Hate the game, not the player. The legal loopholes are to blame here, not the people doing the whaling. It's as honest a job as killing pigs or cows for food. The problem here is the powerless whaling crews are the ones getting rammed and having shit thrown at them, instead of the people who can actually do something about it in the long term.
Not when the laws they use to justify it are riddled with loopholes big enough to fit a whale though (on its way to the automated processor). It is like saying that a person operating an escort service is not a pimp.
Saying nothing of killing an animal that may well be smart enough to mourn the dead (some cetaceans have been documented to do that)
The vast majority of whales caught are Minke whales, which are classified "least concerned" on the endangered species list. The level of Japanese whaling is sustainable.
There are a lot of animals on the IUCN list that are not classified as high as they should be for political reasons. I need only point out pretty much every species of asian turtle for that to be abundantly clear. Whales, as a general rule, have long lifespans and low reproductive rates. They cannot sustain any amount of commercial harvesting for very long. As the backbone of the population (the large adults) gets cut out, there will be a lag time followed by a demographic collapse.
The tuna fisheries were also said to be sustainable... but they are in the same proverbial boat right now. Historically abundant but over-harvested and now in a state of freefall.
They catch the odd Sei and Sperm, but the numbers are comparably tiny, a few hundred over a 10 year period.
And they are now pressuring to be allowed to kill humpbacks(which are not endangered only because they are not being harvested). and Sei whales are most certainly endangered(as are sperms). Again, no amount of commercial harvesting is sustainable.
They're just fishermen doing the job they're paid to do. They're not the ones making the decisions, they're the one carrying decisions out.
Not to Godwin myself, but that defense did not work out too well in Nuremburg. This poor logic could be extended to anything. People poaching elephants, or trafficing in kidnapped women or children for the illegal sex-slave trade could also be defended under this defense. Every person is responsible for their own actions. Regardless of who ordered them to do something, the onus is on the individual to make their own moral choices and as a result the Japanese fishermen are doing something which is morally blameworthy.
Go read an ethics textbook.
Whaling has a very long history of tradition in Japan.
There has been a long history of a lot of morally reprehensible things. Spousal Rape, slavery, institutionalized pederasty.
It's a popular dish
No. It is not. The whales do not get bought at market.
It'd be like if foreigners started forcing us to sign treaties banning the use of cows as food
False analogy. First off, we breed cows for food. In fact we breed too many and they are causing environmental problems. Second, whales are a hell of a lot smarter than cows and thus capable of magnitudes more suffering. In an ideal case, a cow leads a reasonably contented life and then one day is taken to a room where a pneumatic spike is driven through its skull. It does not suffer, and it is too stupid to feel fear. A whale leaves a long life and then one day it is driven to panic by the sound of boats before having an explosive harpoon driven into it, that does not kill it immediately but rather horrifically injures it and it dies from shock or blood loss. The two are kilometers apart. In one case the pleasure and nourishment derived from eating the animal can be justified. In the other... fuck no.
Are the whales which are hunted by the Japanese fleet in danger of extinction? If not, you are engaging in a slippery slope fallacy -- particularly because the rest of the world has effectively given up whaling.
A species with the life history traits of any whale species are in danger of extinction with commercial harvesting yes. On any scale. It is just a matter of how long it takes with a given species and capture efforts.
Minke Whales may be an exception because they have faster reproductive rates. I would need to see long term data to know if harvesting is having an impact, and a life table to know age structure etc. However that does not alleviate the moral argument regarding killing intelligent animals when we dont need to even if it is the case.
My guess is with all that science research the Japanese are doing, they'll be world experts on keeping the whaling down to a sustainable level
Actually no. harvesting quotas are almost never based on sound science. They are political and economic in nature.
Very well. They aren't in danger of making the minks go away any time soon. However, that does come back to a point I made earlier: if they can't actually use that meat, and they aren't actually doing much in the way of research, then can it not still be claimed that the practice is wasteful?
It is not a matter of the number, but what individuals they are harvesting. I cant find the statistics unfortunately (I will search the peer reviewed lit, but I am not sure it will be available) but considering that large adult females (particularly when calving) are easier to catch... yeah there goes the population even if the actual numbers are small. It all depends on the numbers. Search the literature tomorrow I will.
Everyone who participates in an ethical transgression does deserve condemnation for it. The idea of selecting a single scapegoat and letting everyone else off the hook is very Biblical, but that doesn't make it right.
As a nearly universal rule of the thumb, if the bible likes it... it is wrong.
I'm involved in global warming, the killing of sentient creatures for food, the destruction of ecosystems and the pumping of toxic things into the environment. I'm involved in many, many "ethical transgressions", but you can hardly consider me responsible for being a product of my society.
See, I actually take ethical responsibility for those things. I am a poor grad student who pays a carbon offset and drives as high a milage car as I can afford. I reuse my bottles as cups and use reusable bags, I eat as low on the food chain as I can without not eating meat (mostly free range poultry though I do eat beef at restaurants once in a blue moon, and try to avoid pork). I do what I can to minimize my impact, and accept responsibility for the things I cannot or am personally unwilling to change, and I make up for those things by focusing my research on matters pertaining to conservation of amphibians (predator-prey interactions of introduced species).
Your ethical system absolves you of moral responsibility. You are a cowardly little shit.
Yes, the 65% of the original experiment is truly a VAST majority, and it is debatable precisely how "easily" that environment of authority can be replicated in reality. Would you bet against that the results would be different if the subjects were asked to shoot the other person, even if the researcher assured them that it was for SCIENCE?
When the experiments were replicated, the numbers dropped REALLY fast when someone had to see the person suffer or interact with him in any way other than turning a dial.
Do you hold air force pilots responsible for collateral damage, or is it the officers that instructed them to bomb that specific building?
Collateral damage is necessary in war. Unavoidable, and the pilot as well as officers bear responsibility for it. This is where the notion of a Just War comes in. If the war is being conducted to avoid a greater evil (like Hitler) then it is not the ugliest thing and picking the lesser of two evils does not make you a bad person.
If on the other hand said pilot was ordered to target civilians for giggles and he obeyed that order he is a murderer. That is why soldiers are allowed to disobey orders that are illegal or that violate their consciences.
Actually, my ethical philosophy is Ethical subjectivism
which is not an ethical system at all because it provides no guidance for decision making.
Fucktard.
