Well folks, just when you thought it was safe for whales to swim freely, those majestic titans of the ocean, with an intelligence surpassed only (and in some cases marginally) by humans, are facing another onslaught of epic proportions.

Japan has just set sail on another "scientific" whaling expedition. The project, called Jarpa II, will seek to catch 935 minke whales and 10 fin whales during the southern hemisphere summer. And, as if that weren’t enough, Japan also runs a scientific whaling program in the north Pacific called JARPN, which this year took 100 sei whales, 100 minkes, 50 Bryde’s whales and five sperm whales. Soon, they will expand to catch humpback whales too.

Why, you ask? Well, consider their scientific justifications:

"… to monitor the Antarctic ecosystem, model competition among whale species… elucidate temporal and spatial changes in stock structure and improve the management procedure for the Antarctic minke whale stocks."

What a load of rubbish! It is just an excuse to kill whales. All of these "scientific" initiatives can be achieved through non-lethal means.

Check out a recent BBC article. Make sure to scroll down — you can see a picture of a young Japanese woman eating … yup you guessed it … a whale burger. Whale burgers! Come on … you gotta be kidding me! Believe it or not, it’s all part of a push to revive (it used to be popular) whale meat as a desirable culinary treat. I don’t know about you, but I think some trends are better left in the dustbins of history.

Where is the international outcry, you might ask? Well, you can read the International Whaling Commission’s pathetic and impotent denouncement of the Jarpa II proposal here.

You see, the bottom line is that countries aren’t willing to sacrifice other "more important" diplomatic issues for an issue like whaling. So, we continue to pass resolution after resolution and do nothing.

p.s. In the interest of being fair, I must also acknowledge that other countries, including Norway and Iceland, also hunt whales for "scientific purposes," though not nearly at the same level as Japan.

Ah yes, how refreshing. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina we find the State of Louisiana taking a very responsible approach to reconstruction of the devastated city. They are going to start dumping trash and contaminated goods in already degraded wetland areas, potentially creating another Superfund site (see CNN.com article). I don’t know about you, but isn’t sweeping problems under the carpet and then ignoring them what got us into this whole mess in the first place? What part of "Healthy wetlands are the best defense against hurricane storm surge" isn’t clear? Remember what I said in another blog entry about every square mile of wetlands absorbing 1-3 feet of storm surge? I don’t know about the rest of the population but, when I do something that hurts enough times, I stop. I wonder how many more hurricanes will have to hit, how many more people will have to suffer and die before we get the message. Destroying the environment is suicide!