KILLING CECIL, KILLING OURSELVES

In  Zimbabwe in Africa, until a few days ago, there lived a lion named Cecil. He was 13 years old; in his handsome, regal prime.  He lived in a protected parkland, and was a well known attraction to tourists come to see wild lions, while there is still wild habitat left for them. 

 

 

 The African Lion is on its way to endangered status. As Africa’s human population continues to explode,  Lion numbers are down 60% in just the last 30 years.  The collapse coincides largely with the loss of  their habitat.  That’s the sobering backdrop for Cecil’s murder for sport.

Here’s the story. A dentist from Minnesota paid more than $50,000 to kill a lion. He hired to two local guides to find a big, powerful male lion that the dentist wanted on his wall.  The details of how Cecil was targeted are unclear. What is known is Cecil lived, at least mostly if not entirely, inside a reserve, where hunting was not allowed.   While the intrepid dentist watched, the hired guides lured Cecil,  who was at least a prince in the local feline hierarchy, onto private land, where upon the dentist turned archer drilled the regal animal with an arrow. But it wasn’t a kill shot. 

Cecil bolted away. The hunter and his guides followed Cecil for the next forty hours. Instead of ending this wounded animal’s suffering, they followed, very possibly so the hunter could claim he took the powerful beast down with an arrow.  In the end, after almost two days of wounded agony, the dentist finished Cecil off with his gun.  Then they removed the lion’s head as a trophy and took its skin, perhaps destined to be a coffee table rug.

Killing for sport seems to be some kind of masculine thing. The operative word is ‘sport’.  People used to hunt to feed themselves. It’s still that way in many places, unfortunately.  But the person who  killed Cecil was financially secure. He spent a wad of money to kill a majestic predator as a personal trophy.  Murder is his sport.

Some psychologists say the choices we make are sometimes linked to certain brands of psychological inadequacy.    I don’t know. I’m not going to second guess the deeper motives behind the murder of Cecil the Lion. 

 

The intrepid big game hunter is getting hammered with scorching public condemnation.  He has been forced to close his dental practice. The scorn has emerged, not just from this country, but from around the entire world.  Many people in other countries have lost respect for Americans, because they see the horrendous casualties of our gun culture. In this case, it’s an American killer for sport willfully committing a reprehensible crime against nature.

 

Instead of shaking our heads in disgust at the death of Cecil the lion, then allowing indifference to absorb our momentary compassion, I say, let’s use our mourning for this handsome lion prince as a teachable moment.  Let’s make Cecil an icon; a martyr that stands for a human commitment to renewing the natural world.  

 

The human population has doubled since 1970. It took half a million years,  to get to a human population of 3.7 billion,  only 45 years to explode those numbers to nearly 7.4 billion.  We are still adding about 75 million new humans every year.  Too many people remain ignorant or in denial about the impact of our numbers. The scientific evidence is clear.  We have turned our atmosphere into a sewer. We are exhausting our fresh water supplies, stripping the life from our oceans and using up the planet’s finite resources like there is no tomorrow. We are shredding the biosphere we all depend on.  In just the last few decades it took to double our human numbers, the wild animal population in Earth has dropped by more than 50%.

 

We are all culpable for the perfect storm of 21^st century challenges that threaten not just humanity, but all life on Earth. It’s not just the dentist from Minnesota that is guilty.  He is in hiding, unable, despite claims of ‘deep regret’, to shed the regal blood on his hands. No question, he is doing the suffering now.

 

Here is a clear pathway to redemption for the dentist perpetrator.   Face the public.  Acknowledge the moral bankruptcy that big game hunting draws on.  Renounce hunting; arm yourself with a genuine understanding of how our biosphere works, then become a voice of compassion and reason. The louder and more powerful your message, the better for your soul.  Shape your own assertive mission as an ambassador for better behavior toward nature.

 

Let’s not allow Cecil’s death to go in vain. Let it be a symbol. Let it be a beacon that lights our course to a future that is both sustainable and life-affirming.  That’s the least each of us can do.  The undeniable truth is we have one small place in the universe.  The Earth is the only home we have. There is no choice.  We must fulfill our human potential and be the change we wish for.



 

Dancing Star Foundation President Michael Charles Tobias, in an Exclusive Disussion About the Fate of the Earth - Part Three

Here is the third and final part of my dialogue with Michael Charles Tobias. The first can be found at http://ecstatictruthpdx.blogspot.com/2015/05/dancing-star-foundation-president_9.html. The second part is at http://ecstatictruthpdx.blogspot.com/2015/05/dancing-star-foundation-president_13.html



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EmanPDX -  A very sobering assessment to be sure.  It's clear, as a human species, before we can adequately respond to our collective dilemma,  we must reach a tipping point in understanding, and find a common commitment beyond that.  The key is education, but the current political climate favors rote learning and 'one size fits all' standardized testing over the fostering of creativity and critical thinking. Television programming, particularly in recent decades, is less about being informative and more about programming that amounts to mind numbing empty calories. The mass media - newspapers, magazines, television broadcasters, and radio -  has been captured and largely made feckless by a handful of conglomerates that put the interests of their advertisers ahead of their viewers.   At the root of this is the sell out of our political system to Wall Street bankers, self absorbed billionaires, and gigantic, profit obsessed transnational businesses.  Their game is denial, obfuscation, and the blunting of reality in favor of  big profits and 'business as usual'.  Any solution to the unprecedented, global scale, cultural maelstrom in which we are trapped must start with a reordering of our economic and political systems, so that they serve the common good.  Would you agree with this, and if so, what is the best course for us to follow to remake our cultural institutions so they reflect  political transparency, economic fairness, and  proper stewardship of the biosphere?

Michael Tobias -   That is an ambitious new order of thinking and action you are calling for. Indeed, several new constitutional amendments and/or rewrites. You are essentially taking on the circumstances of the Declaration of Independence, and the frailties of the Continental Congress and asking for all of us to press the "refresher button," so to speak.

And not just the U.S. Constitution, obviously. Anyone familiar with America's 27 Amendments, especially the first ten of them from September 25th, 1789, knows that our politics are essentially focused on procedural matters; matters of freedom, of voting, of who gets what within the system, up until the most recent Amendment, number 27, which, to quote, "Delays laws affecting Congressional salary from taking effect until after the next election of representatives." (Ratified May 7, 1992).  Proposed 203 years earlier, in essence this amendment - given as much importance as, say, the abolition of slavery - prohibits the Congress from giving out raises mid-term. I imagine most Americans were more interested in the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Endeavor on that day. My point is, the Constitution may have obviously helped concretize our revolution under George III. But was it a document for all time? Probably not. The 40 male signatories representing Thirteen colonies, 23 of those men veterans of the Revolutionary War, some of them quite possibly in the throes of likely post-traumatic stress syndrome from the punishing war, with not a clue just how large North America was, only scanty population or biodiversity data; these forbears of our political system had no idea whatsoever how many rivers flowed, how many lakes and mountain ranges there were across the land they proposed to legislate. Nor the extent of animal abuse and poaching occurring right under their noses, which was no priority on their part.  Not to mention the whole debacle of divided states and slavery.

It was not much better when Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Purchase, although he had some idea that a veritable land-grab was in progress and the U.S. Government had better start engendering the geographical preconditions  to serve a demographic avalanche. But today, as with every other nation, democratic, non-democratic (roughly half of the nations are democracies at this time), there is no simple formula, to be sure, for re-constituting economic and political realities. The Saudi King can dole out billions of dollars to undermine criticism of human rights abuses. North Korean leadership simply has those who fall out of favor, or doze off during meetings, executed. Indeed, there are different approaches to governing the masses. But until there is true chaos, as occurred during the French Revolution, we are unlikely to recognize new shapes and forms of viable governance. It is as if until the forensic teams arrive on scene, we don't know what we're dealing with. But this matter of justice is more than a series of splashes on a Jackson Pollock canvas. We cannot experiment with the future of life when it is so clearly vested in our hands, right now, as environmental citizens with the power of a vote; the megatonnage lodged in each and every conscience.

Whilst the political lead-up to November 2016 promises to be amusing, given the chaos within the GOP, that said, there is nothing humorous about what is at stake in the world. News junkies, many of whom are friends of mine, get all agitated over 30 minutes of incendiary coverage, while another hundred species have gone extinct. As I type out these words, the same is occurring. And by tomorrow morning (it is late at night, presently) another approximately 115,000 people will be born, mostly into poverty; and by this time tomorrow night, eight billion 219 million + vertebrates (mostly marine creatures - fish, but also well over 2.7 billion terrestrial vertebrates) will have been killed by our species, in addition to another 200,000 acres of rain forest destroyed. These are broad statistical aggregates drawn from several dozen up-to-date, scientific and government websites that track such specifics and pack within their data crunching, varying levels of confidence, but ascertainable trends, make no mistake. What such statistics must necessarily teach us is that we cannot rely on our economists or politicians to change systems that are feeble and defiant at all costs. Einstein said it more eloquently: We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. (* http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein.html#00UCwW3ckKTW3Aju.99 )

That's why the first Rio summit in 1992 was really more about NGO's and NGI's (Non-Governmental Individuals) than it was about governments. Thoreau said, in so many words, that his parents - while sending him to study economics at Harvard - drove themselves into irretrievable debt. Thoreau, who would sell pencils part-time for a threadbare living, while spending those two+ years at Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, saw America with astonishingly clear eyes.

Henry David Thoreau
 

Now remember, while Thoreau was busy observing nature and writing The Highland Light and the famed Maine Woods, just ten years after his glorious Walden, the Sand Creek massacre by 700 U.S. Government militia of 70-163 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in Colorado Territory, two-thirds women and children, the whole village described by posterity as "peaceful" took place. At that very moment of infamy in November of 1864, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ( http://memory.loc.gov/mss/mal/mal3/436/4361100/001.jpg  http://memory.loc.gov/mss/mal/mal3/436/4361100/001.jpg ) was being drafted, and would soon be ratified, only to leave out any rights for Native Americans. It would take much more than Abraham Lincoln to do right by those millions of individuals and their tens-of-thousands of years of sublime culture, and those lands they called their ancestral and spiritual homes.

Rather, it was the photographic Rembrandt of his era, Native American ethnographer Edward Curtis who, with the publication of his twenty-volume The North American Indian (1906-1930) would finally see justice from Washington, DC aimed at the 80+ tribes Curtis  photographed. (*see*****  http://forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2013/04/02/j-p-morgan-edward-curtis-and-christopher-carodozo-an -inspired-collaboration/ ) In other words, it took an artist and a President working in tandem - and eventually Congress - that would ultimately help save indigenous peoples from extinction in this country.

We cannot re-order our economic and political systems until those two interdependent engines of illimitable pain and distress are humbled - economics and politics.  Out of ruins has always arisen something at least partly new, though even this notion is prone to a word you trenchantly employed, namely, "obfuscation," given how clearly history demonstrates the maxim that old habits die grudgingly.

Despite the fact so many philosophical adages remind us that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, genocides and ecocides that call upon the human conscience to demand, as in the case of the Holocaust, "Never Again," "We will never forget," the unbelievable truth is that violence continues.  Perhaps violence that cannot be compared with Auschwitz and the many other "camps" - a more grotesque and unimaginable saga of evil in modern history than words can possibly hope to describe. Indeed, never has a cluster of nations ever plunged willingly into such depravity. But a terrible evil, nevertheless, namely, our slaughter of other animals, populations, and habitat.

A Bovine singing  © J.G. Morrison

When we calculate, even in broadest strokes, the concurrent cruelty that has become the modus operandi of human societies, all those facts and figures corresponding to the human induced Anthropocene, in addition to the probably three trillion vertebrates humans kill every year, it is quite difficult to fathom what geo-political and economic systems might work - so that they are working with, not against, nature - amid a human population heading rapidly towards 8, 9+ billion of us. This is, as I have indicated earlier, a totally unprecedented madness.

Certainly, there has been no lack of efforts to achieve greater fairness for all, whether in the work of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, or of the anti-war reformer John Wilkes, who endeavored at great personal sacrifice, for the "natural reason" movement and the Society for the Defense of the Bill of Rights (1769). From the Luddites to Move to Amend, we have seen good people and whole communities of like-minded individuals trying hard to find methods, popular votes, actionable causes and steady-of-hand research in order to better break down the barriers that exclude and/or divide the 99% of people from all those life-lines and essentials that have been consolidated in the form of power and privilege for the few. In some countries, it comes down to a few families, royal dynasties, or percentage, as you rightly indicated, of billionaires. These imbalances represent ecological perturbations, given how vast and grossly inordinate the influence of our one species in the natural order.

Post-Apocalyptic drama has been the stock-in-trade of that feverish collective imagination that sees no end to this continuing pattern of inequality, inequity and economic disarray. Our additional burden, certainly since the earliest indications of the Industrial Revolution, is what  Marxist ideology also came to recognize with respect to the imbalanced ownership - ownership of any kind - of private property and the ravages of materialism. I would recommend John Bellamy Foster's Marx's Ecology, Materialism, and Nature (2000), http://monthlyreview,org/books/pb0122/ ), among many other works that have sought to pry open the dysfunctional ties between human need and human greed, as recorded in the ideologies of the last 175 years or so. Gandhi, Thoreau, so many in their path, have attempted to make sense, at their moments in time, of the complex and too frequent grievous crises all around them that pivoted upon the fundamental lack of fairness between most people, not to mention people and other species.

Orangutan, Borneo  © J.G. Morrison

Today, we are indeed distracted by a mob of media. There is the compounding sense that too much is happening to fast for even the most sanguine, multi-tasking level of brilliance to encompass it all with nobility, whilst setting a fine, sustainable example and maintaining some sense of humor. The rash of second-by-second news absorbs our cravings in a very sick manner, it seems to me. We are overwhelmed by bad news, obviously, and good news is increasingly difficult to ensure. Yet, we are looking for examples that can liberate humanity from its appalling and escalating impact on the planet. In this conundrum we are as in a dark tunnel, but also enjoy the endless possibilities that are real, in the many templates of dramatic new discoveries in science, engineering, and technology. Such developments are vastly outpacing the evolution of new political and economic systems. This represents a peculiar, and possibly unstoppable dilemma.

In the democratic nation of Bhutan, Gross National Happiness, as opposed to Gross National Progress, has been developed in government circles at a level that is far greater than a mere lovely-sounding mantra, and it has caught on with increasing traction throughout the world. But, if you place Bhutan under a microscope, there are issues (See, for example, the essay, "Animal Rights in  Bhutan."  http://dancingstarfoundation.org/articxle_Animal_Rights_in_Bhutan.php , or, "The Last Shangri_La?"  http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2011/10/26/the-last-shangri-la-a-conversation-with-bhutans-secretary-of-the-national-environment-commission-dr-ugyen-tshewang/ )

In A Moss Garden, Kyoto Greenbelt, Japan  © J.G. Morrison

In nation after nation, there are similar contradictory situations, as with Bhutan, from Suriname, or Denmark, to "clean green" New Zealand, to little San Marino or Andorra. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130123094259.htm) Wherever there are people, there is human nature, which translates into some level of conflict. Yet, in those aforementioned six countries are spectacular examples of ecological governance from which the rest of all nations can take away some valuable lessons, whether in the realm of family planning, animal and habitat protections, or the distributions of goods and services and social welfare nets at various levels.

So, I can only conclude by suggesting we keep trying, with vigilance, and a sense of faith in the genuine possibilities of humanity. We do have what it takes, in my opinion, to ultimately get it right. But time is of the essence.

Dancing Star Foundation President Michael Charles Tobias, in an Exclusive Discussion About the Fate of the Earth - Part One

This is the first part of my personal dialogue with Michael Charles Tobias, PhD, one of the world's most influential ecologists. He is a prolific author, filmmaker, and lecturer. In a career to date spanning 45 years, and as President of Dancing Star Foundation for 16 of those years, Tobias' work has taken him to nearly 100 countries, where his field research has resulted in some 50 books and 150 films that have been read or viewed throughout the world. He was the 62nd recipient of the Courage of Conscience Award, and is an honorary Member of the Club of Budapest. Tobias is best known for such works as his massive tome, World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium, and with his partner Jane Gray Morrison, the ten hour dramatic mini-series, Voice of the Planet.

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EmanPDX - When I was born, there were about 2.5 billion humans on Earth. In just over six decades, that number has tripled to nearly 7.3 billion. Humans have always been a rapacious species, using the planet's resources as if without consequence.  Up until the late 20th century, we pretty much got away with it, because the Earth's bounty was so vast. It's clear now that our indiscriminate hubris has caught up with us. The sheer weight of humanity is driving unprecedented levels of ocean depletion, deforestation, the loss of critical top soils, the squandering of fresh water resources,   the dangerous warming of our atmosphere, and perhaps most significant, the devastating loss of biodiversity.  In the face of all this, the response of our political leaders has been tepid at best.    There do seem to be some encouraging signs, with humanity beginning to give some attention to the reckless course we've set for ourselves. What is your assessment of the prospects for human civilization, given our deeply destructive life choices?

Michael Tobias - Good question, not easily answered.  Homo Sapiens has never been at such a crossroad, where in we are responsible for the future of life on Earth. It is a catastrophic position to be in, unless, presumably, you are God. Barring any God-like interventions, we are left with a chilling predicament that indicts our nearly every activity.

For example, seize the news from any single morning, and you come up with such statistics as follows, today, May 6, 2015. You have a senior biologist, Dr. Haakon Hop, with an expedition called the Norwegian Young Sea ICE:Cruise ( www.npolar.no/nice2015 ), who - as reported by science editor David Shukam for the BBC News - declares , "So, what has been around the Arctic is these animals that live underneath the ice - crustaceans, amphipods, and copepods - the biodiversity has gone down, and their abundance and biomass have also gone down in the areas that have been measured" ( "Climate Drives 'New Era'  in Arctic Ocean." http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32553668 ). This expedition has noted a terrifying truth about the rapidity of Arctic sea ice melt, and the impacts upon every ecosystem there. Moreover, other BBC news this morning  suggest findings from the Antarctic citing that when the Arctic weather changes, ice core samples now unambiguously show that within 200 year the Antarctic begins to melt rapidly. The trouble is these trends are not happening 200 years apart, as was the case for many millennia.  They are happening simultaneously, as the oceanic currents in both the northern and southern hemisphere warm up at the same time. Every country is feeling the wrath and blow-back of our collective emissions.

Then, there is the grim headline in today's Los Angeles Times, "Millions of 'Red Trees' - National forests across California are turning brown from lack of water, raising concerns about wildfires," by Veronica Rocha and Hailey Branson-Ports (pp, B1, B5) pertaining to the fact that "Instead of the typical deep green color, large swaths of pine trees now don hues of death, their dehydrated needles turning brown and burnt-red because of the state of worsening drought." "The situation is incendiary," William Palzert of JPL is quoted. "The national forest is stressed out."  

And on the very cover, today's L.A. Times is writ front and center and bold, "A STATE OF DENIAL - Data suggest the need to slash water use hasn't sunk in," by Monte Morin, Matt Stevens, and Chris Megerian (pp: A1, A11).

Also on the cover of today's L.A.Times, Chris Kraul's piece entitled "Chile's Race to Save it's Mummies," (pp A1, A4). Because of climate change, the oldest mummies in the world are melting, turning into a mysterious black ooze.

Again, in the same L.A. Times, today. Pat Morrison speaks with Stanford University professor, Jon A. Krosnick about his two decades of looking at public opinion regarding climate change. Krosnick speaks to the fact that "...we've started looking at states and haven't found a single state where a majority of residents are skeptical, but legislatures think they are." (p.A.15)



Egyptian Vulture on the Island of Socotra, Yemen© M.C. Tobias

But, then people, even serious students of the environment, read a piece like that by Jason G. Goldman, writing in the May 1st, 2015 issue of Conservation, in an article entitled "National Park Visitors Inject billions into the US Economy,"  and they see that there were "292 million" visits to America's 401 national parks in 2014, generating income exceeding "$16 billion" in park gateway regions(not even including money spent inside the parks) and creating cumulatively, as of 2014, 277,000 jobs." http://conservationmagazine.org/2015/05/national-park-visitors-inject-billions-into-the-us-economy/ And the temptation is to feel better about things, almost as if to nullify in one's mind the truth of what is happening all around us.

It's called, of course, the Anthropcene. We've known about it for decades, despite huge biological gap analyses. We're losing species at a rate that goes well beyond our comprehension. Out of the possible 100 million or so species, if one includes all lifeforms, we may well be losing thousands of species every day. More than half of all life is headed toward extinction - we know that, particularly all large vertebrates  (those animals over 100 kilograms). Herbivores like mountain gorillas and rhnios, elephants, giraffes, are particularly in trouble. But so are all charismatic carnivores, like tigers, wolves and grizzly bears. Among reptiles and amphibians, and the parrot groups of birds, the crisis is overwhelming. And this doesn't begin to factor in overall loss of habitat, key nurseries of the planet, like the neo-tropics and coral reefs.

Critically Endangered Arabian Leopard © M.C. Tobias

 Nor does it touch upon the most enormous area of all in which human cruelty is meted out in lethal forms to animals used for food, leather, fur, and a number of other material goods (a very dubious phrase: indeed, 'material goods' since there is nothing good about dead animal hides, or palm oil, whose origins coincided with  the human destruction of tropical peat swamps and the orangutans, for example, that depend solely on such habitat for their waning survival. 

Some three trillion animals killed last year, including cows, chickens, fish, turkeys, dogs, horses, pigs, sheep, and so on, for human consumption.

We are in a colossal mess like never before. So, my "assessment for the prospects of human civilization" as you ask? Not good.

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Stay tuned for more of  my conversation with Michael Tobias

The Flow Hive - A Great Innovation for Bees

I have a great affection for bees. They are marvelous little creatures.  They work tirelessly to serve the collective interests of the hive. Bees that reside in commercial hives are the source of nearly all the honey we humans consume. 

Unlike wild colonies, bees in commercial service are constantly stressed by keepers who regularly open their hives to harvest honey and beeswax, and also to check on the health of the hives.  It's been that way since humans entered into a working relationship with domesticated bees.

A group of beekeepers from the Australia appears to have developed an innovation that will transform commercial and hobby beekeeping.

In traditional beekeeping, the harvest of honey and beeswax requires opening the hives, removing the honeycombed panels, scraping away the wax and draining the honey into containers.  It's very stressful on the bees and hard work for the beekeepers.

The innovation that could change all that is called Flow Hive. It uses combed panels that are designed to automatically channel the flow of honey in a way that allows it to be harvested simply by opening a tap.  The hive doesn't have to be opened. The bees are not disturbed. 

The people behind Flow Hive are just now ramping up to manufacture their remarkable innovation.

Check out the Flow Hive website.  http://www.honeyflow.com/

The Nature of Sustainability

 

Over the years, I have tried to be a student of good planetary stewardship.  The ultimate prize is a humanity that functions in harmony with nature. This is what comes when what we take from the biosphere balances out with what we give back to it.  

In the U.S. and in other economically advantaged countries, People mostly take for granted their supply of fresh water, the ready availability of inexpensive food, cheap energy to heat our homes and power our transport options, and esthetically pleasing and healthy living environments.  Up until recently, we have also been accustomed to living with minimal risk of extreme, destructive weather.

These days, the natural systems and resources that we count on for stability in our lives are rapidly disappearing.  If the Earth was a bank with a fixed amount of equity assets, healthy living would equate to getting along on just the interest generated by that equity. In fact, our consumption goes way beyond that. We are drawing deeply into the Earth’s resource equity, and putting economic stability and our lives at ever greater risk because of it.   

It doesn’t have to be that way. We can live in balance with our planet’s ability to provide. We can, but it requires making some hard and some not-so-hard choices on a local, national, and a civilization scale.   

We are using up our fresh water. We are sucking the life out of our oceans. We are stripping our living landscapes bare. We are on a truly reckless path with the only home we have.

Energy is a very big sore spot on Planet Earth. The human consumption of fossil hydrocarbons like coal and oil has put our atmosphere in a perilous state.  Climate change is driven by human lifestyle habits; not just the burning of dirty forms of energy, but also our ever expanding appetite for animal flesh.  These days, the sun, and the wind are inexhaustible in supply.  Moreover, both small and massive scale technologies are now available to convert these clean and natural forms of energy into heat and electricity at costs that are competitive or even cheaper than the dirty energy we’ve depended on since the beginnings of the industrial age.   

There is also a personal lifestyle decision that could dramatically reduce the 80 million tons of methane produced annually by the livestock animals we consume.  The answer is simple:  eat less beef, pork, and poultry. The less, the better.   Keep in mind that methane is twenty times more potent as a greenhouse pollutant than carbon dioxide.  Even a small cut in a person’s animal protein consumption, if widely adopted, could really make a difference. It’s an easy and also a healthy way to move to the right side of history.

Sooner or later, humans will get to the right side of history. We will learn to live in harmony with nature. We  have the technology to take us there.  This much is clear: the longer we put off a transition to a life-affirming path, the bigger the mess we leave for future generations.

If we are going to build a future worthy of our species, a sustainable future, living in harmony with the gifts of nature, we the people must step up and be the change we wish for.    

The Importance of Whale Poop

Asha de Vos is a marine biologist, who studies the impact of whales on ocean ecology. Her TED presentation points up the enormous contribution whales make to the health of Earth's pelagic environment.  Who knew that poo could be such a valuable commodity.

Here is a link to Asha de Vos' TED presentation --- http://www.ted.com/talks/asha_de_vos_why_you_should_care_about_whale_poo?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2015-01-10&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=top_left_image

Wild Animal Populations Collapsing Worldwide

Alarming could not be more of an understatement.  A 52 percent decline in wildlife populations in just the last 40 years.  That is the conclusion of an intense study of animal numbers by the World Wildlife Fund.   Why? A look in the mirror will give you the answer.  Human numbers have doubled to 7.3 billion in the same period, and demographers are now saying there is a 70% chance that the growth of the human population will hit nearly 11 billion before it stops.  That is an astonishing number.  It's no wonder the populations of other animal species are collapsing.

We humans are mindlessly shredding the fabric of our biosphere.  We are behaving like parasites... the kind of parasite that ultimately kills its host. 

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Taken from the Huffington Post   9/30/14

GENEVA (AP) — About 3,000 species of wildlife around the world have seen their numbers plummet far worse than previously thought, according to a new study by one of the world's biggest environmental groups.

The study Tuesday from the Swiss-based WWF largely blamed human threats to nature for a 52 percent decline in wildlife populations between 1970 and 2010.
It says improved methods of measuring populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles explain the huge difference from the 28-percent decline between 1970 and 2008 that the group reported in 2012.

Most of the new losses were found in tropical regions, particularly Latin America.

WWF describes the study it has carried out every two years since 1998 as a barometer of the state of the planet.

"There is no room for complacency," said WWF International Director General Marco Lambertini, calling for a greater focus on sustainable solutions to the impact people are inflicting on nature, particularly through the release of greenhouse gases.

The latest "Living Planet" study analyzed data from about 10,000 populations of 3,038 vertebrate species from a database maintained by the Zoological Society of London. It is meant to provide a representative sampling of the overall wildlife population in the world, said WWF's Richard McLellan, editor-in-chief of the study.

It reflects populations since 1970, the first year the London-based society had comprehensive data. Each study is based on data from at least four years earlier.

Much of the world's wildlife has disappeared in what have been called five mass extinctions, which were often associated with giant meteor strikes. About 90 percent of the world's species were wiped out around 252 million years ago. One such extinction about 66 million years ago killed off the dinosaurs and three out of four species on Earth.

In the new WWF study, hunting and fishing along with continued losses and deterioration of natural habitats are identified as the chief threats to wildlife populations around the world. Other primary factors are global warming, invasive species, pollution and disease.

"This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way we choose to live," said Ken Norris, science director at the London society. "There is still hope. Protecting nature needs focused conservation action, political will and support from industry."

 

 

Oregon's Whale Wars Veteran

I am a big fan of the Sea Shepard Society, a group of volunteers, who ply the world's oceans battling  Japanese industrial whalers, the people who club harp seal pups in the Canadian Arctic, illegal tuna fishing, etc., etc.  

You have to admire people who are willing put their lives at risk to get between whales and the humans that want to kill them.  The Animal Planet TV show, Whale Wars, is about the Sea Shepard crews operating their own vessels, going to the very treacherous Southern Pacific ocean to confront Japanese whalers.   It makes for great TV.   I find it very satisfying to watch the Sea Shepard crews protecting whales from the exploding harpoons the Japanese use to kill them.

I work with a lot of good people these days on videos designed to reach the public with Move to Amend's  very ambitious and very much needed Constitutional agenda.

One of the Move to Amend supporters  I've gotten to know these past few months is a young man named Ryan Rittenhouse.  Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Ryan's background is in theater and video production. He's now working as an organizer for a non-profit called, Friends of the Columbia Gorge [FOCG].  Ryan is heavily engaged in the current fight to restrict hazardous, oil train traffic through the gorge.

Ryan in the Galapagos Islands

I asked Ryan to work with me on a video that would tie the oil train controversy to the larger Constitutional agenda championed by Move to Amend. Ryan recruited his boss Kevin Gorman, Executive Director of FOCG, to do that outreach video for Move to Amend. Ryan is co-producing that video with me. It was shot this past week and is currently being edited. I will be posting a blog entry about it as soon as it's finished.

I was having lunch with Ryan after we shot the video, when he told me that he had been a Sea Shepard crew member aboard the Farley Mowat, an old ship named after a well-known Canadian naturalist. Of all of the things I have learned about Ryan, that is the most impressive.

 

 

Ryan was quartermaster, and ship's videographer for two seasons in the Southern Pacific Ocean aboard the Farley Mowat.  He also was a Sea Shepard zodiac driver,  often putting himself and his crewmates between defenseless whales and the harpoons of the Japanese whalers. 

When it comes to life, so many people take the path of least resistance, avoiding controversy or anything that even implies some sort of personal risk. That's a big part of why it is so hard to affect positive change on a cultural scale.  Way too many people are self-absorbed and are unwilling to ' stand up'  for anything that involves any kind of assertiveness and substantive commitment.

That's not the way of Sea Shepard, whose crew members volunteer to work without pay. They are people of great courage, conviction, and commitment to Earth stewardship. They travel to the far reaches of the world's ocean's to confront the worst kind of human hubris.

Ryan Rittenhouse put his ass on the line many times over as a Sea Shepard provocateur. He is a person of character and substance. These days, he sports a bushy red beard. He likes the distinct look it gives him.   It's his style, and he has earned the right to express it, unlike so many people who are all about style, with little or no substance behind it.

Here is a link to the Sea Shepard Society...  http://www.seashepherd.org/

Here is a link to Ryan's current employer, the Friends of the Columbia Gorge...  http://www.gorgefriends.org/

Love and Nurturing

Over the last 25 years, I have been privileged to know Michael Tobias, and count him as one of my best friends as well as my principle personal mentor.  As President of the Dancing Star Foundation, Michael, alongside his equally impressive life partner and wife, Jane Gray Morrison, works tirelessly on a broad playing field to protect the biodiversity of the Earth, and to champion the welfare of both wild and domestic animals. The  dozens of books they have authored, dozens of films they have made,  the countless lectures they have given, and the assertive initiatives they have launched, are a powerful reflection of their commitment to the precious living fabric of our planet.  

I can say without reservation that no one has done more to shape my personal worldview than Michael and Jane. Their example and their inspiration are prime motivation for many of the choices I have made in my own life.  The ecstatic truth behind this blog is about love, and nurturing.

Here is the first of a number of short videos of the wisdom of Michael Tobias that I will be inserting in this blog  in the coming months....  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKvtLt7mnI

Save the Planet - Eat Less or No Meat

According to one estimate, humans kill and eat one hundred fifty billion animals every year.   Farmed livestock, animals like chickens, cattle, hogs,  have been reduced from living creatures to industrial commodities. With rare exceptions, these living creatures are propagated, raised, and ultimately slaughtered with only one thing in mind; minimize costs, maximize profit, the suffering of the animals be damned.

The public indifference to this brutal brand of industrial efficiency diminishes us all. Too often, compassion only extends to other humans, and that is only some of the time.  For too many people, a slab of meat is just something for sale in a supermarket.  Like I said, that attitude diminishes us all.

The article below is from the Huffington Post. It offers the conclusions of a study that puts sobering perspective on the cost of our heavily meat dependent eating habits. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture  organization, about 18 percent of all greenhouse gases contributing to climate change come from the billions of large animals raised industrially for human consumption.  That's nearly a fifth of the total. 

A conclusion that's easy to draw is that eating less meat will reduce the production of greenhouse gases. It's a simple step that every thoughtful person can take.  Not only is  reducing meat consumption good for one's health, it's also a very good thing for the planet. 

Eat less meat. Without question, it is an act of compassion Good for your health, good for the planet, good for your soul. 

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A new study on the environmental burdens of beef, pork, chicken, eggs, dairy and plant products finds that beef is by far the worst offender.

According to the study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a prominent scientific journal, beef production releases five times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as the average of other meats and animal products. Nor is that all: Beef requires 28 times more land, 11 times more water, and six times as much reactive nitrogen as the average of the other categories, according to the study.

To calculate the impact of different animal products, the study's authors looked at the environmental effects of producing feed for animals, taking into account land use, water consumption and the potential for nitrogen pollution from fertilizers. (When excess nitrogen leaches into a body of water, it can cause algal blooms that deplete local levels of oxygen and cause harm to other marine organisms.) The researchers also calculated the amount of greenhouse gas given off by the animals themselves, including methane from manure. Ultimately, for each meat or animal product, the researchers were able to determine the amount of resources used to produce one calorie of that product.

When asked about the easiest and most effective way to make one's diet more sustainable, Gidon Eshel, a research professor at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and the study's lead author, told The Huffington Post: "Really, there's no question about it. Reduce beef whenever possible."
Past research has shown that meat production contributes to global warming at a much higher rate than the cultivation of grains and vegetables. A recent study in the U.K. analyzed the diets of 55,000 people and found that the meat-eaters had twice the carbon footprint of the vegans. But if you're not ready to give up meat entirely, Eshel's study shows that you can have a big impact by just forgoing beef.

The no-beef lifestyle has its high-profile proponents. Earlier this month, business mogul Richard Branson wrote a blog post about his decision to cut beef out of his diet, noting that it was surprisingly easy to accomplish and has made him feel healthier. "I never feel like I'm missing out on anything," Branson wrote.

Eshel told HuffPost that despite a wealth of research into the benefits of a plant-based diet, "people seem unfazed by that in their consumption." Actually, though, meat consumption, and beef consumption in particular, have been on the decline in the United States in recent years. The USDA is projecting that this year, consumption of beef will be the lowest per capita since the 1950s. Whether that's because of rising meat costs, health considerations or growing pro-environment sentiment is difficult to say.

Eshel told HuffPost that maintaining an environmentally friendly diet is harder than marketers often make it seem.

"I really appreciate the good intentions of many individuals who strive in their personal choices to lessen their environmental impact," he said. "I would just caution ... against adhering to canned solutions that are purported to make matters better with little or no evidence that they in fact do."
Just because the meat in your meal is "grass-fed" or "local" doesn't necessarily mean it's good for the planet, said Eshel. More important are details like: Where was the animal raised? What was the climate of that area? What were the specific farming methods used? Someimes, Esehl said, "grass-feeding" can be even worse for the environment than the traditional corn-fed approach.
If the idea of swearing off meat turns your stomach, you can try the "vegan till 6" plan favored by New York Times food writer Mark Bittman. Or you can experiment with the popular Meatless Mondays. One thing's for sure: With animal agriculture responsible for about one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, there's a lot of room for improvement.

Hope on Earth

Hope on Earth, is a highly engaging dialogue between two  remarkable human beings,  Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, President of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology,  and global ecologist/author/anthropologist/filmmaker Michael Tobias.   Ehrlich is best known for The Population Bomb, a book co-written with his wife Anne more than four decades ago.  I should mention that I was a young man when I read the Ehrlich’s book back when it first came out.  Chilling as its message was, then and now, that book had a profound impact on my understanding of the world.  Dr. Tobias’ work is also well known to me. He is the author of more than fifty books, including World War III – Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium and, with his colleague, partner, and wife, Jane Gray Morrison,  Sanctuary – Global Oasis of Innocence. Tobias has also had a distinguished career as a film maker – more than 150 productions - on subjects (mostly non-fiction, but some fiction) related to animal rights’, biodiversity, and humanity’s tenuous relationship with the environment.  Tobias is also the long-time President of The Dancing Star Foundation, a global animal protection, biodiversity conservation, and environmental education non-profit.

 

 

 

Both men have spent much of  their lives investigating and reporting on the massively expanded pressure on our biosphere caused by human population growth.  To put this in perspective, the number of people on Earth when The Population Bomb was first published in 1968 was 3.5 billion. In all of human history, it took till then to get to 3.5 billion. In the 46 years since that time, the population has more than doubled to 7.25 billion. This massive human expansion is not sustainable. The Earth’s resources are finite. We humans are pushing our freshwater, our farmland, our forests, our marine resources rapidly  to exhaustion. Our dependence on fossil fuels like oil and coal is pumping billions of tons of pollutants into the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a planetary warming that puts the very livability of our tiny dot in the galaxy at great risk. Human exploitation is pushing unprecedented numbers of plant and animal species to the point of extinction.  In fact, the consensus seems to be, for humanity to live within the planet’s long term ability to provide sustenance for most sentient beings, including Homo Sapiens,  the human population should no more than about one to two billion.  The current condition for humanity is one of extreme overreach.  Can we turn it around? Can we change our ways sufficiently to roll back  human demand so it does not exceed the planet’s ability to provide?   

Ehrlich and Tobias are skeptical. Despite that, they remain hopeful. They have both  been aggressively sounding a warning for decades. They both clearly detest the general state of public indifference, and even hostility in some cases,  despite the powerful warning signals we are getting from nature; signals like the melting of our glaciers and the collapse of the polar icecaps, the increasing incidents of extreme draught, wildfire, floods, and massive and highly destructive weather events like Hurricane Sandy and Super Typhoon Haiyan. 

In Hope on Earth, Ehrlich warns, “The past is over. We’re here now, and we’d better damn well make our ethical decisions.”  He goes on to say, “If we don’t solve the issues of population growth and consumption, all the rest of these issues won’t stand a chance of being remedied.”

Ehrlich and Tobias agree that humanity must find a path to achieving critical mass in awareness, and beyond that, a thoughtful, ethical approach to the unprecedented global-scale challenges that have emerged. The course we are on is a dead end.

I really enjoyed reading Hope on Earth. In the end, it is a dialogue about ethics. I loved being a fly on the wall, absorbing this great conversation between two exceptional minds, who understand and care deeply about the ugly turn human history has taken. Their prescription: Wake up and embrace a life-affirming cultural paradigm built on a foundation of compassion, and commitment to planetary stewardship. Do it now, before it is too late.

I give five stars to Hope on Earth. Highest recommendation.

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A Hen and her Little Boy Friend

I love this video.  It's a little boy opening his arms to a chicken, and it comes to him and accepts a warm hug.  Pretty amazing, and a beautiful thing to see. How lucky this hen is. Poultry rarely gets anything close to kindness from humans   How many billions of these docile birds are killed and turned into McNuggets and drumsticks every year.  They have been reduced to commodities on a balance sheet, and their lives are an endless, horrific cruelty in the name of cost savings and profit.

H.G. Wells wrote a book called, The Time Machine. In it, a 19th century man created a machine that carried him into a distant future, where he found humans living a seemingly idyllic life. Only later did he learn the dominant species were a grotesque deviation of humanoid called Morlocks, who raised humans to live only long enough to mature, whereupon they were killed and eaten.  At least in that instance, the Morlocks  allowed their human food stock a few years of cruelty-free existence.  Animals raised for human consumption these days get nothing like that. Chickens are jammed in cages from the time they hatch. Their feet become infected from standing on wire mesh all day, every day. Their beaks are cut off to prevent them from pecking each other, thus damaging their commoditized flesh.  It diminishes us as humans to treat other creatures this way.

The boy in this video has been taught to express empathy to his feathered friends, and they in turn have learned to trust him. Yes, it's idealistic, but kindness is always a wonderful thing to witness.

Here is the video of a hen accepting some love from a little boy...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxo1mZeY68&feature=youtu.be

Court Ends Japanese Whaling in the Antarctic

I have done several postings about the TV show, Whale Wars, that chronicle the ongoing struggle of the Sea Shepard Society to confront Japanese factory whaling in the Antarctic ocean.  Sea Shepard has been fighting this battle with Japanese whalers for about the last ten years.

The International Whaling Commission had imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s.  To get around that ban, Japan had been claiming that their whaling activities were based on research that required them to kill and slaughter hundreds of whales every year.  Of course, all of the whale meat taken this way has ended up in Japanese meat markets.

Australia and New Zealand went to the UN's International Court of Justice to challenge Japan's 'research' whaling.    This past week, a panel of judges ruled 12-4 that Japan's 'research' whaling was a sham. It ordered an immediate end to the practice. Though it has publicly regretted the court's decision, Japan agreed to comply.

This is a huge victory of the Sea Shepard Society and those of us who believe that whales should be protected from human exploitation.

Even with this very positive step, there is much that needs to be done to mend humanity's relationship with our oceans. Beyond our continued overexploitation of the ocean's fisheries, humans are responsible for billions of tons of plastic and other kinds of toxic materials being dumped into the oceans. Making this right will take a massive effort by humanity. Accepting responsibility for the mess we've made means new policies that prohibit  our waterways and oceans from being used as dumping grounds. We must also aggressively develop technologies that will allow us to clean up the mess we've already made.   Rather than seeing this as a financial burden, we should be looking at it as an important pathway to sustainability that will create jobs and improve the quality of life of all the world's people.

Time to get busy and take care of our planetary home.

Human Population Growth and Wildlife Extinction

The human population is now more than 7.3 billion. That's about 75 million more people very year. Each of them, like the rest of us, needs food, water, and shelter to survive. The planet isn't getting any bigger. Our once abundant resources are becoming ever more scarce. The natural world we depend on is being shredded. We are pushing the wild creatures that share space with us to extinction.

The Center for Biological Diversity has released a powerful 90 second video that links continued human population growth with the destruction of our Earth's biological bounty. There are already 7.3 billion people, and we are still adding well over 200,000 to that number every single day.   How many is enough?  The case can be made that we are already well past that point.  Our human reproductive hubris is destroying the living fabric of our Earth. 

That is the very clear message in this new video. Here is the link... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vn8rXbTgWg&feature=youtu.be

Wild Dolphin Asks for Help

A group of scuba divers off the coast of Hawaii were surprised by a dolphin that approached them underwater. The animal had a fishing line and hook caught in its pectoral fin and wrapped around the fin, restricting its motion. The dolphin was looking for help. One of the divers cut away the line trapping the fin.  The interaction between the divers and the dolphin is beautiful. Compassion is a wonderful thing to witness.

Here is the video link to a wild dolphin asking for help... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL9I4BxuryY

Mourning the Rhino

I thought hard about whether I should post the image below.  It's very painful to look at. A baby rhino mourning its mother, just killed by poachers for its horn.

The rhino as a species is being wiped out.  They are only found now in a few places in Africa.  The only ones not in jeopardy are under 24 hour armed guard.  

Why are poachers willing to risk their lives to kill one of these creatures to gets its horn? The answer is well known. Traditional medicine markets in Asia, particularly in China, value powdered rhino horn as a medicinal cure. It fact, a rhino's horn is the same stuff as your fingernails. It has zero curative value. But the demand is still the there,  The fewer rhinos there are, the more people are willing to pay. Another market is in the Middle East in places like Yemen, where wealthy young men wear ceremonial daggers. A dagger handle made of carved rhino horn is a prized status symbol.   The fewer rhinos there are, the more a guy with money to burn is willing to pay to have his rhino horn dagger.

Sure, you can put the blame on the poachers. But let's get real.  Most of those guys are uneducated and desperately poor. One rhino horn can fetch them enough income to feed the family for a decade. It's no wonder they are willing to put their lives at risk. 

It's a very sad circumstance, but it's hard to be optimistic about the future of this magnificent species when the human population of the African continent is growing rapidly, faster than any place else on Earth.

Here is a link to Save the Rhino... http://www.savetherhino.org/

Alaska Fishermen Rescue Orca Whale

It's always heartening to run across a story of humans being kind to an animal in distress.  In this case, three Alaskans, Jason Vonick and two friends,  were out in a remote area of shoreline on their boat when they came across a pod of orca whales.  They noticed that one of the smaller whales was stuck on some rocks and unable to move.  

The easy course for the fishermen would have been to keep on going. Instead, they anchored their fishing boat and tried to help.  They recorded some video of the event. The stranded whale remained calm and actually seemed to take comfort from the efforts of Vonick and his colleagues to keep her cool and reassure her.  The other orca remained just a few feet away. They were not even a little aggressive.  They seemed to understand that Vonick and his friends were there to help.

Finally, after four hours, the tide came in enough that the fishermen were able to use a pair of oars to lever the stranded whale free of the rocks.

It's a wonderful story, with a happy ending. I just wish the brand of kindness displayed by Jason Vonick and his two colleagues was the rule rather than exception.  

Here is the link to the You Tube video shot by the fishermen....  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrqcmDHY9xo

Lucky

A video to warm the heart.  In Fresno, California, firefighter, Cory Kalanick enters a smoke filled house with a GoPro video camera mounted on his helmet. Searching for survivors, he finds a kitten lying unconscious. Enough said.  Check out the video.  The kitten, who survived,  was given the name, 'Lucky'.

Here is the video of  'Lucky' being rescued and bought back form the brink...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjB_oVeq8Lo

Dance of the Honey Bee

Bees are wonderful little creatures. They work tirelessly to serve the hive, gathering nectar and pollen from flowers far and wide.

We tend to take bees for granted, not understanding that they play a crucial role in the lifecycles of nature.  Most plants require a transfer of pollen from one individual plant to another to reproduce.  Bees are the instruments of much of that cross pollination. If it weren't for bees,  the natural food supply humans depend on would shrink dramatically. 

Bees are in a lot of trouble these days. Whole hives can disappear in virtually an instant due to something called Colony Collapse Disorder.   Mounting evidence suggests this could be  caused by the wide spread use of a particularly deadly form of insecticide known as  neonicotinoids. The manufacturers of these insecticides deny any link to honey bee deaths. Odd, when you consider that bees are insects. Duh.  When you spread this kind of poison over the landscape,  it's going to kill any small creatures that come into contact with it.  That bees are particularly vulnerable should be no surprise.

As I wrote at the beginning of this piece, bees are wonderful little creatures.  We need to appreciate the very important role they play in the fabric of life. That's the first step in becoming advocates that recognize that protecting bees is tantamount to protecting ourselves.

Here is a link to a new video called Dance of the Honey Bees...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo6fK1yKcAA

Iceland - Be a Nice Land

So, Iceland,  an island nation in the North Atlantic, located between Greenland and Norway has begun killing whales again.  After almost two decades of abiding by the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on whaling,  Iceland is following the Japanese in defying the international consensus that prohibits the slaughtering of whales.

Whale Killing Boats - Reykjavik Harbor, Iceland

It's true that Iceland is a seafaring nation with a whaling tradition. It is also true that Iceland has no economic or nutritional need to kill these magnificent warm-blooded creatures. Nearly all of the meat that comes from the whales killed by Icelanders is sold to Japan.

I have been to Iceland. It is beautiful, volcanically active, and largely untamed.  The people there are lovely:  friendly, well educated, and sophisticated.  Why they are so defiant on the morality of killing whales is a mystery to me. It has to be expensive to operate those whaling vessels.  It can't be a very profitable, if at all. 

Icelandic whaling, like Japanese whaling, is nothing but industrial scale slaughter in the cruelest fashion.  The preferred method of killing has not changed for nearly a hundred years.  Imagine for yourself, a pod of fin or minke whales, the species most commonly killed in Icelandic waters.

Fin Whale

A killer boat approaches at high speed forcing the whales to flee. But they cannot outrun the boat, and when the whales are exhausted, a man stands at a cannon sized gun high on the killer boat's bow, and shoots harpoons loaded with explosives into their bodies.  The exploding tip shreds the internal organs of the targeted whale, causing an agonizingly cruel death.  

If there were a survival need for whale meat,  such a slaughter might be justifiable.  There is no such need. This is about the cold-hearted exploitation of living creatures - the largest on Earth - purely for economic gain.   In fact, this kind of thing is happening in so many ways all over the Earth.  Humans reducing the planet's living treasures to resources ripe for plunder.

The killing of whales is a throwback to another era. It is unnecessary. It is cruel.  It is an obsession unworthy of the people of Iceland.  It is also a reflection of the entrenched mindset that favors exploitation over stewardship.  That kind of cold-blooded, profit-centered thinking must be marginalized. We have only one planetary home.  We all must learn to protect it, for our own sake as well as for creatures like the great whales that live here with us.

I would love to return for another visit to Iceland, but. I will not. I will not go to Iceland again until they repudiate their whaling tradition for good.  If every potential tourist took that step, they would be forced to stop whaling, because whatever money their whale slaughter generates is surely small compared to the money that flows to Iceland from tourism.

Here is a link to the International Whaling Commission's page on Icelandic whaling... http://iwc.int/Iceland