Whale
Sanctuary Plan Demolished by Japan and Other Whaling Nations. The
proposed South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary (SAWS) could have finally become a
reality this year, if it weren't for certain nations that insist upon killing
these highly intelligent marine mammals. READ
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First and foremost, Brosnan is using his status to share some critical statistics about the whale community to illustrate just how badly these animals need our help. If you know anything about whaling, you know that it’s a bloody and brutal business. As Brosnan relays, while there have been strides in the past towards saving whales, such as the moratorium on commercial whaling which went into effect 30 years ago, there is still a lot of work to be done. Despite strong opposition from millions of people around the world, Norway, Iceland, and Japan are still hunting whales at an alarming rate.
Just to give you an idea of how severe this problem is, let’s lay out some of the undeniable facts. Firstly, 16,000 whales have been murdered every year for the past 83 years for a whopping total of 1,339,232 whales. Since 1986, over 25,000 whales have been murdered legally by Japan for “scientific research” (despite the fact that no data is ever published by reputable science journals from this so-called research). International communities recently told the country to halt the barbaric practice after realizing their research claims were completely unfounded, but Japan literally defied international law by continuing to hunt whales. And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to whale suffering since these awe-inspiring creatures are also dying off from marine debris, ship strikes, ocean acidification, climate change, and entanglement in fishing gear.
While the fact that we are severely damaging our oceans should be enough to spur change, we can’t have a discussion about the whaling problem without talking about the victims themselves. Whales are incredibly intelligent animals. They have a unique method of communication, they are very empathetic, and the part of their brain that is responsible for emotions and memory formation is actually more complex than humans! When you take into account these facts, the whaling industry appears even more horrific. These animals deserve so much more than what we are doing to them.
The Brosnans’ call to action comes at an important time. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), and the 30th anniversary of the moratorium on commercial whaling. The IWC will be conducting their biennial meeting in Slovenia this week, an event that Brosnan says should be used not only to highlight the achievements of the past but some of the major problems facing whales today.
“We are all forces of nature — the catalysts and agents of change, the architects and engineers of a new tomorrow. We shape and create our reality every moment of every day, and like no species before we have the power to define our future,” shared Brosnan in an article for Time.
We completely agree! While most of us can’t attend the meeting, that doesn’t mean we can’t make changes in our own lives that will help whales in the long run. By lowering our fish consumption, choosing to only whale watch responsibly, and cutting plastic out of your life as much as possible, you are playing a vitally important part in making sure whales survive long enough for future generations to enjoy them as much as we have. To learn more about how you can help whales, click here. Image source: Mark Von Holden/WireImage
Denounce Japan for Killing Over 300 Whales
Goal: Punish Japan for violating international law and slaughtering hundreds of minke whales.
Japanese whalers reportedly killed more than 300 whales in a one-year span, using a legal loophole to slaughter the innocent animals. The killings come in spite of an international court ruling expressly forbidding any such activity.
Japanese fleets targeted the minke whale, a species found mostly in Europe and Asia. Many of the slaughtered animals were pregnant, according to officials from the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The IWC has harshly condemned the recent wave of killings, criticizing Japan for its cruel and greedy actions.
Japan claims that the whales were hunted as part of a scientific study, though this excuse has been criticized as a poor cover story for commercial hunting. Japanese officials argue that “coastal whaling” is not harmful to overall populations, but this claim is mostly unfounded. The IWC has since intervened and stopped all whaling efforts, but the damage has already been done.
The slaughter of hundreds of precious creatures, most of whom were pregnant, demands condemnation and punishment. Sign the petition below to voice your disapproval and urge the IWC to punish Japan for its transgressions. SIGN THE PETITION LETTER HERE
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| Iron Fish Game - Developers Diary |
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Walter took samples of rock for further analysis, and working with his father (a renowned scientist at the time), they tested the rock for iridium, hoping to find out how long a span of time the layer with no forams represented. Iridium is an element found mostly in meteorites and accumulates in soil deposits slowly and steadily as cosmic debris rains down on Earth. Their results, however, were off the charts, with iridium levels high above the normal range.
Scientists at this time were highly skeptical of cataclysmic doom scenarios, but when additional samples from around the world showed the same levels of iridium, Alvarez and his father came up with a hypothesis that would forever change the way we think about extinction.
The Fifth Extinction
Their paper, which was published in 1980, sets out the familiar scenario we all became fascinated with as children. 65 million years ago, a giant asteroid six miles wide slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula with a force comparable to that of one million nuclear bombs. Anything even remotely close to the site of impact would have been instantly vaporized, while other plants and animals were killed by the massive tsunamis and earthquakes that followed. The force of the collision was so strong that it flung broken and burning asteroid fragments back into the atmosphere, which rained down across the planet’s surface, some possibly hot enough to spark wildfires around the globe.
The collision also released billions of tons of sulfur into the charred sky, an element particularly good at blocking sunlight; consequently, after the initial explosive destruction, the world became very still and dark. Some estimates by NASA show that it was so dark, you wouldn’t have been able to see your hand in front of your face, a darkness which lasted for months. The world’s plants, unable to photosynthesize, withered and died, along with anything that relied on them for food. When the sulfurous shroud finally dissipated, it fell back to the earth in the form of acid rain, poisoning any lake or stream too small to filter it out.
Though the dinosaurs are the most famous group to have gone extinct during this time, they weren’t the only ones to do so. Many groups of reptiles were also wiped out, along with several groups of plants, birds, and mammals. Something close to 80 percent of all life on Earth disappeared in the geological blink of an eye. Since Alvarez and his father published their landmark paper, scientists have concluded that the Cretaceous-Paleogene event was one of only five major extinctions to have occurred during the history of life on Earth, caused by disasters ranging from massive oceanic algal blooms, volcanic eruptions, and abrupt climate change.
During the interval between these cataclysmic events, the rate of species extinction is extremely low, with estimates predicting a background rate of one species out of every 10 million going extinct every one million years. Compared to this, the number of species that are going extinct in the present is up to 1,000 times higher than the normal background rate, levels comparable to those of the five mass extinctions of the past. This has prompted some scientists to claim that we’re currently living in the sixth great extinction, except this time, rather than being caused by a natural disaster, humans are the current perpetrators of the rapid loss of biodiversity.
The Extinction Caused by Humans
In our short history of life on Earth, wherever humans go, waves of extinction follow. Shortly after Homo sapiens migrated into North and South America, the giant mammals on both continents met their demise, likely having been hunted to extinction by our ancestors. From the time we started recording species extinction back in the 1600s, many have been lost due to human interaction, including the dodo, the West African black rhinoceros, and the Tasmanian tiger, formerly the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial. But the human population is now bigger than it’s ever been at any point in history, and as we expand our cities, suburbs, and agricultural fields, we push the species that once occupied those areas to the margins of their previous range, and often to the very margins of existence.
If we consider only plants, about one in five are currently in danger of extinction, a trend caused mostly by deforestation along with agricultural development and urbanization. Amphibians are currently the worst off, with roughly one in every three of the 6,300 or so species at risk of going extinct. The numbers are dire across the board, with 50 percent of primates at risk, 21 percent of fish, 30 percent of invertebrates, and 21 percent of reptiles. Unfortunately, it seems likely that the worst is yet to come. Global climate change, which has occurred naturally over the course of millions of years in the past, has been accelerated to the pace of mere decades, which will without a doubt destroy much of our remaining biodiversity, with extinction rates rising to as much as 10,000 times higher than the background rate.
What Can You Do
Staving off the next big extinction will take the combined efforts of all of the world’s human inhabitants, but it all starts at the level of the individual – and one of the most powerful things you can do starts on your plate!
One Green Planet believes that our global food system dominated by industrial animal agriculture is at the heart of our environmental crisis.
This destructive industry currently occupies over half of the world’s arable land resources, uses the majority of our freshwater stores, and drives greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, this system causes rampant air and water pollution, land degradation, deforestation and is pushing countless species to the brink of extinction. And yet, one in eight people still suffer from food scarcity.
As the leading organization at the forefront of the conscious consumerism movement, it is One Green Planet’s view that our food choices have the power to heal our broken food system, give species a fighting chance for survival, and pave the way for a truly sustainable future. By choosing to eat more plant-based foods, you can drastically cut your carbon footprint, save precious water supplies and help ensure that vital crop resources are fed to people, rather than livestock. With the wealth of available plant-based options available, it has never been easier to eat with the planet in mind.
| AAD Update October 2016 |
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