Apparently, we do not care about whales
According to the Environment News Service:
"WASHINGTON, DC, November 12, 2008 (ENS) - The U.S. Supreme Court today lifted restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar off the coast of California, handing a defeat to environmentalists who say the limits are needed to protect whales and dolphins. The court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that a lower court judge had wrongly allowed the environmental impacts of the training exercises to trump U.S. national security interests."
I heard this on NPR yesterday. It's sad. Apparently sonar testing scrambles whale and dolphin brains, and they get all confused and end up beached. I'm also in favor of military security, and the argument went that an untrained Navy is worse than a bunch of dead sea mammals. I was talking about it with my dad, and he said that earlier arguments centered around the location of the tests - the Navy doesn't HAVE to conduct tests in warm waters, where whales and dolphins are likely to be breeding and hanging out, but for convenience and fun's sake they (the Navy) prefer it.
I'm reacting to this story more strongly than to other enviro ills because it's us, our system, that decided that we'd prefer to scramble whale brains over the alternative. It's not like the oil spill, where there was a big mean corporation and I could go, 'well, I'm not part of that big mean corporation' or the melting permafrost which is leading to grumpy bears who aren't cued to go into hibernation and therefore run around terrorizing locals (because even though that's horrible, it's kind of funny. Bears!) It's California, and it's the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be a check on the big bad military industrial complex. Plus, there's just something severely icky about the image. There you are, a whale, or a dolphin, swimming around, eating some krill, looking for a little whale tail, and all of a sudden you get super confused and you don't know up or down and you end up floundering onto a beach and unable to swim. Lame.
In other hilarious enviro news, a few months back I read that bear attacks are up in Anchorage because they built a bicycle trail right next to a river. The river is where the fish are, so... THAT'S WHERE THE BEARS GO. And then they eat bicyclists instead.
"WASHINGTON, DC, November 12, 2008 (ENS) - The U.S. Supreme Court today lifted restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar off the coast of California, handing a defeat to environmentalists who say the limits are needed to protect whales and dolphins. The court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that a lower court judge had wrongly allowed the environmental impacts of the training exercises to trump U.S. national security interests."
I heard this on NPR yesterday. It's sad. Apparently sonar testing scrambles whale and dolphin brains, and they get all confused and end up beached. I'm also in favor of military security, and the argument went that an untrained Navy is worse than a bunch of dead sea mammals. I was talking about it with my dad, and he said that earlier arguments centered around the location of the tests - the Navy doesn't HAVE to conduct tests in warm waters, where whales and dolphins are likely to be breeding and hanging out, but for convenience and fun's sake they (the Navy) prefer it.
I'm reacting to this story more strongly than to other enviro ills because it's us, our system, that decided that we'd prefer to scramble whale brains over the alternative. It's not like the oil spill, where there was a big mean corporation and I could go, 'well, I'm not part of that big mean corporation' or the melting permafrost which is leading to grumpy bears who aren't cued to go into hibernation and therefore run around terrorizing locals (because even though that's horrible, it's kind of funny. Bears!) It's California, and it's the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be a check on the big bad military industrial complex. Plus, there's just something severely icky about the image. There you are, a whale, or a dolphin, swimming around, eating some krill, looking for a little whale tail, and all of a sudden you get super confused and you don't know up or down and you end up floundering onto a beach and unable to swim. Lame.
In other hilarious enviro news, a few months back I read that bear attacks are up in Anchorage because they built a bicycle trail right next to a river. The river is where the fish are, so... THAT'S WHERE THE BEARS GO. And then they eat bicyclists instead.
posted by walkinhomefromthethriftstore at 11:14 AM
1 Comments:
i <3 that bike trail story too.
sigh... let's hear it for the ridiculousity of the human race! sometimes, you just gotta be all WTF are we thinking? :(
Post a Comment
<< Home