The decision may have more to do with plans to bring back online nuclear power generation capacity that was offline since 2011. Majority of coal-fired power generation capacity was already idle and being mothballed before 2011. Only reason a lot of coal-gen capacity was restarted after 2011 because there was no other option for producing electricity as nuclear power accounted for most of the supply.
We know that Germany who focused on using dolar has failed miserably and we know that france who focused on nuclear hasnt. No modern country get their main supply of energy from wind or solar but have to use coal and oil to make it work. And the countries who boast with using a lot of alternatives also have much higher consumption prices because they are subsidizing their politically based energy policy.
So international criticism was a potent enough deterrent in this case that forced Japan to change their policy. It then makes me wonder why Japan hasn't made similar changes in their whaling policy after all the international criticism directed at them. Could it be that we are doing it wrong and when it comes to social issues, criticism is not an effective tool and an altogether different approach is needed?
It could be that the world is doing it wrong by eating cows instead of whales. :)
They're direct contributors to global warming and rainforests are being clear cut to make way for pastures. In contrast, the whales that Japan harvests, minke whales, aren't endangered, their consumption has negligible impact on the environment, and they're quite delicious.
I grab whale sashimi whenever I see it at the supermarket and I keep a couple cans in my cupboard just in case I get a craving. I don't eat it often due to the risk of mercury accumulation, but I can't think of a good reason to not eat it every now and then. From an environmental standpoint, it's also preferable to fish, since trawling absolute destroys environments and nets as a whole end up killing a lot of "waste" fish and dolphins that people won't eat. Whaling is targeted and doesn't really have much collateral damage in comparison.
> They're [the cows] direct contributors to global warming
It's a popular misconception that cows contribute greatly to the global warming. The general story is that recently a lot of people in emerging countries (and specifically China) have increased their beef consumption and you need more cows for that, and hence more methane emissions from their burps. And since methane is many times more potent than CO2 ... you know the rest.
What people don't take the time to check is if the story is true. The global inventory of cows was constant at very close to 1 billion for the last 45 years [1]. The half-life of methane in the atmosphere is about 7 years [2], so all the burps released by cows today simply replace burps that decayed from cows of decades past. Overall, cows don't contribute to an increase or decrease in the level of methane in the atmosphere.
Methane doesn't have a half-life, but you are correct it doesn't stay around forever. In about a decade it will react to become carbon dioxide and water vapor, which both contribute to warming themselves.
Scientists know this when they state that over a 100 year period, methane traps 32 times more heat than CO2 [1]. This is the number widely cited. Over a 20 year period it is even worse: 104 times greater! Considering we are trying to drastically reduce the human contribution to global warming over the next 10 to 20 years, methane is a great thing to focus on.
Other thoughts:
It is interesting that the cow population only increased 35% since 1960 according to that source. But what about the methane per cow? Some quick searches suggests the slaughter age may have decreased from 3 years to 15 months during that time. They are growing much faster, fed grain that leads to the methane burps. At a minimum several times more emissions per cow.
CO2 only sticks around for 100 years, by your line of reasoning we should just shrug that off too?
That is interesting. So if cows are slaughtered at 15 months instead of three years, methane per cow life time has been cut by more than half. So we could have twice as many cows with the same methane output, right? Something doesn’t seem right about that though...
While the inventory stays constant, the environment is not in a stable state right now regarding greenhouse gases.
Considering than methane is two orders of magnitude more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 [0], removing it from the atmosphere will also do good alongside reducing CO2 emissions.
Your whole argument is a logical fallacy.
You're basically saying "It was bad before, so continuing on the same level isn't making it worse". I haven't checked the numbers, but even if true that's not an argument at all.
no, his argument is not that simple.
read it more closely, he is saying the methane from cows is not causing any methane accumulation.
its a fixed, relatively small forcing admidst a monotonically increasing one from co2. If we all stopped eating cows co2 would replace the cow-methane forcing in a short time.
Whales are not fish, nor are they harvested like fish.
“If we can imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears stuck into its stomach and being made to pull a butcher’s truck through the streets of London while it pours blood in the gutter, we shall have an idea of the present method of killing. The gunners themselves admit that if whales could scream, the industry would stop, for nobody would be able to stand it.” - Dr Harry Lillie, 1946.
Lillie was a a surgeon and medical officer aboard British whaling ships in the Antarctic during the 1940s.
>Whales are not fish, nor are they harvested like fish.
And nowhere did I say that they are. Unlike fish, they're harvested in a way that doesn't result in wasteful and incredibly destructive bycatch.
And frankly, it's hard to think of a form of butchering or mass-scale animal harvest that wasn't brutal in the 1940s. Factory farming today is a worse fate than most people can ever imagine hell to be, yet most of us (my hypocritical self included) are still providing financial support to it.
Eating meat (at least as it is now) results in a death no matter how you go about it. The options we have are let an animal have a free life and suffer at the end, let an animal suffer its whole life then pop it in the brain to "stun it", or let it watch itself bleed out if you're going for halal/kosher food. Hunting and modern whaling are ironically more humane than most other methods of meat consumption we have.
You did compare whaling to fishing, and with a straight face compared whaling to hunting small/medium animals and to halal methods of killing animals.
There is no comparable suffering of a mammal that the cruel and draw out method killing a whale.
It would be best compared to how the English hung drew and quareted the worst condemned prisoners.
You are now bringing up strawmen. We are talking about whales. Not chickens.
Yes battery chicken farming is aweful, so I don't eat battery chickens or eggs. Pig farming is terrible and if I didn't have religious objections to eating in the first place I would avoid that too. I also eat ethically grown beef.
Just because other animals are mis treated does not mean anyone should give whaling a pass.
If you truly belive fish are so bad, maybe you should avoid that too.
Massively disingenuous statement. The minke whales found closest to Japanese waters are least concern.[1] Japan also does controversially take some whales outside of its waters, though, and that's definitely a problem.
Regardless, it's not nearly as bad as eating the verifiably endangered yet popular bluefin tuna[2] or any variety of sturgeon or its caviar, of which pretty much all are on the verge of extinction.
Most minke whales caught by Japanese whalers were in Antarctic waters when they were still in the IWC. [1] I don't see how it is disingenuous to link to the classification of the whale that makes up most of their catch.
The headline has been chosen to strongly imply causality, but the author has made sure to not actually claim that. (Likewise, in the main text (my emphasis): "The policy initiative... follows criticism that Japan is reluctant to break with such power generation...") And of course, the author had complete freedom to choose a totally different potential cause to juxtapose with this policy change, and so could tell just about any story they wanted regardless of the facts.
I am not sure it was international pressure; I think the difference is domestic pressure. The number of people in Japan that care about whaling is tiny.
Same with nuclear. Domestic pressure to keep the plants closed was HUGE and therefore they stayed closed.
> "Domestic pressure to keep the plants closed was HUGE and therefore they stayed closed"
Japan has restarted 9 of it's reactors since Fukushima, after completion of safety checks, seismic upgrades, and implementation of enhanced safety rules. Another 5 reactors have been approved for restart, and restart applications are pending for a further 11. One new reactor, Ōma, which can run on 100% MOX fuel, is under construction and expected to come online in 2021.
Japan plans for 20-22% of it's power to be nuclear by 2030, similar to pre-Fukushima levels.
I don’t think intl pressure made them do anything. They’re doing it because they want to (and PR-wise it looks good) They claim it was intl pressure but I’m not sure about that given:
“Even today, about 30 projects remain, including facilities that will not be scrutinized for their impact on the environment due to their limited scope of power generation.”
And in addition what the environment ministry says is more of guidance than law and METI has the final say.
It seems to me they feel nuclear is a better solution to their power demand than coal.
I don’t think it’s wrong, I just think it usually takes criticism plus an economic incentive. Hybrid cars didn’t have adoption until oil prices rose substantially. Airlines also adopted Boeing’s Dreamliner, which was made with lighter materials, during this same period. Now oil prices are low, but adoption of electric cars is increasing still. I think that an economic spark is typically a necessary catalyst for an alternative to emerge.
The US has one third the population of China, and has been bringing up ~100GW of natural gas power plants/year over the past ten years. Which produce as much CO2 as 50 GW of coal power.
Today, the US has has ~1300GW of coal, and ~1400GW of natural gas. China has ~1000GW of coal, and 700GW of natural gas.
We are, quite literally, the pot pointing fingers at a kettle.
Japan couldn't care less about international criticism. They're as mercenary and as negligent as some of the worst countries in the world. But they do have Shibuya, and an interesting culture, which is very distracting from this core conclusion.
