Among Greenpeace’s most successful campaigns of recent years has been its effort to stop the hunting of whales and harp seals in the North Atlantic. By widely distributing films showing alleged brutality against seals, by claiming that whales and seals have become endangered, by organizing international boycotts against fish products from North Atlantic nations, and by lobbying governments in Europe and the United States, Greenpeace has succeeded in having the importation of sealskins banned by many industrial nations. The International Whaling Commission of the United Nations has also banned all commercial whaling in the North Atlantic for a four-year period that started in 1986. “Nine-tenths of the world’s whalers are out of business,” boasted two Greenpeace campaigners in the January/February issue of the journal Greenpeace, published by the organization’s American lobbying arm. Greenpeace is not a popular name in Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, parts of Norway and Canada, and even Alaska. The economies of the North Atlantic have depended for centuries on the hunting of whales, seals, and fish. Now that these products have been banned, curtailed, or boycotted since 1985, people in those nations are suffering dislocations and hardships even worse than those created by their harsh climates. Families in the many small villages have been forced onto welfare or into the cities, where finding employment can be difficult. The sudden declines in productivity have left these economies reeling, just as the United States economy would be if its entire automobile industry were suddenly eliminated. The people of those nations are particularly offended by the Greenpeace campaign against their economies because of its incredible irony: Countries such as Iceland have led the world in enacting legislation for protecting their natural resources. Their people cannot understand why foreigners from Greenpeace and other multinational environmentalist groups should arrogantly decide how their resources will be managed.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 22:32:13 +0000
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