It is about the killing of pilot whales in the Faroes, a flock of windswept islands about halfway between Scotland and Iceland. We have all seen harrowing images of beautiful black pilot whales being driven on to a beach and, then slaughtered in blood-reddened tide water. I wanted to hear the Faroese side of the story.
Why? Maybe it was bewilderment, like looking a murderer in the eye and seeing a gentle, compassionate smile. A few months ago I spoke to a Faroese person who seemed fairly normal and felt deeply misunderstood. I was puzzled and attracted by the clash of cultural and ecological values.
Maybe it was something to do with the word "harmony". I have filmed with people who live in rainforests and seen, to my surprise, indiscriminate killing, often with waste and cruelty. We say that Indians live in harmony with nature, but I'm not sure what that means. In my experience Indians live much as we do: from moment to moment,taking what they can in a short-sighted quest for comfort and affluence.
The first thing I discovered in the Faroes was that there are several separate issues to disentangle. First and foremost, are pilot whales endangered? If they are, then there can be no justification for this traditional slaughter.
Despite rather woolly claims from some campaigners, it would seem that there is no imminent threat to pilot whale numbers. Dr. Tony Martin form Cambridge University's Sea Mammal Research Unit puts numbers in the North Atlantic at "many tens, and quite probably hundreds, of thousands". At these levels the Faroese kill, of about 1,000 to 2,000 a year, may be sustainable indefinitely.
Second, how are the animals killed? The short answer is brutally - involving many minutes, and sometimes hours, of stressful driving into a killing bay followed by the severing of the creature's "neck" artery with a knife. Not as clean as an abattoir slaughter by any standard. But then - next issue - would we really want it to be? If you happen to be a vegetarian it's academic: all animal killing is wrong. But for the rest of us there is a dilemma. Is it better to take an animal from birth and keep it in a cage, crate or shed all if its life and then ship it by road across the nation, or even the continent, to a concrete building where it will be stunned or shot in controlled conditions? Is this what we mean by humane killing?
If we want our food animals to have a good quality of life as well as good quality of death, surely the killing of wild, "free- range" animals can never be as clean and efficient as the killing of captive, penned creatures? Surely there must be a pay-off between the freedom the animal enjoys in life and the difficulty we have in finding and killing it.
This raises the question of "the specialness" of whales, and whether we should kill them at all. We, the friends of the earth, have turned whales into the icons of ecology. Why? because, they are highly intelligent? But they are not.
Leading whale biologists compare the intelligence of the baleen whales - the large, grazing filter-feeders - to that of cows, and the intelligence of the smaller, toothed whales- hunters, like dolphins and pilot whales - to that of dogs. The famous humpback songs, these scientists would say, are mere mega-mooing. Perhaps we idolise them simply because of their gentle power or immense size. Fair enough, but are we then to force everyone else to worship whales? what if you happen to be born on a north Atlantic island in a vast cornucopian ocean, with only a sheep and potatoes to keep you going on the land? Is it really better to import pink salami from Denmark? Finally there is the question of "traditional" kills. Many green campaigners say that the Inuit in Alaska are allowed to kill bow-head whales because that's "traditional", whereas the killing of pilot whales is forbidden because the Faroese "drive Volvos". Can you only have traditions if you're poor? No, say the campaigners, but you can only have traditions if you use the old tools: bow and arrows, spears and knives. No modern technology allowed.
But, I asked, surely the kill is then less humane rather than more, slower rather than faster? Yes, they said, but that's OK because the kill is "harmonious", "natural". The bottom line seems to be that once you have entered the corrupt world of Volvos and Big Macs you must bid farewell to your roots and embrace a complete set of new values.
There are no simple answers, only interesting questions. When I left the Faroes I was about as confused as when I had arrived. I was left thinking that some campaigners are targeting the wrong issues. The one thing that everyone - Faroese and campaigners alike - agreed upon was that the pollution levels of mercury, insecticides and pesticides are now so high in pilot whales that the faroese may have to stop whaling - simply because of the danger of poisoning.
It sounds to me like a far greater ecological hazard - to us all - than the rather emotive issue of the killing. Perhaps the more self-righteous campaigners should stay in Britain and concentrate on cleaning up our own environmental act. I have s sneaking feeling that some of them are becoming a bit like missionaries.
Our grandparents sent people with Bibles to faraway lands to convert heathens to a new enlightenment. Today we disparage the missionaries, yet we send people to faraway lands to convert backward nations to a new environmental enlightenment. We still feel we know better.
Well, maybe we do and maybe we don't. But I believe that if we read the small print in our new Green Bible we may discover that the sustainable - and, one hopes, humane - use of a natural resource which swims to your home waters is the very essence of greenness. Polluting someone else's water is not.