Jennifer Marohasy

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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to continue – not because whales were running out; but because there was no longer the need for whale oil, which had been replaced by petroleum-based products.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 .

ICR Responds to Greenpeace: Whaling is Sustainable

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In the following blog post Dan Goodman, Councillor, Institute of Cetacean Research, Tokyo, responds to an earlier post by Greenpeace’s Adele Major in which she quotes John Frizzel explaining why whaling can not be sustainable, click here to read the Greenpeace position.

In this response Goodman puts the case for sustainable whaling and explains the importance of the current research effort in Antarctic waters:

Greenpeace has been misleading the public on issues related to whaling for many years (If Greenpeace told the truth about whaling, The Japan Times, 2nd January 2002). They clearly have an economic interest in continuing their campaign of “hype, half-truths and posturing” as it was described by a former director of Greenpeace International (Nature Vol. 396, December 10/98).

John Frizzel’s arguments are simply more of the same with additional errors of fact and omission. His advocacy is for the most part fiction rather than science.

Frizzel’s argument that because past commercial whaling depleted whale stocks, whaling should never be attempted again ignores the fact that science related to whales and resource management has very substantially progressed in the last 50 years.

His argument also ignores the fact that past whaling was for whale oil which was a commodity valued worldwide whereas current and future whaling is for food for a very limited market. The argument is also contrary to the views of the IWC’s Scientific Committee which developed and unanimously recommended to the Commission a risk-averse procedure for calculating catch quotas for abundant species of baleen whales. Clearly the Scientific Committee, and indeed the Commission itself which adopted the procedure in 1994, were of the view that sustainable whaling is possible.

Frizzel notes that the blue whale is only showing slow signs of recovery from past over-harvesting but he should also have informed readers that data from Japan’s research program is providing important information to explain why this is the case.

Flawed logic also leads Frizzel to conclude that because the IWC has established a sanctuary in the southern ocean, “Japan’s research program is gathering data to set commercial catch limits on a population for which commercial whaling has been forbidden” but he omits the fact that Paragraph 7 (b) of the Schedule to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling which established the Southern Ocean Sanctuary includes the words “However, this prohibition shall be reviewed ten years after its initial adoption and at succeeding ten year intervals, and could be revised at such times by the Commission.”

Presentation of data to the IWC from Japan’s research program clearly shows that the Southern Ocean Sanctuary, which was established without advice from the Scientific Committee was required for conservation reasons, clearly shows that the sanctuary is not required. If the IWC followed the requirement of the Convention for its regulations to be based on scientific findings the sanctuary would be abolished. In addition, Japan filed an objection to the Southern Ocean Sanctuary with respect to minke whales as is the right of any member of the IWC. The meaning of this in legal terms is that the sanctuary does not apply to Japan.

Frizzel quotes a genetics study by Roman and Palumbi (2003) suggesting that pre-whaling abundance was much higher than previously thought however, he fails to note that this study has been severely criticized in the scientific literature and that in 2004 the IWC’s Scientific Committee agreed that “figures presented by Roman and Palumbi could not be considered reliable estimates of pre-whaling abundance”.

Work by Palumbi and colleagues following the 2004 meeting of the Scientific Committee did not resolve issues raised by the Scientific Committee (IWC/57/REP 1 page 38).

Frizzel also mis-stated the findings of the Scientific Committee concerning recent preliminary and not-agreed estimates of southern hemisphere minke whales when he says that “The new estimates are half the old in every area that has been resurveyed.” The fact is that the estimate for Area VI is higher from the more recent surveys (IWC/57/ REP 1, page 24).

He is, however, correct that the possible reasons for the differences in estimates derived from circumpolar surveys conducted more than 20 years ago and more recent surveys are not yet understood. Factors such as differences in survey design and areas covered, differences in ice and whale distribution and species interactions where increasing abundance of fin and humpback whales may be reducing the availability of krill for minke whales may all be contributing to the difference in estimates of abundance.

On the other hand, data from Japan’s 16 year whale research in the Antarctic (JARPA) which used the same survey method each year shows a stable level of minke whale abundance and there are no indications that biological parameters such as natural mortality rates, pregnancy rates and age of sexual maturity have changed to the degree which would be required to reduce the population by half over the past 20 years.

It also needs to be pointed out that even if minke whale abundance was half of the 1990 estimate of 760,000 animals, the current level of take under JARPA II (the new Japanese research program begun this year) is approximately only 0.02%. Clearly this level of removal is not a conservation concern.

Frizzel states the Greenpeace view that “whaling in all forms must be stopped” because of threats to whales other than whaling. Here again he fails to note that the Revised Management Procedure for setting catch quotas developed by the IWC’s Scientific Committee takes account of uncertainty including uncertainty related to environmental change. His statement that “Expectations for the recovery of whale populations have been based on the assumption that, except for commercial whaling, their place in the oceans is as secure as it was a hundred years ago” is therefore simply false.

Finally, Frizell opines that very little is known about southern fin whales and that most civilized cultures recognize the need to preserve biodiversity and conserve species that are endangered and protected. The fact that little is known about southern fin whales is precisely the reason we will sample a few whales of this species

Martin Ferguson Breaks Rank

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I was going to title this blog post ‘Martin Ferguson for Prime Minister’ – but I don’t really know that much about Martin Ferguson.

He gave a great speech in defence of Tasmanian foresters some weeks ago, click here.

Yesterday The Australian newspaper published him asking that we move beyond politics and embrace the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

The speech and the article are revolutionary because Ferguson is a senior member of the Labor Party and he is taking a stand against traditional green politics yet over recent years the Labor Party has not only consulted with, but encouraged environmental activists, including Don Henry from the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), to write Party policy (see the Latham Diaries).

Ferguson is redefining what it means to be an environmentalist and reshaping environmental politics in Australia. In yesterday’s The Australian he wrote:

“Unprecedented world economic growth is creating unprecedented global energy demand, rising energy prices and faster depletion of non-renewable energy resources. These are genuine threats to our future economic wellbeing. Maybe worse, the unequal distribution of energy resources across the world is a real threat to future geopolitical stability.

International initiatives such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate have the potential to ease both these tensions. But although greenhouse gas reduction targets may be necessary, any frank review must conclude that the world’s greenhouse emissions are not going down in the short term: they are simply being shifted from one country to another.

After all, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters are not bound by Kyoto. The US, as the world’s biggest emitter, has refused to ratify the agreement. China and India, the second and fourth biggest emitters, are not required to reduce their emissions. And while we are often reminded by the Greens that Australia has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions, let’s not forget there are good reasons for that.

Australia’s relatively high energy intensity has to be considered in the context of the country’s size and its relatively low population density, its climate, its heavy reliance on coal for power generation, and the presence of energy-intensive industries such as aluminium which form the backbone of the nation’s wealth-generation capacity.

That is why it is a significant achievement of the Asia-Pacific Partnership’s first meeting that the aluminium industry in the member countries reached an agreement on working together to reduce emissions. This is essential to overcome the problem of simply shifting emissions from one country to another and at the same time shifting Australian manufacturing jobs and prosperity offshore, to countries with lower environmental standards.

It is extraordinary that the Greens could place the economic security and jobs of their constituents at risk and at the same time advocate a worse greenhouse outcome by displacing Australian industry to countries with lower standards.

It’s time to abandon the political correctness espoused by the green movement. Let’s be real: without getting business on board we cannot achieve anything.

Read the full article by clicking here.

The Australian newspaper continues the theme with its editorial today. The the last paragraph includes:

The reactionary response to the Asia-Pacific Partnership meeting this week demonstrates that support for Kyoto cloaks the green movement’s real desire – to see capitalism stop succeeding. Extreme greens cannot bear to accept that our best chance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions will occur when free enterprise has incentives to implement solutions. While power providers and big electricity users will howl, we need a national carbon trading scheme, with permits bought and sold in the free market, as a means of meeting greenhouse reduction targets set by Canberra. And we need tax concessions for industries that develop new technologies to clean up power supplies. In the long term geo-sequestration, which buries carbon dioxide pumped from power plants, may be a solution. And research into technologies to clean the coal burned in electricity generators is already under way, including development of a power plant in Florida designed to deliver much lower emissions. When the incentives exist business will use technology to find a way. For a century London was plagued by pollution that killed people. No longer. People now fish in the great lakes of North America which were once sludgy industrial swamps. And the idea that cars could emit much less pollution would have seemed impossible to environmental doomsayers 30 years ago. They would not have even conceived that commercial cars could run on batteries, with hydrogen power on the horizon. Whatever the extreme greens say, we can address global warming without adopting a medieval mindset that sees electricity as inimical to the environment. This week’s meeting was a practical step forward by six nations whose legitimate energy requires continued use of coal – perhaps with more nuclear energy to follow. It worried environmental activists – because it showed up their messages of doom for what they are – hot air.

What a difference a week can make!

Greenpeace Lied & It Matters

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It was Wednesday evening before Australian television started showing video of the ramming by Greenpeace’s boat the Arctic Sunrise of Japanese mothership the Nisshan Maru in Antarctic water the previous Sunday morning.

In contrast, online news ‘Crikey’ ran a link to my blogsite in their Monday email and then again on Tuesday with a piece by Christian Kerr titled a ‘whale of a story going ignored’, click here.

Today there was more in Crikey,

Greenpeace arguments lost at sea?

Christian Kerr writes:

Get ready to hear more and more about Dr Eric Wilson from Monash University.

Japan has accused Greenpeace of ramming a whaling ship in the Southern Ocean and then selectively editing video coverage of the collision for the world’s media