Saturday, November 29, 2008

So it's wrong if the Japanese fish them, but it's ok if our sonars kill them?

I just found out today about this. In another wonderful display of double standards, the USA Supreme Court reversed a decision by a federal district court in California in which certain restrictions were applied to the use of sonar during military exericises. You also read the last word, right? Exercises!!! They are using sonars in a way that could harm or even cause death of several marine mammals, and they are doing it for nothing? well, exercises may be important, but are they so important that may allow the Navy to go against environmental laws? I don't think so, as does Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

What is funny here is that the U.S. has been against commercial whaling since the moratorium of 1986, and has even certified Japan 3 times under the Pelly amendment. I wonder if deaths due to scientific whaling (I won't get into this debate yet) are wrong, but when they happen for "national security reasons" it's fine. Of course, there was the usual declaration of "there is no evidence...", but there is well documented evidence of deaths related to sonars for at least for one species (beaked whales), like this report says. Sonars were also supects for the death of ~400 dolphins in the coast of east Africa, and the stranding of 35 whales in North Carolina, although it was not possible to link the deaths to the sonar in the last case.

This might not be directly related to what I said I was going to talk about, but I thought I could mention it as an example on how important the environment really is for governments.

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