Both the driver and the animal suffered near-lethal bruises.
Luckily, he was not alone in the car. His travel companion,
unharmed, got out to assess the full extent of the damage. He
soon found out that the accident had taken place next to a
roadside public telephone. Inside the phone booth be read: "In
case of accident, call..." and two phone numbers, one of the
doctor's, the other the veterinarian's.
He searched his pockets and the car and found a quarter - and
only one. Now the dilemma: who should he call?
Does the moose have just as much of right to a veterinarian's
care as his buddy has to a doctor's? Was he under a moral
obligation to look first after the moose since unlike the
humans involved, it was incapable of helping itself?
Coming down to brass-tracks of the man-animal relationship,
there was not a shred of a doubt to the wounded man's friend.
Of course, every one in his right mind would look first after
the life and health of the driver, before thinking of the
moose. In the situation, nobody would even reproach him that.
I am a speciesist. That is, when it comes to the relationship
between humans on the one hand and animals on the other. Not
when it comes down to differences between whales on the one
hand and all other animals on the other.
The human being is uniquely special, not only because of our
unmatched intelligence, superior adaptability to all regions
and climates of the globe, and unprecedented fertility. Not
just because of our unique will and ability to take control of
all other animal species and natural phenomena, for better or
for worse. Not only for our record of altering the surface of
the Earth and reaching for the moon and the stars.
Among all known creatures, we are uniquely special first and
foremost because we are aware of the moral dimension of good
and evil. Human aggressions, and the act of killing, can be
evil and can be good. It all depends on the situation and the
matter at hand; and our conscience unwaveringly passed
judgement on our actions. We can listen to our conscience, or
we can choose not to listen, and that in itself is good and
bad, respectively, and we know it. We can choose to be good or
evil. We are a species apart.
But speciesist considerations setting the seventy-some
different whale species fundamentally apart from all other
types and shapes of animals is nonsense. Granted, whales are
special and wonderful in many ways. So are bees and beavers
and blue geese, each in their own intricate way. Sure, the
sperm whale has the largest brain of all animals; but not in
relation to its body weight: in that pespective, its brain is
rather small. Sure, the bowhead whale is big and impressive;
but it is certainly not nearly as smart as a common bearded
seal. Sure, the blue whale, the greatest of all creatures, was
hunted to near extinction and deserves complete protection;
but not the minke, the smallest of baleen whales. It has never
been threatened, and in the Antarctic there are now more
minkes than there has ever been in historic times.
Out of the very people who get up in arms over what they term
human speciesism, isn't it strange how many support campaigns
in favour of whale speciesism?
Which ever way one would want to view this puzzling
phenomenon, one thing is clear: for the West-European and
Anglo-Saxon countries, whose economic and political muscle are
felt all over the world, it is all too tempting to impose
their own totem animals and environmental symbols on everybody
else. The rich countries of the West, together with Australia
and New Zealand, no longer experience any basic dependency on
the marine resources, and they have nothing to lose by a
moratorium on whaling. For them, it is not only emotionally
gratifying to cast a taboo on all whales; it is also cheap.
If we bow to the pressure and accept a total ban on even the
most wise and controlled use of these animals, what is going
to be next? A world-wide ban on sealing, maybe? During the
UNCED-process, New Zealand has already indicated something to
that effect, and IFAW would love it.
What would our people be supposed to eat, then? New Zealand
lamb? Have we no longer the right, so clearly stipulated by
the two Human Rights Covenants of 1966, signed and ratified by
virtually all Western nations, according to which "all people
may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural
wealth and resources" and "in no case may a people be deprived
of its own means of subsistence" (UN-GA Res. 2200/XXI, 1966,
Part I Art.1.(2))? Or are international covenants only viable
so long as they are palatable to Anglo-Saxon public sentiment?
In this science-oriented world of ours, there is a crying need
for rationality. After all, that property still remains widely
acclaimed as the hallmark of our species.
We all have a right to be here.