Showing posts with label humpback whales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humpback whales. Show all posts

18 November 2007

Tragedy and Travesty of the Commons

One of the key features of digital commons - like free software or science - is that there is no tragedy in the classical sense: it is impossible for users to "overgraze" a digital commons in the way they can a physical one.

That analogue tragedy can even by caused by the selfish actions of just one player. A case in point is the cetacean commons, which a few decades ago came perilously close to the ultimate tragedy: total destruction. That, happily, was avoided, but there are still a few benighted groups who insist on taking for themselves what belongs to all.

Worse, that selfishness is escalating:

A Japanese whaling fleet has set sail aiming to harpoon humpback whales for the first time in decades.

The fleet is conducting its largest hunt in the South Pacific - it has instructions to kill up to 1,000 whales, including 50 humpbacks.

This extraordinary display of contempt for the global community is compounded by a further insult. The "justification" for this pointless slaughter is given as:

killing whales allowed marine biologists to study their internal organs

What, you mean to find out if they have a brain, unlike the whalers who insist on hunting endangered species back to the brink of extinction?

Not so much a tragedy of the science commons as a travesty.