Sick and Tired

I know we all agreed to avoid politics, however I would like to supply some food for thought. This is not intended to become a political debate between family members but to be an eye opener for all of us when considering future environmental policies and those who claim to support such policies.


I'm sure we're all well aware of my opinions towards the environment as well as the Democratic Party's platform to take a more environmentally friendly approach to politics, which is commendable. However, is it a true platform?

In the 1990s, pressures of politics, free trade, and globalization were hard at work to undermine the future of whales on this blue planet. According to Mother Jones, this new category of "cultural whaling" comes from the Office of Environmental Quality, under Vice President Al Gore. How ironic is it that this self-described "environmental" candidate for the presidency is credited with ushering in a new century of "cultural whaling" in direct violation of the International Whaling Commission's moratoriums on whaling?

In 1993, Vice President Al Gore met with Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and secretly signaled to the Norwegians that the United States would not interfere with their plans to expand commercial whaling. Gore's infamous Norwegian memo was leaked to the press and published in full page ads with the caption "Blood and Gore." In the memo, the Vice President repeated the United States commitment to stand by and not interfere with Norwegian attempts to overturn the IWC ban on commercial whaling. Gore wrote, "This strengthens my argument for the need for a scheme that will allow resumption of whaling worldwide." Gore hoped to keep free trade options open to Norway and Japan by not interfering and going as far as supporting their commercial whaling operations.

Despite backlash from environmentally friendly elders, the younger members of the Makah tribe voted to resume their whaling, after all the price of a dead gray whale was $1 million in 1996. The United States allowed the Makah to take on "cultural whaling" and reduced its reputation as a global whaling watchdog and instead became an underground supporter of such acts, claiming it was for Native American rights. (Even though the majority of tribe members were strongly against such hunting techniques.)

Although gray whales are the target of the Makah tribe's whaling efforts, the most commonly killed whale worldwide is the minke whale, the most common baleen whale in the San Juans.

The minke whale, is the smallest of the "finner" whales (rorquals) and due to its size, remained relatively safe from whaling in its "glory" years. Relative to its slaughtered kin, the whale that hardly anyone paid much attention to emerged more abundant than ever. This suddenly transformed the littlest rorqual into something quite different - a target, and a test case for the price other whales may have to pay as soon as they start to become common again. These countries are not only killing minkes. Scientists analyzing meat at Japanese markets have found samples from Humpback, Sperm, and Blue whales... as well as my beloved orcas.

You may be thinking that we have no right to tell other countries or Native Tribes what to hunt. I beg to differ, and my reasoning has nothing to do with having empathy for whales. After analyzing more than a hundred samples of whale meat from restaurants and shops across Japan in 1999, Japanese toxicologists announced that half the specimens held concentrations of dangerous heavy metals such as mercury. The meat also contained organochlorines such as dioxin and PCBs, known to cause harm to nervous, endocrine, reproductive, and immune systems in mammals. Like seals and sea lions, minkes often feed fairly high on the food chain, gulping the big fish that gulp smaller fish that gulp krill-size plankton that gulp smaller plankton. At each of these stages, or trophic levels, pollutants from a large number of food organisms can become concentrated in the single organism digesting them. The process is termed bio accumulation. According to the Japanese researchers, some minkes were storing enough contaminants to pose a serious health risk to a human eating just a few ounces of blubber. A separate study revealed higher-than-normal levels of brain and heart damage among children in the Faeroe Islands whose mothers had eaten whale meat, primarily minke. This is a huge environmental concern. Being from Michigan, I can speak for the current failure of the Great Lakes. In this region, as well as in the Arctic, health problems and abnormal development during early childhood have been attributed to eating fish laden with chlorinated hydrocarbons... from OUR own fresh water supply!

In 2005 Japan announced its intention to more than double the Antarctic minke harvest, to 935 whales from this specific area a year. They also intend to expand their "scientific whaling" program to sperm whales, fin whales, Byrde's whales, and humpbacks. All of this was done with little backlash from ANY U.S. politician.

I don't want you all to think I'm a whale lover and hunter hater. I understand the necessity to hunt and would never criticize hunting for game management purposes. Where is the game management here?

I'm not trying to elevate whales above all other environmental causes. This is especially not an attempt to elevate animals to our level, but rather an effort to see ourselves with greater humility. I don't believe we are the sole claimants of such traits as intelligence or consciousness. I believe all life on earth has a spark of divinity... something any creationist would agree with (and perhaps even some new agers). We are to be the stewards of nature, not rapists of the natural world. Where are the fighters for such causes?

I'm sick of the politicized issues. It's becoming more and more difficult to see through the rhetoric and get to the point. I'm sick of candidates from BOTH parties telling the American people how to live: turn off your lights! Carpool! Don't turn on your air! Blame the big businesses! ~ And yet those same people have the gall to turn around and fly in their private jets, live in their extravagant houses, and parade their tour buses around the country. This is the real Straight Talk Express. I can't stand people who use the environment as a phony platform, from either side, and do nothing to champion the causes they "care about so dearly."

Is Al Gore a bad guy? I believe he has brought more attention to green causes than many other politicians in recent history and cannot and will not discredit him for that. However, it's time for all of us to quit drinking the political Kool-aid of either party and begin thinking for ourselves. In a world where few things are pure I hope one day someone will stand up to save our environment from ourselves and the politicians who use it to get votes from a concerned public.

Once again, I hope this doesn't open the floor for angry one-sided debate about specific parties. I was especially hurt by finding this out about Al Gore, because I saw him as a champion for environmental causes and looked past his party affiliations to see a noteworthy cause at work. Reading about his double-speak in the 90s was painful for a fellow environmentalist.

It's time to quit looking at environmental champions as whack-jobs and begin to see the human issues to consider. Infertility is becoming a huge concern for many couples... something the orcas showed us years ago. Children are suffering more frequently from autism... could mercury be a culprit, if so... the orcas showed us that years ago. Is bio accumulation a real issue... just because orcas don't have the dietary options we ever so brilliant humans have doesn't mean we're untouchable.

I feel used and I'm sick of voting for "change" promised for today, while we turn a blind eye to the changes of tomorrow. I want to be the voice for those who have no vote...

Sorry if this post stung a little, but I was equally stung by how two-faced politicians can be. Who is the champion of whales and the environment now?

P.S. Perhaps it's time to quit looking at political figures as heroes and begin to see them as humans with selfish desires.

Below: A humpback whale surfaces in Hawaii, looking the underwater photographer right in the eye. For being underwater creatures, their eyesight is nearly as good as ours. Why have such good vision if not to look up out of the water... and directly at us? Is this worth slaughtering? I say it's worth fighting for.

Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and ask, "Why not?"