Makin' Waves

So the IWC is over with a final score of 5 for the whales and 1 for the whalers and after all the doubts and concerns about this year's meeting we should feel relieved and there is cause for some kind of celebration I guess. After all it could be so much worse but I don't feel happy and actually I am angry at governments who voted for a return to the "normalisation" of whaling and I am angry at the IWC for accepting the votes from countries who have clearly been bribed. Thousands of whales will die again this year, for no other reason than national pride and greed, despite our best attempts to save them.

It's wonderful to see that Greenpeace will return to give the whalers a hard time in the Southern Ocean but we all know that this hasn't helped to strengthen the international moratorium on whaling in the past so my question is: Is it at all possible to stop thousands of whales being killed each year? Nothing has worked so far and we can argue about tactics all we like but ramming and sinking whaling vessels has not stopped whaling either. Letters have been written, protests have been staged, boats have been rammed and sunk, meetings have been attended, awareness and money has been raised, pressure has been applied to companies who funded whaling while countries who have been bribed have been named and shamed. Maybe it's up the politicians to do something about whaling but what can they do and will they do it? The only thing that is going to stop whaling nations is a fisheries boycott or some other form of financial or political pressure yet I don't see any anti-whaling nation ready to instigate this.

In the meantime it doesn't hurt to keep TAKING ACTION online: E.mail the Prime Minister of Denmark and ask him to save whales

L.