I thought this interview with Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. They’re like Greenpeace on steroids: they do everything short of harming people to stop whalers. In fact, Watson calls Greenpeace the “Avon Ladies” of environmentalism and compares their philosophy of “bearing witness” to standing idly by while someone’s attacked:
They have this thing called “bearing witness.” That’s their approach. And I said, “You don’t walk down the street and see a kitten being stomped and do nothing, or see a woman being attacked and do nothing, or see a child being molested and do nothing. And you don’t sit there in a boat taking pictures of whales dying and do nothing.” Bearing witness, to me, is just another way of saying they’re cowards.
Watson’s tactics–though I wouldn’t necessarily endorse them–raise a question worth pondering. Most people will say that, in cases of grave injustice, it’s sometimes right, or even obligatory, to break the law. For instance, abolitionists helping slaves escape in antebellum America is regarded by most of us as not only not wrong, but extremely noble. Does preventing the hunting of whales fall into this category? Especially when there is no international authority with the wherewithal or power to prevent it?
