Kieran Mulvaney

Oct 27, 2008 12:04 PM EDT

Eisbaer!
It's one of the only words i know in German. Kieran! I miss you, brother. Please receive my condolences about your father moving on to another realm, where it might be difficult to believe you are receiving his guidance. I'm really sorry for the loss you must feel. Peace, my friend. Much love.

- Johnny

Nov 06, 2008 8:59 AM EST

Just read The Whaling Season, and enjoyed it.

Nonetheless, I cringed at the inclusion of the Fallacy of the Minimum, page 114. The fallacy, in its simplest form, is that culling the largest members of a population leaves more food for the juveniles, who will hence grow faster to adulthood, thereby maximizing the catch the next time around. The error is so deeply ingrained in our culture you do not even repeat it; you simply mention that the Norwegian Whaling Act established a minimum. Then you wring your hands over the next 5 pages, trying to explain why setting a minimum failed to protect whale stocks.

The problem is the formula. Setting a minimum in a common, whether the prize is fish, whales or redwood trees, turns Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest on its head. The winners in the school-of-life are removed from the gene-pool, and reproduction is left to those in last place: the smallest and least successful. It is a recipe for species extinction.

Reverse the signs in the equation, and you reverse the results. Set a maximum instead of a minimum, the principle of survival-of-the-fittest is restored, and the population thrives. The IWC could, in principle, bring about the recovery of all whale species, while simultaneously throwing out the moratorium altogether. The algorithm is simple, like backing up a vehicle with a trailer: if you want the trailer to swing right, you steer left; if you want the trailer to swing left, you steer right. If the IWC wants a whale population to increase, decrease the maximum; if the IWC wants a population to decrease, increase the maximum.

For critical species, the maximum would start below birth size. As a species recovers, and the Blue-Whale-Units start to increase, the maximum can be increased. If the maximum is set too high, however, the point of Maximum Sustainable Yield is passed, and the BWUs (and population) will decrease. Every two years, the IWC could meet, review catch and population data for each species, and vote on whether to increase, decrease, or make no change to the maximum. Sustainable whaling? Done.

Because sustainability requires a maximum instead of a minimum, it means killing baby whales, not adults. [Violins] Obviously, many people are loathe to consider whales a “resource” at all, and the idea of calculating BWUs might be considered cold and inhumane. But no matter your feelings, math is math, and the formula for sustainability requires a maximum catch size, not a minimum. Establishing a maximum size in a common will not work without the cooperation of all parties, but at least it can work, in principle, whereas setting a minimum guarantees the tragic results you describe.

I liked the book and tip my hat to your environmental efforts. Hope my criticism is constructive! The fallacy of the minimum must be purged from the collective mind-set if humans are ever to live in balance with nature. Sustainability in a common can only be achieved by establishing a maximum, and this wisdom must be appreciated by all.

- Peter Wilson