Crafting a whaling “compromise”

So it appears the Bush administration appointee to the International Whaling Commission is trying to legitimize the least legitimate commercial harvesting enterprise in the world. According to the Sidney Herald, the commission’s chairman William Hogarth was recently trying “to craft a pact that would permit a new type of ‘coastal whaling’ in exchange for a commitment by Japan to scale back its ‘scientific’ whale hunts.” Given Hogarth is a Bush holdover, there are no surprises there. But with Obama in, we should view it as a new game completely. The world needs to ban whaling and most commercial fishing. And that’s what the discussion should be about.