From: bane@vtx.ma.man.ac.uk) (M i c h a e l ;-)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Views on hunting and environmental issues (somewhat long)
Keywords: ARers, Greenpeace, whaling, seals, hunting
Date: 23 Aug 92 18:15:57 GMT
Reply-To: bane@vtx.ma.man.ac.uk
Organization: Magic Michael's Mushroom Factory.

In article <1992Aug21.000529.15756@news.uit.no>, tomg@stud.cs.uit.no (Tom Grydeland) writes:
|> The reason I wanted to post here is to discuss some of *my* views on
|> different types of hunting. I am an occational hunter myself, and I've been
|> listening to your discussions concerning hunting for a few weeks now, and
|> my feeling is that the people most adamantly against hunting are a bit
|> removed from the facts of life and death in nature. The way I see it, *all*
|> animals on this planet nourish themselves by killing, whether they hunt
|> other animals, just eat plants or both. People who want all species living
|> together with no killing seem to me to be further from nature and the
|> realities of life than people who look upon hunting and killing as a
|> natural and healthy way to supply your diet.
|> 
          [* STUFF ON HUNTING/KILLING DELETED *]
|> 
|> As for the minke whale. Many environmentalists have made whales a flag
|> issue. This originates from the fight to save the blue whale (and in the
|> US, from the TV-series about Flipper). Unfortunately, this has led many
|> people to beleive that *all* whales are endangered and threatened with
|> extinction. This of course, is not the case. There are presently about
|> 90000 (ninety-thousand) minke whales in the Northern Atlantic. This
|> population can (and should) sustain a yearly hunting of about 2000 (or was
|> it more? I don't remember the exact figures) animals. Now let's look at the
|> figures. We can estimate the minke whales' weight to 1000 kg, giving about
|> 750 kg of meat (this is not an exact figure, but close enough). In
|> addition, the minke whales' meat is extremely nourishing, healthy and
|> well-tasting, and the whale is at all times living in its natural habitat
|> eating its natural kind of food. Compare this to chicken raised in modern
|> farms. These chicken are cramped together, they are hardly able to move,
|> they are raised on a special diet to make them grow faster, and they have
|> never tasted the sweet freedom of wild life. Their average weight is about
|> 1 kg, giving about 0.75 kg of meat. Now where do you find the most
|> suffering, do you think?
|> 
           [* RAMBLINGS ON IWC DELETED *]
|> 
|> One of Greenpeace's first reactions when confronted with the Norwegian
|> decision to resume whaling included something like the following
|> (paraphrased from memory): "The whales sing out their despair against this
|> brutal and inhumane decision from the murderous Norwegians."  This is a
|> common trick amongst ARers. They are putting alot of emotions and feelings
|> into the minds of animals, making them into a kind of "pseudo-humans." This
|> of course assures instant support from emotionally inclined humans which
|> have no idea that they are being manipulated.
|> 
|> I think it is time to take a closer look at Greenpeace. They have a lot of
|> employees, big ships, helicopters, fast zodiacs and so on. Where did they
|> get the money? From private persons trying to do their bit to save the
|> earth? Probably not. This is money in a totally different league. Consider
|> the fact that several important chemical companies are not very bothered by
|> Greenpeace at all. Consider the fact that Greenpeace are spending a lot of
|> money "protecting" animals that are far from being threatened by extinction
|> when there are so many other important things to do in the fields of
|> pollution, economic imbalance between North and South and insane levels of
|> consumption in the Western world. I wonder, who makes their priorities?
|> Could it be that Greenpeace are more interested in high-profile media
|> oriented actions which assure television coverage than actions that
|> actually matter in saving this earth? Let's look at Greenpeace in Norway.
|> One by one, the Norwegians on the board have left in protest against the
|> organisation's statements and politics, the last one (a professor in marine
|> biology) over the Norwegian whaling issue. So there are no Norwegians
|> currently on the Greenpeace Norway board. In addition, consider the fact
|> that close to all Norwegian environmental organisations actually *support*
|> the Norwegian decision to resume whaling. So where did Greenpeace's
|> credibility go?
|>



Why is everybody suddenly assuming Greenpeace do nothing except anti-whaling issues?
And I'm sure Greenpeace don't do the "high-profile media" work just because they want
to be stars! I would have thought that it was a way of raising public awareness (and
obviously a very good one!).
 
|> I consider myself a concerned environmentalist.
|> 
|> I do *not* however, consider it a valid use of time and resources to strike
|> out at all other small details that we would all like to improve.  In this
|> perspective, eating meat *is* a waste of resources. It takes approximately
|> 10 kg of plants to produce 1 kg of meat. This should *not* however, stop us
|> from topping off plentiful populations for consumption.
|> 
|> If we want to talk about saving the earth, we must look at issues which
|> can contribute towards this goal.
|> 
|> We must look at nuclear waste.
|> We must look at the Consumer Culture in the West.
|> We must look at the population explotion.
|> We must look at the increasing use of fossil fuels.
|> We must look at the accelerating use of energy.
|> We must look at the pollution introduced by large industrial companies.
|> We must look at the disappearing fresh water resources.
|> We must look at the trade imbalance between North and South.
|> We must look at the deforestation of the huge rainforests.
|> 

Here in the UK, Greenpeace have campaigns on (at least) 5 of the above. (It would be
ridiculous to expect them to work on all - there are other organizations, for example,
who are campaigning extremely well on TW Debt.

|> In short, we must come to an agreement on whether we are interested in
|> reducing our spending to a level which this planet can sustain for us and
|> the coming generations. We must come to an agreement on whether this planet
|> is meant for us alone or for our children too.
|> 
   I'm sure that me, you and Greenpeace would all agree on this issue.
|> 
|> We didn't inherit this world from our parents
|> we borrowed it from our children
Lester Brown quote I believe?

Michael
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals