Greasing the Wheels to Get At the Whales

It's an old story, but it never fails to shock--trading cash and equivalents for votes at the International Whaling Commission, the international convention that sets rules about the treatment of whales in the world's oceans.

Even though young people in Japan are hardly interested in eating whale meat, the government is still committed to killing whales, and seeks each year greater validation from the IWC for its currently unauthorized whale-killing gambits. The upcoming meeting, the 62nd annual gathering, starts in a couple of days in Agadir, Morocco. This year, the run up to the IWC meeting has been intense and fraught with controversy. The participating nations have been deliberating for some months already on the merits of a proposal that would suspend the commercial whaling moratorium, and allow Japan, Norway, and Iceland to hunt whales openly, under a system proponents claim will feature monitoring by the IWC and a schedule for reduction in catch over ten years.

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