So I promised you that I’d come off the fence on what I think about whaling, and specifically the case of the Western Grey Whale that Richard Black discussed. So far sample size on my poll is too low for me to bother reporting, but I hope that these following posts may prompt a few more to cast their votes. For now the only way for you to find out what your fellow blog readers think is to vote and then you will see the current breakdown.
Last week I set out a number of options:
- Hunting whales is just morally wrong.
- Biodiversity loss is a major problem. Anywhere we can draw the line we should.
- Protecting these whales will protect a lot of other wildlife. (The umbrella species argument.)
- Conservation and development should be balanced, but sacrificing biodiversity to extract more fossil fuels which will just increase global warming is not a sensible trade off.
- Conservation and development should be balanced, but we’d be asking Russia and the local communities in Siberia to sacrifice a lot of money and this is just a sub-species.
- Economic development should generally take precedence over conservation within bounds, i.e. allow the oil and gas developments to go ahead with appropriate regulation.
- This is just red tape dyed green, strangling legitimate business. If you want to keep the grey whales then you pay for it!
As I said then I think all have some validity. Over the next few days I shall post some thoughts on each one in turn (see links above) before concluding with my final considered opinion.
Bottom Up Thinking 