Ladies and gentleman, it's time to get pissed.
President Obama is making deals behind closed doors to end the moratorium on commercial whaling. You would be hard pressed to find another issue that so many Americans agree on today - END commercial whaling FOREVER!
Mr. President argues that the moratorium should be lifted because loopholes are being exploited by whaling nations. He thinks that if whaling is legalized, it will bring the issues out into the open and whaling will eventually be phased out. So, in order to stop whaling, we need to start whaling? What??
"The Obama administration's fundamental premise -- that the proposed agreement will save thousands of whales over the next decade -- doesn't withstand scrutiny. The agreement suggests quota numbers, but no actual numbers have been agreed to among the nations of the whaling commission -- or even among the smaller group of nations that have, for the last three years, been negotiating the proposed agreement behind closed doors. The actual number of whales allowed to be killed if the agreement is adopted is, at this point, anybody's guess."
Sounds dangerous. Isn't this a huge step backwards for us? Wasn't the moratorium hailed as an enormous win for environmentalists? Aren't whales still in danger, despite the moratorium? I can tell you myself - they are. Climate change, ship strikes, entanglements in fishing gear, army and navy sonar exercises, noise pollutions...the list goes on.
Probably what pisses me off the most is that the quotas under negotiation right now do not have input from the scientific community. Everything is political, trying to please the whaling nations more than trying to conserve the whales. Indeed, the agreements being made are protecting commercial whaling more than they are protecting the whales.
If Obama lifts the moratorium, this will be his legacy. This WILL be his legacy. It's tragic, because many environmentalists voted for him due to his positions on environmental management, conservation and clean energy...but he's proving to be quite the disappointment.
Full article here (LA Times):
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-reynolds-20100428,0,3445944.story
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