Quote Originally Posted by Reenk Roink
A regulated system is necessary in almost any scenario...

Humans need regulations, and regulations need to be enforced.

Frankly, I like my "regulate and repopulate" idea, better than "ban it".

People in countries where whaling occurs are going to defend it, as you can see by what just happened in Japan...

"Regulate and repopulate" would allow people to continue on taking food and oils, and help the whale population make a comeback.

Of course, I'm being Panglossian* once again, because it seems that neither side wants to compromise on an issue where a compromise would give one side the food and oils they need, and the other the increase in the whale population as well as quick deaths, without really taking away anything...
It's not really that neither side wants to compromise - regulated hunting works in some conservation scenarios. The issue with whaling is that Japan and the other whaling nations have a complete blind spot with regard to the science (for example, they cite minke whales as being a sustainable resource, but actually hunt other species - soon they will start hunting humpbacks in the Southern Ocean Refuge, and these are very certainly endangered still). It's therefore really difficult to believe they wouldn't break future quotas as they regularly do now for 'scientific whaling.' Norway doesn't even bother with that pretense - why would they respect any restrictions in the future?

There really is no need for whale meat and oils nowadays. Consumption of the former is declining, and the latter has been replaced by synthetics.

Sustainable harvesting of whales is tough. We know so little about the true state of ocean stocks and their real fragility. As the fishing industry proves, commercial interests always argue the science is too conservative and doom laden - until the stocks collapse. Most whales take many years to reproduce, unlike anchovies. We over-harvest and they're gone forever. There are always those who push the boundaries. The oceans are notoriously difficult to police. Few people argue we should allow hunting of tigers so the Chinese can get their peckers up and some oddballs can have a moulting rug. If there was a real product need from whales or tigers, we might have to consider a sustainable use. But there is absolutely no need to kill either except to satisfy a few nations' macho aspirations. (My remarks include aboriginal people too - there is a wierd hypocrisy in the environmental movement that thinks it's OK for an Inuit to kill a whale but not a Norwegian, for essentially the same purpose. Neither, in the modern world, needs to kill whales to prove their manhood or satsify a need).

In addition, your point about humane killing has a touching faith in technology, but all studies have shown whales die agonisingly over a long time. It simply isn't possible to fire a harpoon into the brain of a diving, fleeing mammal from a bucking boat 100% accurately every time. These are not farm-bred cattle waiting patiently for the stun-bolt to smash their brain. Whales are among the most intelligent mammals to have evolved, and they communicate - other whales hear the death screams over many hundreds of miles, and show clear signs of empathic distress.

If the emotional perspective that Beirut so ably articulated is also to be dismissed, why then do we not harvest all that human meat currently going to waste in the developing world? There is nothing special about humans, except our rather bizarre emotional attachment to our own species. Given the expressions of outrage in other threads, maybe we could eat paedophiles and solve two problems at once?