Sure we can do that, I just didn’t want to hijack a conversation about what makes killing whales ok with a bunch of other separate considerations.
- Whales feel pain.
- It’s wrong to inflict pain on others unnecessarily.
- Killing whales is not necessary.
- Therefore, killing whales is bad.
Separately, there’s the environmental impact. No matter how sustainable the whaling is, it’s not like they’re overpopulating and need to be culled or something. Whales are important in the ocean ecosystem, and they’re good at sequestering carbon on the sea floor for a very very long time when they die. It seems pretty obvious to me that killing whales is done out of self interest (we like eating them, it’s our tradition, etc.) rather than out of some altruistic sense of duty to preserve the ecosystem, and not killing them at all would be the most sustainable solution.
And finally, I don’t know a ton about it but evidently there are some pretty serious health concerns with eating whales, that makes it seem like you could argue for not eating them (and therefore not killing them) purely out of self-interest to maintain your own personal health.
It seems pretty obvious to me that killing whales is done out of self interest (we like eating them, it’s our tradition, etc.) rather than out of some altruistic sense of duty to preserve the ecosystem, and not killing them at all would be the most sustainable solution.
Is everything you do altruistic? If no, then why should we be altruistic specifically there, if yes, then how do you manage to lie to yourself on such a fundamental level?
No of course not. I was mostly just trying to make the case that killing whales isn’t good for the environment, or is at least strictly worse than not killing them. The sustainability of whaling mostly refers to killing just few enough that we can continue killing them indefinitely, rather than any sort of positive effect on the environment. Clearly if we were actually interested in environmental sustainability we just wouldn’t be killing whales at all.
Did you have any thoughts about the other two points I made? I’m also curious why you’re so passionate about defending people who kill whales, since this seems like a pretty uncommon opinion.
If we were actually, without-compromise, interested in the sustainment of the environment we’d end the human race right here and now, because we’ll always have an oversized impact. Or we could realise that we’re not separate from our environment, nature in general, for some reason alienation from nature is rampant even among environmentalists, many they see it as this pristine, alien, innocent thing on a pedestal that they need to stay away from, never interfere, to protect it and the distance created there helps them (and those not identifying as environmentalists) to ignore the mercury they’re pumping into the oceans.
As such the question "what is good for the environment’ doesn’t really make sense – ecology 101 teaches us that you can’t see the environment separate from the creature, the creature separate from its environment. You can ask “what is good ecology” and that’s, as a first approximation, when things are thriving and interconnected so that mutual adaption occurs. The Faroese are connected to their whales, that’s all that matters to me here. They’re very much not seal clubbers, looking at their bank statements instead of the animals they’re hunting (and Greelanders aren’t, either. I could write another rant about the damage that knee-jerk moralistic seal fur embargo did but I’ll leave it at this, as well as a brief update. dig into it at your own leisure).
As to unnecessary pain: The Faroese actually agree with you. That’s why they switched to spinal lancing in favour of old, much less sure, methods. That’s why you bonk fish on the head before gutting them, why you don’t let them asphyxiate, that’s why you pet rabbits while aligning the bolt gun. It’s why stress hormones taste bad. Curious adaptation from our side, isn’t it? Heck, in a sense that’s even why you cut basil directly above a node, not mindlessly ripping off leaves. That’s a kind of consideration you’ll never see in a goat.
