Defending Wild Salmon from Greed and Ecological Ignorance

From Captain Paul Watson:

Sea Shepherd’s Operation Virus Hunter is focusing international attention on the health of wild salmon populations on the West coast of Canada and the threat of viruses and parasites from domestic salmon farms.

If the wild salmon disappear, the Orcas will not survive. If the wild salmon disappear, the culture of West Coast First Nations will be seriously damaged. If the wild salmon disappear, bears and eagles and many …other species will also disappear.

What the Norwegian salmon farm industry has done is to introduce and exotic non-native species – the Atlantic salmon into an eco-system it does not belong. They then concentrated these fish in captive pens where they breed parasites and develop viral infections. The industry counters this with antibiotics but the viruses persist and the wild salmon have no defenses against viruses or parasites.

Salmon should not be confined to concentration camps. Wild fish populations should not be wiped out to feed the captive inmates. The diseases and parasites from the captive inmates should not be allowed to infect wild salmon populations.

DFO should be doing their job and not allowing the salmon farms to police themselves.

Sea Shepherd stands behind Dr. Alexandra Morton and the majority of the First Nations on the West Coast in opposing the ecological destructions being caused by these floating virus and fish fecal factories.

First Nations groups stand up to anti-farm salmon activists

B.C.-based biologist Alexandra Morton was elbow-to-elbow with Pamela Anderson of Baywatch fame and environmentalist and broadcaster David Suzuki for the…

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The Laws Of Ecology And The Survival Of The Human Species

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-watson/the-laws-of-ecology-and-t_b_11324490.html

08/05/2016

by Captain Paul Watson Founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

I was raised in a small fishing village on the Passamaquoddy Bay in New Brunswick, Canada and I still vividly remember the way things were in the Fifties. The way things were then is not the way things are now.

I’m not talking about technological, industrial or scientific progress. I’m referring to the health and stability of eco-systems. What was once strong is now weak. What was once rich in diversity is now very much the poorer.

I have been blessed, or perhaps cursed, with the gift of near total recall. I see the images of the past as clearly as the days that were. As a result it has been difficult for me to adapt to diminishment. I see the shells on the beaches that are no longer there, the little crabs under the rocks, now gone, the schools of fishes, the pods of dolphins, the beaches free of plastic.

I began traveling the world in 1967 — hitch-hiking and riding the rails across Canada; joining the Norwegian merchant marine; crossing the Pacific and Indian Oceans; traveling through Japan, Iran, Mozambique and South Africa, working as a tour guide in Turkey and Syria, co-founding the Greenpeace Foundation in 1972 and, in 1977, founding the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson some forty years ago when he founded the non-profit.

Many things that I saw then no longer exist – or have been severely damaged, changed and diminished.

In the Sixties we did not buy water in plastic bottles. In the Sixties the word ‘sustainable ‘was never used in an ecological context, and except for Rachel Carson, there were very few with the vision to see into the future, where we were going, what we were doing.

But slowly, awareness crept into the psyche of more and more people. People began to understand what the word ecology meant. We saw the creation of Earth Day, and in 1972, the first global meeting on the environment in Stockholm, Sweden that I covered as a journalist.

Gradually, the insight into what were doing became more prevalent and to those who understood, the price to be paid was to be labeled radicals, militants, and a new word – eco-terrorist.

The real “crime” of eco-terrorism was not burning down a ski lodge, toppling a power line or spiking a tree. Such things are only outbursts of desperation and frustration. The real crime of eco-terrorism was having thought, perception, and imagination. In other words, the questioning of the modern economic, corporate and political paradigm.

The word eco-terrorism should be more accurately used for the destruction caused by progress like the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal or the BP Deep Water Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Picture of an oil rig taken during Sea Shepherd’s Operation Toxic Gulf in 2014.

In the Seventies, the late Robert Hunter, along with Roberta Hunter, Dr. Patrick Moore, David Garrick, Rod Marining and myself observed and wrote down the three laws of ecology. What we realized was that these laws are the key to the survival of biodiversity on the planet and also the key to the survival of the human species. We realized that no species could survive outside of the three basic and imperative ecological laws.

The law of diversity: The strength of an eco-system is dependent upon the diversity of species within it.

The law of interdependence: All species are interdependent with each other.

The law of finite resources: There are limits to growth and limits to carrying capacity.

The increase of population in one species leads to the increase in consumption
of resources by that species. This leads to diminishment of diversity of other species, which in turn leads to diminishment of interdependence among species.

For example, increasing diminishment of phytoplankton populations in the sea is causing diminishment of many other species as well as a 40% diminishment in oxygen production since 1950. Diminishment of whale populations has contributed to the diminishment of phytoplankton populations because whale feces are a major source of nutrients (esp. iron and nitrogen) for phytoplankton.

The planet simply cannot tolerate 7.5 billion (and growing) primarily meat and fish eating necrovores. The killing of 65 billion domestic animals each year is contributing more greenhouse gases to the planet than the entire transportation industry. The industrial stripping of life from the sea is causing unprecedented biodiversity collapse in marine eco-systems.

Ecological systems globally are collapsing from coral reefs to rainforests because humanity is exploiting resources far beyond the capacity of eco-systems to create and renew natural resources.

Diminishment of eco-systems is also leading to the breakdown of human social structures causing global conflict in the form of wars and domestic violence. Terrorism is not the cause of society’s problems, it is merely a symptom.

Humans are compromised by medieval paradigms like territorial dominance, hierarchical desires and superstitious beliefs combined with primitive primate behavior like greed and fear.

Sea Shepherd’s 2010 Faeroe Islands Dolphin Defense Campaign: Operation Grindstop. Photo credit: Sea Shepherd /Sofia Jonsson

The fishing village that I lived in as a child is no longer a fishing village. The relative innocence of our lives as children of the Fifties and Sixties is no more. The African bush, the Arctic tundra, the marine reserve of the Galapagos Islands, the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazonian rainforests that I once traveled through are no longer what they recently were.

Humans have this amazing ability to adapt to diminishment. It’s a trait that was exceptionally useful when we lived as hunter-gatherers. We adapted to food shortages, to changes in the weather and to the world as it evolved around us. Today we are trying to adapt to the destruction brought on by ourselves and that adaption is taking the form of more and more control by governments and corporations and a blind reliance on corporate technologies.

We no longer have the empathy we once felt. I vividly remember the events of October 23rd, 1958. I was seven years old on the day of the Springhill Mine Disaster in Nova Scotia. 75 men died and 99 were rescue. I remember crying for the fate of people I did not know and feeling excited every time a miner was brought to the surface alive. I no longer have that capacity. Perhaps I lost it when I became an adult, or perhaps society no longer has room for such emotions.

Disaster happened and we grieved for people we did not know. A few weeks ago nearly 100 people were viciously murdered within a few kilometres of where I live when a deranged man mowed them down with a large truck in Nice, France. Last week, a priest was beheaded in France. Every week brings us more stories about mass killings in the Middle East, Africa, America etc. It’s a worldwide pain-fest of chaos and violence and yet it is met with complacency for the most part and a predictable Facebook posting of — “say a prayer for Paris, or Orlando, or Nice, or Beirut, or Istanbul” in a litany of self-indulgent adaptation to tragedy, before being quickly forgotten.

This is not the world of my childhood. We remembered the horrors of World War II with real emotion. I remember talking with both World War I and World War II veterans and feeling their pain. Today it’s just another short-term item on the news, in a world that seeks to escape through movies, celebrities, video games and increasingly more fanatical religious fervor.

Here is the reality. As human populations increase, the consumption of resources increases with it. But because resources are finite and the rate of renewables is overcome by demand, this can only lead to one result — the collapse of resource availability.

And because we are literally stealing resources from other species, this will lead to
diminishment of species and habitats, which will contribute to even more resource diminishment.

Sea Shepherd’s 2008 Seal Defense Campaign photographs the murder and carcass dragging of a seal. Photo credit: Sea Shepherd / Greg Hager

At COP 21, I called for an end to worldwide government subsidies for industrialized fishing and at least a 50-year moratorium on commercial industrialized fishing. That solution was not given a moment’s thought at a conference that did not even take into account the imperative role of the Ocean in addressing climate change.

My opinion of COP 21 is that governments were not looking for solutions. They were looking for the appearance of solutions. They certainly did not want to hear about solutions from people like me. They want solutions that are accompanied by jobs and profit. The one thing they do not want is any form of economic sacrifice.

I also do not believe that the majority of humanity — certainly not the leadership — understand the true gravity of the situation. There are six viewpoints concerning climate change: 1. Denial 2. Acceptance, with the view of it being a positive development. 3. Acceptance with the belief that science and technology will save the day. 4. Acceptance, but refusal to fully appreciate the consequences. 5. Apathy. 6. Acceptance with the resolve to find real solutions.

Those who are in denial have vested self interests in doing so, motivated primarily by greed or ignorance. My old Greenpeace colleague Patrick Moore sees climate change as an opportunity for longer growing seasons and better weather. (He lives in Canada and I don’t think he’s really thought it through.) Others like Elon Musk see our salvation in science, in moving off-world or developing artificial eco-systems on Earth. Most responsible world leaders recognize the problem but are too politically-impotent to address it with realistic solutions because those solutions would not be politically popular. And as with everything, the majority of the world is apathetic and too self-absorbed with entertaining themselves (developed world) or surviving (underdeveloped world).

On this path we are on now, the future is somewhat predictable. More resource wars, more poverty, more accumulation of wealth by the minority of privileged people, more disease, more civil strife and with the collapse of biodiversity – global mass starvation, and pestilence.

The rich tapestry of all our cultures and all our achievements in science and the arts hangs by threads linked to biodiversity.

If the bees are diminished, our crops are diminished. If the forests are diminished, we are diminished. If phytoplankton dies, we die! If the grasses die, we die!

We exist because of the geo-engineering contributions of millions of diverse species that keep our life support systems running. From bacteria to whales, from algae to the redwoods. If we undermine the foundations of this planetary life-support system, all that we have ever created will fall. We will be no more.

We made the mistake of declaring war on nature, and because of our technologies it looks like we are going to win this war. But because we are a part of nature, we will destroy ourselves in the process. Our enemy is ourselves and we are slowly becoming aware of that indisputable fact. We are destroying ourselves in a fruitless effort to save the image of what we believe ourselves to be.

In this war, we are slaughtering — through direct or indirect exploitation — millions of species and reducing their numbers to dangerously low levels while at the same time increasing human numbers to dangerously high levels.

Dolphin offal and intestines photographed during the 2011-12 Taiji Dolphin Defense Campaign. Photo credit: Sea Shepherd / Christoph Heylen

We are fighting this war against nature with chemicals, industrialized equipment, ever increasing extraction technologies (like fracking) and repression against any and all voices that rise up in dissent.

In our wake over the past two centuries we have left a trail of billions of bodies. We have tortured, slain, abused and wasted so many lives, obliterated entire species; and reduced rich diverse eco-systems to lifeless wastelands as we polluted the seas, the air and the soil with chemicals, heavy metals, plastic, radiation and industrialized farm sewage.

We were once horrified by the possibility of a Chernobyl or a Fukushima. But the accidents happened and we adapted and accepted. Now we are complacent.

In the process we are becoming sociopathic as a species. We are losing the ability to express empathy and compassion. We idolize soldiers, hunters, and resource developers without giving a thought to their victims. We revel in violent fantasies hailing two-dimensional fantasy killers as heroes. We have become increasingly more Darwinian in our outlook that the weak (other species) must perish so that the strong (ourselves) may survive. We forget that Darwinism recognizes the laws of ecology and we cannot pick and choose when it comes to the laws of nature. In the end nature controls us, we do not control nature.

The consequences of our actions are not going to happen centuries from now. They are going to happen within this century. Oceanic ecosystems are collapsing — now! The planet is getting warmer — now! Phytoplankton is being diminished — now!

To be blunt — the planet is dying now, and we are killing it!

From what I have experienced and from what I see there is only one thing that can prevent us from falling victim to the consequences of ignoring the laws of ecology.

We must shake off the anthropocentric mindset and embrace a biocentric understanding of the natural world. We can do this because we have wonderful teachers in indigenous communities worldwide who have lived biocentric lifestyles for thousands of years just as our species all once did. We need to learn to live in harmony with other species.

We need to establish a moratorium on industrialized fishing, logging and farming.

We need to stop producing goods that have no intrinsic value — all the useless plastic baubles for entertainment and self-indulgence. We need to stop mass-producing plastic that is choking our global seas. We need to stop injecting poisons into the soil and dumping toxins into the sea. We need to abolish cultural practices that destroy life for the sole purpose of entertaining ourselves.

Of course it won’t be easy but do we really want the epitaph for our species to be, “Well we needed the jobs?”

Without ecology there is no economy.

I am not a pessimist and I’ve never been prone to pessimistic thoughts. There are solutions. We see people of compassion, imagination and courage around us working to make this a better world — devoting themselves to protecting species and habitats; finding organic agricultural alternatives; and developing more eco-friendly forms of energy production. Innovators, thinkers, activists, artists, leaders and educators — these people are among us and their numbers are growing.

It is often said that the problems are overwhelming and the solutions are impossible. I don’t buy this. The solution to an impossible problem is to find an impossible solution.

It can be done. In 1972, the very idea that Nelson Mandela would one day be President of South Africa was unthinkable and impossible — yet the impossible became possible.

It’s never easy but it is possible and possibilities are achieved through courage, imagination, passion and love.

I learned from the Mohawks years ago that we must live our lives by taking into account the consequences of our every action on all future generations of all species.

If we love our children and grandchildren we must recognize that their world will not be our world. Their world will be greatly diminished and unrecognizable from the world of our childhoods. Each and every child born in the 21st Century is facing challenges that no human being has ever faced in the entire history of our species:

Emerging pathogens from the permafrost. (Just this summer, an anthrax virus from a recently thawed reindeer carcass broke out killing 1,500 reindeer and hospitalizing 13 people in Russia.) Eruptions of methane opening huge craters in the earth in Siberia, mass-accelerated extinction of plants and animals, pollution, wars and more wars, irrational violence in the form of individual, religious and state terrorism, the collapse of entire eco-systems.

This is not doom and gloom fear mongering. It is simply a realistic observation of the consequences of our deliberately ignoring of the laws of ecology. I call it the Cassandra Principle.

Cassandra was the prophetess of ancient Troy whose curse was the ability to see the future and to have everyone dismiss her prophecies. No one listened to her, instead they ridiculed her. Yet she was right. All that she predicted came to pass and Troy was destroyed.

Years ago I had a critic in the media label me as a doom and gloom Cassandra. I replied, “Maybe, but don’t forget one thing. Cassandra was right.”

Sea Shepherd’s Galapagos Director Sean O’Hearn-Gimenez on a shark finning arrest operation om 2007.

And over the years I have made predictions (that were ridiculed and dismissed) that have come true. In 1982 I publicly predicted the collapse of the North Atlantic Cod fishery. It happened a decade later. In 1978 I predicted the destruction of one half of the African elephant population in Defenders magazine. I was wrong. Some two thirds of the population have been destroyed. In 1984, I predicted ecological destruction by salmon farms including the spreading of viruses to wild salmon populations. Every prediction was based on observation with reference to the laws of ecology and every prediction was dismissed.

Nothing has changed. Today I am predicting the death of worldwide coral reef eco-systems by 2025, the total collapse of worldwide commercial fishing operations by 2030; and the emergence of more virulent viral diseases in the coming decades. It does not take any exceptional foresight to predict that war will be the major business of the next half-century, as well as the rise of more authoritarian governments.

Recently my old friend Rod Marining, also a co-founder of Greenpeace, said to me: “The transformation of human consciousness on a mass scale can not happen, unless there are two factors. First, a huge mass visual death threat to survival of our species, and two, the threat of the loss of a people’s jobs or their values. Once theses two factors are in place humans begin to transform their thinking over night.”

I have seen the future written in the patterns of our behavior, and it is not a pleasant future, in fact it is not much of a future at all.

The four horses have arrived. As death sits astride the pale horse, the other three horses of pestilence, famine and war and terrorism are stampeding at full gallop toward us while our backs are turned away from them. And when they trample us, we may look up from our latest entertainment triviality to see ourselves in the dust of the ecological apocalypse.

I also see the possibility of salvation. By listening to the words and observing the actions of indigenous people. By looking into the eyes of our children. By stepping outside the circle of anthropocentrism. By understanding that we are part of the Continuum. By refusing to participate in the anthropocentric illusion. By embracing biocentrism and fully understanding the laws of ecology, and the fact that these laws cannot — must not — be ignored if we wish to survive.

Follow Captain Paul Watson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/captpaulwatson

How Dare They Bite Back! Humanity’s Illogical Rage When the Beast Bites Back

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

A two-year old boy is grabbed by an alligator and dragged into a Floridian swamp and killed.

The response is murderous retribution towards every alligator found in the vicinity. So far five alligators have been killed despite failing to identify the alligator involved.

A nine-year old boy falls into a gorilla enclosure at a zoo. The gorilla does not injure the boy yet is killed nonetheless as a precaution.

A grizzly bear kills a hunter and is in turn hunted down and slain for its “crime.”

A spearfishing woman is killed by a shark and the Western Australian government immediately initiates a policy of extermination of an endangered shark species.

In a world dominated by humanity, animals are enslaved, slaughtered, tortured, abused and treated like expendable material property without consideration that they are living self aware sentient beings.

Their lives have no intrinsic value outside of the value we decide to place on them.

Humans refuse to acknowledge intelligence or emotions in animals yet we perveresly hold animals directly responsible for their actions.

The killing of a two-year old boy is a sad tragedy in human eyes of course, but what does a vendetta against alligators accomplish? The child is sadly dead. The alligator simply did what alligators do. Killing five alligators or more in retaliation is an illogical and murderous expression of outrage at the fact that a non-human did not acknowledge the “superiority” of humanity.

We humans have fashioned ourselves as special and extraordinary, better than all other animals, endowed with unlimited privilege and entitlement.

As humans we have defined ourselves as the “master species” and to most animals, all humans are Nazis.

We slaughter 65 billion domestic animals each year and many more billions of fish, we massacre tens of millions of wild animals, torture millions of animals in labs, enslave millions more in cages and tanks, lay waste to thousands of square miles of life supporting habitats, yet when one of us is killed, and usually because of our own stupidity, we become irrationally and violently outraged.

In the minds of the majority of human beings, animals have no rights that any human being is obligated to respect. We own them, we dominate them and we hold total, ruthless and lethal dominion over them and as such we are under no obligation to acknowledge that they feel pain, that they suffer, that they have emotions, that they can think and reason, dream and are self aware sentient beings. We simply deny all these things to justify our anthropocentric dominance.

Being killed by an alligator, a shark or a bear is no different than being struck by lightning, drowning in the surf or having a coconut fall fatally upon your head. These tragic things happen but for some irrational reason when the cause of the incident is a sentient being, we are enraged and we demand retribution. We don’t chop down the coconut tree, but we do slay the shark.

We have made the rules that the animals must abide by even if they are unable to understand the rules.

What we are saying is that animals have no rights that we need to respect but animals are obligated to respect human lives and property even as we acknowledge they possess absolutely no moral or ethical basis for such an acknowledgement.

How many babies are snatched by alligators, how many people are killed by sharks how many people are slain by bears? Not many, and in the case of gorillas, not even a single human has died.

Humans on the other hand slay millions of other humans. Millions more die in accidents involving cars, planes, boats and other human made objects. More hunters are killed by other hunters than by wild animals.

Yes some innocent people are indeed killed by animals, it happens, but tens of millions of innocent animals are slaughtered by humans.

Sharks kill an average of seven people every year despite the fact that some two hundred million people enter the sea each and every day. If sharks were intentionally killing humans, the numbers would be in the thousands. Shark kills are rare and accidental yet humans kill over seventy million sharks every year. That’s the equivalent of exterminating the entire population of France in one year.

And many human victims of attacks by animals are also not always innocent. A hunter killed by an elephant or a lion, a bear or a wild boar cannot be described as an innocent. Nor can a matador, a spear fisherman or even an Orca trainer.

Despite this, the human response is an indictment of the animal in virtually every case, be it a matador or a child, and that indicates a special kind of illogical rage. The response is always equal no matter if the victim is innocent or guilty, if the attack was provoked or unprovoked. The human is always in the right, the animal is always in the wrong and that is because in every case the animal is considered an inferior to any human for any reason no matter the circumstances.

At the same time humans do grant special dispensation to some animals. People have an aversion to seeing a dog being killed in a movie but there is very little effective protests to stop the hundreds of dogs being boiled and spit roasted alive at the Yulan dog meat festival this month. We love our horses until they break a leg, after which we put a bullet in their head. We pet our cats and dogs as we eat cows and pigs and get arrogantly defensive if anyone points out the contradiction.

When humans are killed by humans we make the distinction between those we consider to be “bad” humans being killed and the “good” humans doing the killing. One side simply dehumanizes the other side to justify the killing.

This is made all the more easier with animals who are dehumanized by reason that they are not human already.

All of this is irrational behavior that defies logic.

How many more alligators must we kill in Florida before we feel justifiably revenged?

How many more sharks must be massacred until we achieve retribution?

How long will it be before we can replace primitive, vengeful retribution with a logical, rational and compassionate understanding of the relationship between humans and other species.

How long will it take before we can honestly describe ourselves as “mankind?”

 

 

Facebook:  Captain Paul Watson, SeaShepherd

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Sea Shepherd Announces Operation Jairo II

baby sea turtle trying to make it to the seaLOS ANGELES, CA – JUNE 8, 2016:  Today, on World Oceans Day, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is proud to announce its latest campaign to defend, conserve and protect our oceans.

The campaign, Operation Jairo II, will span three countries including the United States, Honduras and Costa Rica to protect endangered sea turtles. The launch comes on the heels of Sea Shepherd’s announcement of its first full-length feature film, Why Just One?, chronicling the organization’s successful 2015 Operation Jairo campaign.

The crowd-funded documentary Why Just One? raised its goal of $18,000 in one day to complete the production and has a star-studded list of names supporting it. Like its predecessor, Operation Jairo II is named after Jairo Mora Sandoval, a Costa Rican turtle defender who was brutally murdered on May 31, 2013 while attempting to protect leatherback turtle nests.

There are seven species of sea turtles in the world. Four have been identified as “endangered” or “critically endangered,” and two are classed as “vulnerable,” by the IUCN Red List of Endangered species. Sea turtles are some of the oldest living creatures, one of the few who’ve watched dinosaurs evolve and become extinct. They are now facing the same fate as their predecessors.

“This species which has survived so much, may not survive us,” commented Sea Shepherd founder Captain Paul Watson.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is requesting donations to fund Operation Jairo II by asking fans to become monthly donors. To donate, visit http://my.seashepherd.org/DAC.

About Operation Jairo II

Operation Jairo II will launch in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on July 15 until September 1, with volunteers working to protect green, loggerhead, and leatherback sea turtles. Sea Shepherd will work with Sea Turtle Oversight Protection (S.T.O.P.) to protect sea turtle nests and guide hatchlings to the sea, away from the commercial lighting that disorients them.

The Honduras campaign will be held in Utila from August 1 to November 1, where Sea Shepherd volunteers will protect hawksbill, green, and loggerhead sea turtles. Partnering with Bay Island Conservation Association (B.I.C.A.), Sea Shepherd will protect nesting females and nests from poachers. The Honduran Navy will provide security for beach patrols.

From September 1 to December 1, Operation Jairo II will move to Costa Rica where ground campaign volunteers will work in Jaco to protect primarily olive ridley and green sea turtles. The Jaco police are teaming with Sea Shepherd volunteers to protect nesting females and nests from poachers. Nests will be relocated to a hatchery run by the Jaco police force.

Campaign volunteers will conduct weekly beach cleanups in all three locations.

Click here to volunteer for Operation Jairo II.  Email the completed application to campaigns@seashepherd.org

Paris talks a fraud: Watered down climate agreement is too little, too late

by Sea Shepherd’s Captain Paul Watson

COP 21 – The Positives and the Negatives

The positive: (1) The attention of the world has been focused on the issue of climate change. (2) The issue has been given great credibility through the recognition and participation of 195 nations. (3) there will most likely be a surge in support for alternative energy technologies. (4) It could have been worst.

The negatives: (1) Having attended these international conferences since 1972 I’ve yet to see any past agreements translated… into action. So we shall see. Promises are cheap. (2) the Ocean was virtually ignored. (3) Oxygen depletion was completely ignored as was phytoplankton diminishment. (4) the issue of animal agriculture was not only ignored it, the food concessions at the events contradicted that concern 100%. Serving fish and chips during an ocean forum and hamburgers at forums dealing with greenhouse gas emissions was a disconnect that was painfully obvious. You would think the delegates and the NGO’s could have weathered a meat free two weeks considering that the animal agriculture industry slaughtering 65 billion animals a year produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation industry. (5) and no one wanted to hear about cutting off the 75 + billion dollar government subsidies to the industrialized fishing industry.

In the agreement signed in the COP21 climate deal: the words “fossil fuels” do not appear. Neither do the words “oil” or “coal.” I find that quite revealing.

My two solutions to address climate change were two solutions that no one wanted to hear. (1) shut down industrialized fishing and allow the ocean ecosystems to repair themselves. And (2) convert the majority of the 7.5. billion humans on the planet to a plant based diet.

My summation is that this watered down agreement is too little, too late, and what is on paper will most likely not see any realistic application in practice.

Hopefully I will be proven wrong.

Also: James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks ‘a fraud’

The former Nasa scientist criticizes the talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020,

“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”

Makah Whaling – Whales Must Be Protected in U.S. Waters

Makah Whaling – Whales Must Be Protected in U.S. Waters

March 11, 2015 

http://www.seashepherd.org/commentary-and-editorials/2015/03/11/makah-whaling-whales-must-be-protected-in-us-waters-692

Commentary by Sea Shepherd Founder, Captain Paul Watson

Gray Whale
Photo courtesy of Wiki media commons.

Sea Shepherd Legal (SSL) will make a presentation on April 27th in Seattle at a hearing to be held by NOAA Fisheries on the proposal by the Makah Tribe to kill gray whales in the waters off Washington state. SSL’s position is that this permission should not be granted and that whales must be protected 100% in U.S. waters.

SSL is also exploring legal avenues of opposition to this proposal. Tradition and culture must never be a justification for the killing of whales and dolphins or for violating international conservation law.

In 1998, Sea Shepherd exposed documents released under the Freedom of Information Act that exposed negotiations between the Makah and the Japanese whaling industry that would have sold meat from the “traditional” hunt to the Japanese market.

As Makah Tribal Elder Alberta Thompson said at the time, “This is not tradition. It was part of our culture to weave baskets and to pick berries in the mountains. It was part of our culture to speak our language. No one want to weave baskets or to speak Makah. What they want to do is to kill a whale with an anti-tank gun – and that has never been a part of Makah culture.”

Sea Shepherd Legal is a 501(c)(3) entity, operating separately from Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Makah tribe grey whale hunt question reopened by NOAA report

In the Words of Farley Mowat

The world has suffered another great loss with the death of author, naturalist and avid animal advocate, Farley Mowat. I never had the opportunity to meet him, but I do feel extremely fortunate to have received an endorsement for my book from him, just two short years before his passing.

He didn’t use the internet, so I sent a manuscript to his assistant, who had to hand deliver it (presumably on snowshoes) to him at his place in eastern Canada. This is what he had her send back to me, which now holds a special place on the back cover of the book:

“Robertson’s new book could be titled The Big and Dirty Game, because that’s what it is about — the dirty, bloody business of killing other animals for sport and fun. Fun? Sure, that’s what the Sportsmen say . . but read about it for yourself . . .”   ~ Farley Mowat, Author of Never Cry Wolf and A Whale for the Killing

One of Farley Mowat’s many classic books, A Whale for the Killing, written in1972, was an autobiographical account of his moving to Newfoundland because of his love for the land and the sea, only to find himself at odds with herring fishermen who made sport of shooting at an 80-ton fin whale trapped in a lagoon by the tide. Although he had started off thinking folks around there were a quaint and pleasant lot, he grew increasingly bitter over the attitudes of so many of the locals who, in turn, resented him for “interfering” by trying to save the stranded leviathan.

Mr. Mowat writes, “My journal notes reflect my sense of bewilderment and loss. ‘…they’re essentially good people. I know that, but what sickens me is their simple failure to resist the impulse of savagery…they seem to be just as capable of being utterly loathsome as the bastards from the cities with their high-powered rifles and telescopic sights and their mindless compulsion to slaughter everything alive, from squirrels to elephants…I admired them so much because I saw them as a natural people, living in at least some degree of harmony with the natural world. Now they seem nauseatingly anxious to renounce all that and throw themselves into the stinking quagmire of our society which has perverted everything natural within itself, and is now busy destroying everything natural outside itself. How can they be so bloody stupid? How could I have been so bloody stupid?’”

Farley Mowat ends the chapter with another line I can well relate to: “I had withdrawn my compassion from them…now I bestowed it all upon the whale.”

And Farley Mowat writes here of the wrongheadedness of hunting intelligent animals, such as geese, in his foreword to Captain Paul Watson’s book Ocean Warrior:

“Almost all young children have a natural affinity for other animals, an attitude which seems to be endemic in young creatures of whatever species. I was no exception. As a child I fearlessly and happily consorted with frogs, snakes, chickens, squirrels and whatever else came my way.

“When I was a boy growing up on the Saskatchewan prairies, that feeling of affinity persisted—but it became perverted. Under my father’s tutelage I was taught to be a hunter; taught that “communion with nature” could be achieved over the barrel of a gun; taught that killing wild animals for sport establishes a mystic bond, “an ancient pact” between them and us.

“I learned first how to handle a BB gun, then a .22 rifle and finally a shotgun. With these I killed “vermin”—sparrows, gophers, crows and hawks. Having served that bloody apprenticeship, I began killing “game”—prairie chicken, ruffed grouse, and ducks. By the time I was fourteen, I had been fully indoctrinated with the sportsman’s view of wildlife as objects to be exploited for pleasure.

“Then I experienced a revelation.

“On a November day in 1935, my father and I were crouched in a muddy pit at the edge of a prairie slough, waiting for daybreak.

“The dawn, when it came at last, was grey and sombre. The sky lightened so imperceptibly that we could hardly detect the coming of the morning. We strained out eyes into swirling snow squalls. We flexed numb fingers in our shooting gloves.

“And then the dawn was pierced by the sonorous cries of seemingly endless flocks of geese that cam drifting, wraithlike, overhead. They were flying low that day. Snow Geese, startling white of breast, with jet-black wingtips, beat past while flocks of piebald wavies kept station at their flanks. An immense V of Canadas came close behind. As the rush of air through their great pinions sounded in our ears, we jumped up and fired. The sound of the shots seemed puny, and was lost at once in the immensity of wind and wings.

“One goose fell, appearing gigantic in the tenuous light as it spiralled sharply down. It struck the water a hundred yards from shore and I saw that it had only been winged. It swam off into the growing storm, its neck outstreched, calling…calling…calling after the fast-disappearing flock.

“Driving home to Saskatoon that night I felt a sick repugnance for what we had done, but what was of far greater import, I was experiencing a poignant but indefinable sense of loss. I felt, although I could not then have expressed it in words, as if I had glimpsed another and quite magical world—a world of oneness—and had been denied entry into it through my own stupidity.

“I never hunted for sport again.”

 

Captain Paul Watson on Welfare Ranching

Welfare Ranching Show Down in Nevada

There is a silly little drama going on in Nevada and the Neo Cons, the militias and the welfare ranchers would have us believe there is another Waco about to happen.

For some strange reason I am on the Conservative Daily mailing list. I think they confused the word “conservation” with the word “conservative.”

Joe Otto who I assume speaks for the Conservative Daily sent me this message today (below) and I could not resist responding to it.

It’s all about a rancher named Cliven Bundy who has not paid his grazing fees since 1990 and is now upset that the government has come to collect over two decades in back fees.

You see, Cliven believes that he has every right to graze his cows free of charge on public land. It’s called welfare ranching and they believe their “right” to feed at the public trough trumps the right of endangered species to exist.

So I decided to inject my comments into Otto’s somewhat hysterical letter defending Cliven and his fellow welfare ranchers from the tyranny of Obama. You see when anything happens they don’t agree with, Obama is always at fault, and Obama is especially at fault when the thing the Neo Cons are upset with is something initiated by one of the two former Bush Presidents like this particular case.

Anyhow, this is Otto’s letter with my comments.

Dear Conservative, (PW: You mean dear conservationist Otto. You were addressing me I think.)

By now you have probably heard about the crisis surrounding the Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada. In case you haven’t, here is the basic synopsis.

(PW: Yes the Fox Network has their undies in a knot over this, which means it is hardly a major story elsewhere.)

Cliven Bundy is a cattle rancher whose family has lived near Bunkerville, NV for the last 140 years. The Bundy family’s cattle have always grazed on what had always been state-owned, public land. In 1993, the Federal Government discovered that Bundy’s grazing area was also home to the endangered Desert Tortoise. As a result, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) swooped in and took over control of the land. In order to dissuade farmers and ranchers from using the land and threatening the tortoise population, the BLM instituted a policy where ranchers would be forced to pay a grazing fee before using the land.

(PW: Let me see, the Bundy family has lived on the land for 140 years and the desert turtle has lived there for hundreds of thousands of years. The Bundy family took their land by force from Native Americans but the turtles were there even before the Native Americans. In 1993, the government did not discover that the grazing area was home to the turtle. They knew that. What they discovered was that the turtle was endangered and one probable cause was over-grazing by rancher Bundy’s cows.)

For Cliven Bundy, this was an unacceptable affront to his livelihood. His family has lived off this land for over a century, long before the creation of the BLM, and the idea that he would now have to pay a tax to protect a turtle was nothing short of absurd.

(PW: To the turtles it is an unacceptable affront to their right to survive as a species. Rancher Bundy believes the turtle’s right to survive is absurd yet he believes he has a God-given right to graze his cattle for profit at public expense. It is also not a tax but a grazing fee. In exchange for the fee, Bundy gets to graze his cattle. Bundy wants free food for his cows at public expense. In other words he wants welfare.)

So, Bundy refused to pay the tax. He allowed his cattle to graze on the land and didn’t pay the federal government a dime to do it. Why should he? The land is technically state-owned public land, yet the federal government want’s a cut because of an endangered turtle. Well, after twenty years of court battles, the Bureau of Land Management has finally swooped in and begun confiscating Bundy’s cattle at gunpoint to pay the $1.1 million that he owes in back “grazing fees” for using public land! This is absurd and should be a wake-up call to everyone! The government doesn’t care about common sense or decency… these militarized agencies and bureaus will use every law, regulation, and technicality to come after YOU with the full weight of the Federal government!

(PW: The law assessed a fee and rancher Bundy refused to pay the fee for over two decades and now he seems surprised that the government has called to collect back fees. Otto states the land is state owned and public but somehow rancher Bundy has a right to use it free of charge. Bundy owes back fees and the government is collecting those back fees by the confiscation of the cattle that Bundy has been raising at the expense of the public. It’s a classic case of welfare ranching where the rancher believes he is entitled to have his animals raised for slaughter at public expense. I hope the government does use every law, regulations and technicality to collect the back fees and to protect the right of the turtles to survive.)

Tell Congress to STOP the out-of-control militarization of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and put an end to the Obama administration’s intimidation tactics!

(PW: I intend to tell Congress in the words “Good on you for defending the turtles and enforcing the grazing fees.”

How despicable is this… The federal government is seizing a rancher’s cattle because he didn’t pay a $1.1 Million “grazing fee” that was set up to protect a damn turtle! Anyone with half a brain can see that this is ludicrous… yet the government continues to wage its war on Cliven Bundy and proceeds to seize his cattle at gunpoint.

(PW: If anyone else does not pay their bills, they forfeit their property. Why should ranchers be exempt and above the law. Why should the public support Cliven’s damn cows? Why do his damn cows have more rights than the desert tortoise? The government is not waging war on Bundy, they are simply enforcing the law. Personally I disapproved of the fee myself. He should have been banned completely from grazing his cows on the land occupied by an endangered species.”)

I’ve said it before: It is absolutely ridiculous that we have so many militarized, non-law enforcement agencies in government. Agencies like the Department of Education, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the IRS, and even the Bureau of Land Management have been arming themselves to the teeth for years.

(PW: I’ve never seen an armed IRS agent, That would be scary, hell they are scary enough unarmed. I have certainly never seen an armed member of the Department of Education but considering all the school shootings, that might not be a bad idea. A law has been broken and it is being enforced. Pretty damn straight forward to me.)

Now, the full weight of the government has come down on the Bundy ranch. There are snipers watching the family’s movements, armed agents rounding up cattle, and the BLM has effectively made the whole area a “constitution free zone,” or at least that’s what they want it to be. The land is public land on a public road. Yet, anyone who wants to protest the government’s tyrannical actions is limited to doing so within a preset “First Amendment Zone” set up by government officials.

(PW: Can someone tell me where in the Constitution it says that ranchers have the right to graze for free on public land? The land as Otto says is public land on a public road. It is not Clive Bundy’s land. It is however turtle land. Thank you United States government for defending our endangered turtles. As for snipers, the fact is with dozens of trigger happy militia nut bars in camo, armed to the teeth, the deployment of snipers seems like a reasonable response. I admit the First Amendment zone is unacceptable but by order of the Governor of Nevada it has been taken down.)

That is ridiculous, and the protesters have fanned out, taking their frustration directly to the federal agents. In the last two days, one protester has been tackled to the ground and another has been shot with a stun gun. Now, militias from around the country have been mobilized and are beginning to arrive in Nevada to defend the ranch from this clearly tyrannical action. One county official warned the “inbred” militiamen (his words, not mine) from neighboring Utah that if they come to Cliven Bundy’s aid, then they “better have funeral plans.”

(PW: Oh no not the Mormons!!! I hope this is not another Mountain Meadow Massacre. It is amazing to see so many ultra conservatives ready to rise up and die to defend welfare rights for ranchers. Oh the tyranny of collecting unpaid bills.)

How despicable is that? Rather than defend the local rancher against the government thugs, the local Clark County Commissioner is actually threatening people if they show up to help him!

(PW: Yes I would imagine that the Clark County Commissioner would be opposing mob rule. When a bunch of wild eyed men in camo arrive with heavy weaponry it is reasonable for the County Commissioner to condemn their invasion of his county.)

I pray to God that there isn’t bloodshed. I really hope that the Federal government realizes that they are waging this war over nothing but a damn turtle and pull back. I mean, think about it… people could actually die over a dispute over cattle grazing on a turtle sanctuary… What on earth is this world coming to?

(PW: It is a world where human greed is eradicating endangered species and diminishing biodiversity. Otto you said it yourself, it’s a turtle sanctuary. It seems to me that people would be making a decision to risk dying for some damn cow. I think the turtle is much more deserving, after all it is a sanctuary for turtles. This is not a dispute over a turtle anyhow, it is a dispute over the fact that a welfare rancher has refused to pay his grazing bill.)

The fact remains that this is just one of the latest attempts for the Federal government to use loopholes to seize property for the “common good.” There is a case in Colorado where a couple’s mountain cabin is being seized and demolished to create “open space.” The government is actually using eminent domain to seize a piece of property just to create more open space.

(PW: If you build a cabin on public land you don’t have rights to the land just because you built the cabin. People have seized too much open space for their own use and by doing so they deprive nature of open space for wildlife. Nature needs more open spaces, more turtles and fewer cows.)

Rather than using common sense and restraint, the Federal government looks for every opportunity to come down hard on average citizens! This has to stop!

(PW: If citizens are a threat to the survival of an endangered species they should be stopped. Welfare ranchers are not average citizens, they are people who have grown rich at the public expense.)

The government shouldn’t be allowed to levy $1.1 Million fines on hard working Americans because their family’s ranch’s historical grazing grounds are now occupied by an endangered turtle! Americans from across the country shouldn’t have to mobilize in order to fend off tyrannical government agents!

(PW: It is not a fine, it’s a grazing fee, a fee that rancher Bundy has refused to pay for over two decades. Bundy’s lands are not now being occupied by an endangered turtle. The turtle’s land is being occupied by Bundy’s cattle.)

What if the government came into your home or business and threatened you because of a technicality or nonsense regulation? Things like this happen every day across America because we have given the Executive branch and its numerous agencies too much power over our lives!

(PW: When the U.S. Court and the IRS came after us for defending whales they were acting on the request of the Japanese whalers, I did not see many conservatives defending our rights to defend the whales. No most of them were defending the “right” of Japanese whalers to use American courts to stop American whale defenders.)

The Obama administration wouldn’t even send in one soldier to protect our ambassador in Benghazi, but it has sent in over 200 agents to harass a rancher in Nevada! This is despicable! The time has come to rein in these out of control, militarized government agencies. Congress must put an end to the Obama administration’s intimidation tactics!

(PW) Wow, they actually managed to fit Libya into their rant. That’s a stretch. The law removing free grazing rights came under the George H. Bush administration, not Obama.)

Tell Congress to STOP the out-of-control militarization of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and put an end to the Obama administration’s intimidation tactics!

I will tell them in the words of George W. Bush, “Go get ‘em boys.” We need to put an end to Welfare ranching.

Sincerely,
Joe Otto
Conservative Daily

Sea Shepherd Founder to Bill Maher: ‘If Oceans Die, We Die’

 

http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/08/sea-shepherd-bill-maher/

Brandon Baker | April 8, 2014

You can always expect to see Captain Paul Watson on the front lines of the battle to conserve and protect marine ecosystems for wildlife. He and his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have been doing it for nearly 40 years.

A late-night, cable television got the chance to learn more about Watson’s mission during the most recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. He discussed some of his biggest enemies—Japanese whalers—and his joy regarding last week’s International Court of Justice ruling that Japan’s “research whaling” is illegal. It marked a big moment for Watson, who says he has been labeled an “eco-terrorist” for years.

“I’m not an eco-terrorist—I don’t work for BP,” he said to a round of applause from the studio audience.

Back in February, chapters of Watson’s organization hosted “World Love for Dolphins Day” demonstrations in large cities, calling for an end to brutal dolphin hunts in Taiji, Japan’s killing cove.

Watson has also been jailed for his cause. He was arrested two years ago in Germany for extradition to Costa Rica for ship traffic violation as he exposed an illegal shark finning operation on Guatemalan waters run by a Costa Rican company.

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Captain Paul Watson’s Message to Patriarch Duck Dunce

My Message to the Patriarch Duck Dunce

From one so called Reality TV Star to Another

Captain Paul Watson of Animal Planet’s Whale Wars sends a message to Phil Robertson of A&E’s Duck Dynasty.

Dear Phil,

I am confused. How can you equate homosexuality with bestiality? You’re hardly in a position to say such a thing when your business is manufacturing duck mating calls that essentially declare that you want to fuck a duck.

You are flirting with bestiality Phil.

You not only seduce defenseless innocent ducks, you kill them when they approach you. Sort of reminds me of Ted Bundy.

You are also seducing ducks through fraudulent behavior. Essentially you are lying to the ducks. And you’re peddling duck seduction devices in a quack-pot scheme to enrich yourself on the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of innocent ducks.

I picked up a copy of the New Testament to see what Jesus Christ or any of the disciples had to say about gay men and women. Incredibly I discovered that they never said anything at all about homosexuality. Jesus did however condemn the rich and you Phil Robertson are rich and I also do recall something in the tablets that Moses brought down from the mountain about not killing. It did not say thou shall not kill other human beings, it said, “Thou shall not kill.”

It seems to me that Jesus would have been more compassionate towards a gay man than to a rich man. So I think that Jesus would be more comfortable listening to Elton John than hearing your shotguns dropping his father’s children from the sky.

Now I know that it’s common for some Christians to cite Leviticus but if you believe Leviticus you need to go all the way, selling daughters into slavery, smiting and stoning and hating everyone that believes in something different than you do. But then again, I may be wrong but I recall that Jesus Christ came with a new message – one of love and forgiveness, compassion and kindness.

I can’t see Jesus defending war nor can I see him denying help to the poor. Nor can I see him spewing hatred for gays.

True Christianity can be a very beautiful thing – when practiced but unfortunately it is rarely practiced.

As for going to hell Phil, everyone goes to hell because if you do not believe in the Catholic faith you will go to Catholic hell and likewise Catholics will go to Protestant hell. From the way the various denominations have laid claim on heaven and hell everyone is going to someone’s hell.

But what I really don’t get is this. Why do people, and especially so-called Christians get all upset about gay people? How does gay marriage affect them? Why do they make it their business to interfere with the happiness of other people? Why does this threaten some people?

I mean Phil, how does gay marriage get in the way of you murdering ducks for dollars?

They certainly are not out there in the swamp gunning down what you consider your ducks and cracking red-neck jokes. There is simply no Godly reason they should be annoying you Phil unless, well unless you have had some inclination towards temptation in that particular direction of choice Phil and you are feeling guilty about your unspoken desires.

And as for freedom of speech, well, by all means you are free to have your bigoted opinions and no one is denying that. Your problem is that you broadcasted your bigoted opinions on television, and as such you must suffer the opinions of people who disagree with you and find your opinions to be vile and hateful.

A &E simply exercised their right to express their disagreement with your bigoted views. All those people you are saying are intolerant of your right to free speech are simply expressing their free speech to denounce your hateful rhetoric.

Of course you have Sarah Palin defending you. Good luck with that Phil.

Do you think that if I were to make racist statements about the Japanese that Animal Planet would not take me off the air? Of course they would and they would be right to do so. Our fight is with whalers who happen to be Japanese. Sometimes they are Norwegians. The point is we don’t condemn anyone on racial or cultural grounds and racism should never be tolerated, especially on the airwaves.

Phil, I don’t like you. It’s not because you’re white, supposedly Christian or seemingly heterosexual or that you have a strange and violent sexual relationship with ducks. I don’t like you because you’re a bigot and I don’t like you for murdering ducks.

The bottom line is you exercised your right to free speech and now you are suffering the consequences. The Constitution guarantees your right to free speech, it does not guarantee your right to not be held responsible for what you say.

You are free to continue making bigoted and hateful comments. No one is going to toss you into jail for it. That is what it means by freedom of speech.

You are however dreaming if you think that what you say does not have consequences. Enjoy your freedom of speech because you are going to have to pay for it – with consequences.

Oh and by the way, stop seducing and murdering ducks.

I’ll leave you with a little song I heard from a little girl the other day.

“Be kind to your animal friends
For a duck may be somebodies mother”

Yea, I know that is way beyond your comprehension of empathy but I’m sure Phil that if you repent of your sins of bigotry and lust for ducks that Jesus will forgive you.