Huh?

Speaking Albanese

The Annual IWC stoush is coming up again, but this time, there's a feeling even in Australia that it's lacking credibility in pushing an environmental agenda when it won't even sign up for Kyoto.

Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese said Senator Campbell would be taken more seriously if Australia was taking international action against climate change.
Senator Campbell left for Kiribati today for talks with officials on how to force the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to take action.

He also will visit the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu, both of which recently have shown interest in whale conservation.

Senator Campbell's Pacific visits are set against a background of his warning a week ago that pro-whaling forces looked set to win a majority on the IWC.

This bit though, got me laughing:

Senator Campbell said all Mr Albanese's comments did was give hope to the whaling nations and divert the issue.

"Really, in the environment, to use an old cliche, you need to be able to jog and chew gum," Senator Campbell said.

"Just because you are doing a tour of the Pacific to try to save whales, it doesn't mean you can also, at the same time, deal with greenhouse and other issues."

Did you understand the last bit? He says it doesn't mean that he can do both.
What a putz.

Meanwhile, here's an appetiser for things to come.

Foreign journalists here have long struggled to bridge the cultural divide over whaling between this country and the readers they cater to abroad. But this job is about to become much more difficult.

Japan and the prowhaling nations of Iceland and Norway are likely to win control of regulatory body the International Whaling Commission (IWC) when it meets in the West Indies in June.

Led by Tokyo, which has tirelessly lobbied for the return of commercial hunting, the three countries hope to secure 51 percent of IWC votes, paving the way for the reversal of the whaling ban that the environmental movement counts as one of its biggest victories.

Although scrapping the ban requires a 75 percent majority, control of the commission will be a huge propaganda boost to Tokyo's campaign and allow secret voting and other measures likely to help its cause.

The prospect of an end to the two-decade moratorium will make the conference the most vitriolic yet, after years of tension between the two bitterly opposed camps.

The IWC has failed to stop the three prowhaling nations from killing about 2,000 whales a year. Japan's whaling fleet recently returned from a "scientific expedition" to an Antarctic whale sanctuary with a haul of almost 1,000 whales, in defiance of the whaling body.

Pictures of the harpooned, bloodied animals went all around the world and Australia was one of several countries that labeled the expedition "a sham." But Japan has worked for years to win the support of over a dozen smaller nations, by buying their votes with foreign aid, claim critics.

Tokyo says the IWC has been hijacked by environmentalists and is "totally dysfunctional." Armed with its own surveys on whaling stocks, the prowhaling lobby is relishing another skirmish with what it calls the West's "culinary imperialists."

"We think it's possible to use whale resources in a sustainable way," says Hideki Moronuki of the Fisheries Agency. "We don't have much land, we have the sea. Japan has lost so much of its own culture already. Countries like the U.K. and America have their own resources. We don't tell them what to eat."

But strip away the rhetorical fog about "culture" and the issues become clearer. Sending factory ships thousands of kilometers from Japanese ports to hunt whales in sanctuaries is not the same as some idealized picture of locals engaged in sustainable fishing.

The agency claims there are close to a million Antarctic minkes and that it can hunt at a "scientifically sustainable" level, but so many other sources dispute those figures that it is simply impossible to take them at face value.

Moreover, "sustainability" arguments were heard when other species, such as gray whales, were being hunted to near extinction.

These issues, and the enormous damage that an end to the ban will likely cause to Japan's international reputation, should be the topic of a national debate, but the media here has so far remained silent.

Oh joy. The 'enormous damage' is not going to stop kids around the world buying PS3. Life goes on. You'd be surprised at what people don't care about - Like war and famine in Africa and Third World Debt. You know, actual people dying and stuff. Yet kill one whale and your whole country is a pariah? Yeah well, I've seen enough erotomaniac gaijin in Roppongi to be dissuaded of believeing that possible outcome. *Ugh*
There is this bit though, which might be encouraging to all:

One problem faced by this lobby is falling whale meat consumption. Even before 1986, when the moratorium on whaling began, whale eating was declining and about one percent of the population now eats it regularly, say most surveys.

With whale cuisine confined mostly to a handful of outlets, the prowhalers have struggled to dispose of Japan's growing stocks of whale meat -- almost 5,000 tons, according to one recent report.

This problem is being worked out by stealth. Last year, schoolchildren in rural Wakayama Prefecture found deep-fried whale in their lunchboxes, and similar schemes are afoot in government-related organizations that don't have to struggle for the consumers' pocket.

So economic and market reality might end whaling before moralising.
If nothing else, the annual IWC meet is always great blogging season.