The International Whaling Commission’s meeting in Chile wrapped up last week. So what happened to claims made beforehand that this meeting might make actually progress, rather than re-hashing the same old arguments?

You will be shocked to hear that peace did not break out.

Japan has become so annoyed at the resistance to controlled commercial whaling that it might pull out of the IWC altogether. “The world is witnessing the death of an international organisation,” says Japan’s delegate Glenn Inwood, whose suspiciously un-Japanese name comes from the fact he’s a native New Zealander (Daily Telegraph).

This follows a rather-predictable row at the meeting, where Australia’s environment minister Peter ‘Burning Beds’ Garrett said Japan’s current whaling, which it claims is for scientific purposes, is “in reality commercial whaling operations prohibited by the moratorium” (ABC Radio Australia).

Other IWC meeting news

Greenland’s attempt to gain permission for indigenous whaling of humpbacks was rejected (Daily Telegraph, AP).

Australia’s opposition party brands meeting a failure for government and Garrett (ABC, The Age)

National Geographic asks ‘Why Is Japan Whaling’s Bogeyman When Norway Hunts Too?’ A Greenpeace spokesperson replies Japan is the “head of the zombie and needs to be cut off”. What the Norwegians feel about being relegated to miscellaneous zombie body parts is not reported.

The BBC still thinks peace will win out.

Image: NOAA