended that global warming and the melting of glaciers is positive because it creates more arable land and the use of forest products drives up demand for wood and spurs the planting of more trees. He added that any realistic plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and the emission of so-called greenhouse gases should include increased use of nuclear energy.”

A Nation of Bigots: Glenn Inwood on Whaling

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I have just checked my dictionary on the meaning of bigot. It says “obstinate and intolerant adherent of creed or view”.

Glenn Inwood describes New Zealanders as bigots because they are opposed to whaling. He was writing for the Sunday Star Times in New Zealand last Sunday.

It’s a passionate piece and begins:

You asked for an article that explains why I have chosen to work on the side of the whalers; why I provide strategic public relations advice to the organisation that, according to our Conservation Minister, “slaughters the magnificent whales” in the Southern Ocean.

The simple answer is because they have the right to do it. That’s not to say that I don’t think whales are magnificent creatures. I just don’t believe they are sacrosanct – despite the best efforts of the Marine Mammals Protection Act 1978 to make them so. The other answer is more complicated but is related to the environmental belief that the best way to monitor and protect whale stocks and achieve transparency is to end the moratorium and bring about a return to commercial whaling where the regulations are obeyed and seen to be obeyed.

We Kiwis were passionate whalers once. We joined the rest of the world in taking our share when whale oil was a high-priced commodity, and we only ended the practice in 1964 when it became uneconomic to continue – not because whales were running out; but because there was no longer the need for whale oil, which had been replaced by petroleum-based products.

Anthropological studies have also shown that pre-European Maori were the southern-most whalers in the world, with evidence of small cetaceans (dolphins and porpoises) caught using stone-tipped harpoons and utilising beached whales for food. There is still debate over whether we should in fact push beached whales back out to sea: an insult to Tangaroa some say.

Whaling these days is for food for a very limited market. Some people love lambs because they taste good with a dash of mint sauce. Some people, however, enjoy a whale steak or whale sushi. So why can we not accept that of others? When did we begin to think that our beliefs should override those of others? How did we turn into a nation of bigots? Why is whaling bad and watching them the only commercial thing that should happen to whales?

For years we have been told that all whales are endangered and need saving. It is a view that fits the fundraising aims of numerous environmental groups because the public feels good when contributing to such a cause. But it is a view that goes by unchallenged. We don’t have a whaling industry to satisfy so there’s no need for the Government to correct the information. And our Conservation Minister jollies us along with every public statement condemning the “slaughter” of whales by Japan. (Apparently, whales are only ever slaughtered, never hunted or killed!)

But that doesn’t seem to matter. Now that ‘save the whales’ is imprinted apparently into our national psyche, we don’t seem to question the veracity of that statement. We let our politicians and environmentalists tell us ‘slaughtering’ whales for research is wrong if that research is used to determine whether a commercial whaling regime would be sustainable. Yet our media is quick to print allegations from Forest and Bird that we aren’t doing enough science on our own fishing industry and we should stop fishing. Our Government on the one hand establishes a Ministry to ensure we get the right science for our commercial fishing yet we decry another country’s decision to do the same thing for whales. The hypocrisy is quite outstanding.

New Zealand originally quit the International Whaling Commission because it ended commercial whaling and no longer needed to belong. However, it joined again in 1976 on a preservationist stance justified on our history of commercial whaling. But there is no denying the fact that the role of the IWC is to find a way to end the moratorium and permit the resumption of whaling when it can be demonstrated to be a sustainable activity. Our Government is resolutely one of the blockers towards achieving that legally binding requirement.

Happily, I don’t believe your average (mainstream) Kiwi is a bigot. I believe that most New Zealanders are reasonable people who would say, “If whaling has no effect on the status of the population, then what’s the problem? It’s just like killing (slaughtering) a cow or a sheep.” It’s clear that minke whales are ultra-abundant and even taking a few thousand out of the Southern Ocean isn’t going affect the population of those stocks.

When I travel overseas, one of the things I most look forward to is sampling the local cuisine. I have eaten things in other countries that I can’t even name. Our dietary custom is one of the things that make us who we are. I recall the words a Norwegian friend who said, “I love whales, but I couldn’t eat a whole one!”

My first blog post on whaling was in June last year and followed my pondering that food really is cultural, click here.

Cost of ‘Green’ Electricity

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My colleague Alan Moran, had an article published in Melbourne’s Herald Sun on the weekend. I was interested in his comment about the relative cost of different electricity sources in a Victorian context. He wrote:

“Extracting carbon dioxide from brown coal, even in the embryonic pilot schemes now on the drawing board, would double the cost of electricity generation. Not only would this have a direct on the consumer but it would, at a stroke, undermine the State’s commercial competitiveness.

If we were serious about reducing carbon emissions we would be embracing nuclear power.

At least we know this is only double the cost of coal power.

But even such a modicum of commonsense wilts in the hands of ministers who are prisoners of the green left.

Mr Thwaites released a paper shortly before Christmas calling for a doubling of the electricity derived from wind power.

We know wind power is expensive and unreliable but in making the proposal, he did not even try to estimate its cost to the ordinary consumer or to the State.”

ICR Defends Legality of Whaling in The Antarctic

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Following is a media release from The Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) responding to calls made today in both New Zealand and Australia for legal action to be taken against its research program in the Antarctic.

This issue was raised in comments following an earlier blog post, click here.

Media release

… ICR Director General Dr. Hiroshi Hatanaka said today: “Our research is perfectly legal in every aspect referred to by anti-whaling opponents and scientifically necessary to ensure the best decisions can be made for sustainable resource management.”

The ICR research is conducted under a special permit issued by Japanese Government based on its right under Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), which reads that:

“Notwithstanding anything contained in this Convention any Contracting Government [including Japan] may grant to any of its nationals a special permit authorizing that national to kill, take and treat whales for purposes of scientific research subject to such restrictions as to number and subject to such other conditions as the Contracting Government thinks fit, and the killing, taking, and treating of whales in accordance with the provisions of this Article shall be exempt from the operation of this Convention.”

“The fact that Article VIII begins and ends by categorically stating absolutely nothing in the ICRW or its Schedule affects research carried out under this provision. This means that the current moratorium on commercial whaling, which in our view expired in 1990, and the Southern Ocean Sanctuary provide no legal basis on which to stop this research.”

Dr. Hatanaka added that while Japan’s Antarctic research was perfectly legal, the data obtained would ensure the proper management of whale resources under a future commercial whaling regime.

“While we have one eye on the law, the other is on the need to ensure that whale stocks are utilized sustainably for future generations and our research will help us achieve that.”

He added that Japan was also meeting its obligations under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. “The Antarctic Treaty does not apply to the research activities conducted on the high seas.”

Some media coverage in Australia alleges that Japan is conducting its research in an area called the “Australian Antarctic Sanctuary”. “Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty freezes all claims to the Antarctic. Japan, like most other nations in the world, does not recognize Australia’s territorial claim: the Antarctic is for everyone,” Dr. Hatanaka said.

Furthermore, Article VI of the Antarctic Treaty says: ” …nothing in the present Treaty shall prejudice or in any way affect the rights, or the exercise of the rights, of any State under international law with regard to the high seas within that area.”

“The ‘rights’ of any State under international law with regard to the high seas include freedom of fishing,” Dr. Hatanaka said.

Finally, Dr. Hatanaka said that the necessary permits had been duly provided by the Japanese Government under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and that nothing in the CITES is violated.

“The legality of Japan’s research in the Antarctic has been discussed ad infinitum at the IWC and other fora. The legal basis is very clear; the environmental basis is even clearer: the marine resources in the Southern Ocean must be utilized in a sustainable manner in order to protect and conserve them for future generations,” Dr. Hatanaka said.

End of media release.

I would be keen to post the alternative(s) legal views with respect to whaling in the Antarctic at this blog. Email me at jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com .