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Japan to leave International Whaling Commission, resume commercial hunting

• stevespang 8y ago
  Immediately BOYCOTT All things Japanese Poor whales, Japs could give a shit. Donate to Greenpeace
• sytelus 8y ago
  TLDR; Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s constituency includes the whaling port of Shimonoseki, and he has also come under pressure from lawmakers in his Liberal Democratic Party whose electoral districts include whaling or dolphin-hunting communities. As a move from environment loving developed nation, this is quite repulsive.
  • SamReidHughes 8y ago
    The whales that don't get whaled will get starved, sharked, or killer whaled.
• DrPhish 8y ago
  The article itself is really quite good, but for those who come to the comments to find out what this is all about, here is an attempt at a dispassionate summary on an emotionally charged subject: It's been a fight between those who were seeking to create a sustainable whaling industry, and those who wanted to end the practice completely. As written in the article, the IWC was founded in order to be the former, and brought (largely by global consensus) to become the latter. After the disaster that was the historical whaling industry, Japan tried to move back to commercial whaling within a framework of scientific consensus based on population levels and a sustainable catch limit, but was blocked by the wider international community. It has been obvious for years that it would come to this. The two groups are at loggerheads. It's the natural outcome of two different opinions on the ethical standing of whaling as a practice. In one way, we are lucky that it is Japan that is resuming whaling (joining Norway and Iceland), since they will probably do a decent job of policing their domestic whaling industry, but of course it is unfortunate that a global consensus could not be reached over either acceptable limits or a permanent end to the practice