Japan plans to defy Tuna ban

[Crossroads Inc.]

It's odd that the Japanese are responsible for so much environmental devastation today, because I always thought that the Japanese traditionally had great reverence for nature because of their Shinto religion.

That only applies to Japan itself. I have a 'penpale' I write to who lives in Shinjuku who says she knows people whos attitude is basically
"We must save the precious and delicate nature in all Japan... But we can Harvest the rest of the word into nothingness"

That's what I've read as well. Mind you, it's not just the Japanese that do that, but the ocean is a particularly vulnerable area for it, since you generally can't just wall off part of the seas and keep the fish there like you can do with national parks on land.

I have had long discussions with my friend on this topic and she says it is largely a cultural way of thinking brought on by Japans island status and a National superiority that she admits isn't as bad as it used to be. She does say that many many more younger Japanese don't share this way of thinking and are getting more active in environmentalism, but for most older people its a sense of "We can't see it, its not our country so its not our problem"

[General Brock]

The pro-conservation people should push for or sponsor a national Japanese referendum on the issue of tuna and whale meat. Leave it to the elites and nothing will get done. Bypass them and present the case to the people and let them decide, might be the more promising route.

[Thanas]

The pro-conservation people should push for or sponsor a national Japanese referendum on the issue of tuna and whale meat. Leave it to the elites and nothing will get done. Bypass them and present the case to the people and let them decide, might be more promising.

Yeah....because the Japanese are so enlightened people and there is no reason to assume they are to steeped in traditionalism to care about the issue.

If enough Japanese people cared about the issue, they would have stopped even worse (as in visually horrifying like the dolphin slaughter) things already.

[Beowulf]

Turning the bluefin into a farmed species may conserve it, but only pushes the overfishing problem down the food chain. Bluefin tuna are carnivores, so it wouldn't be like farming, say, cows. You have to catch fish and squid to feed them.

Yes, you do need to feed the bluefin other fish. But you can almost certainly get away with feeding them other farmed fish. And those fish can probably be fed with farmed algae (or similar). So you don't necessarily need to fish the open ocean to get the food for them.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The pro-conservation people should push for or sponsor a national Japanese referendum on the issue of tuna and whale meat. Leave it to the elites and nothing will get done. Bypass them and present the case to the people and let them decide, might be more promising.

Yeah....because the Japanese are so enlightened people and there is no reason to assume they are to steeped in traditionalism to care about the issue.

If enough Japanese people cared about the issue, they would have stopped even worse (as in visually horrifying like the dolphin slaughter) things already.

It just so happens that dolphins scream in fear and pain when they are driven onto a beach with nets. Just saying.

[Thanas]

The pro-conservation people should push for or sponsor a national Japanese referendum on the issue of tuna and whale meat. Leave it to the elites and nothing will get done. Bypass them and present the case to the people and let them decide, might be more promising.

Yeah....because the Japanese are so enlightened people and there is no reason to assume they are to steeped in traditionalism to care about the issue.

If enough Japanese people cared about the issue, they would have stopped even worse (as in visually horrifying like the dolphin slaughter) things already.

It just so happens that dolphins scream in fear and pain when they are driven onto a beach with nets. Just saying.

[Erik von Nein]

Aly may be referring to the dolphin hunting that goes on in Japan, made especially famous by the movie The Cove ( http://www.thecovemovie.com/ ).