The White House and the Whales

By Andrew C. Revkin
In Haro Strait (near Vancouver, British, Columbia), orcas in the foreground swim near a whale-watching boat as the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Shoup passes offshore. (Kenneth Balcomb/Center for Whale Research)

[UPDATE 10/9: The Supreme Court is mulling the relative rights of whales and the White House and Navy.] The fight over how humans should, and should not, interact with whales has moved from the waters off Antarctica, where environmental campaigners have been harassing Japanese whalers, to the White House.

While traveling in the Middle East on Tuesday, President Bush issued an exemption to the Navy from environmental laws that would otherwise limit its ability to use certain kinds of sonar used in anti-submarine warfare training, the Associated Press said. [UPDATE: I believe the Washington Post broke this story today.]

Last August, the Natural Resources Defense Council persuaded a federal judge in Los Angeles to order a stop to Navy training exercises off Southern California using medium-range sonar. The judge said that the Navy’s own assessments predicted that dozens of marine mammals, particularly deep-diving whales, could be harmed by the intense sound waves. In January, a fresh injunction was issued by the court requiring the Navy to establish a 12-nautical-mile, no-sonar zone along the coast and to post lookouts for marine mammals.

The A.P. quoted a White House memorandum as saying, “The Navy training exercises, including the use of sonar, are in the paramount interest of the United States…. This exemption will enable the Navy to train effectively and to certify carrier and expeditionary strike groups for deployment in support of worldwide operational and combat activities, which are essential to national security.”

Environmental campaigners and California officials sharply attacked the decision in a joint news release today.

“There is absolutely no justification for this,” said California Coastal Commissioner Sara Wan. “Both the court and the Coastal Commission have said that the Navy can carry out its mission as well as protect the whales. This is a slap in the face to Californians who care about the oceans.”

“The president’s action is an attack on the rule of law,” said Joel Reynolds, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “By exempting the Navy from basic safeguards under both federal and state law, the president is flouting the will of Congress, the decision of the California Coastal Commission and a ruling by the federal court.”

The Navy makes its case both for the importance of the sonar and its efforts to limit risks to marine mammals on a Web site here.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Brooke January 16, 2008 · 1:54 pm

This is a complete disregard for the welfare of our whales and marine wildlife. First Aerial shooting in alaska and now the president is permitting harmful sonar in the water? He has no repect or care for our enviornment.

nobody in particular January 16, 2008 · 2:05 pm

classic bush – I assume that he’ll maintain that this is all covered under the patriot act…aren’t all of his legal violations?

JSB January 16, 2008 · 2:16 pm

BUSH is the worst president the USA has ever seen! He has ruined this country and the world!

Bill January 16, 2008 · 2:18 pm

“The president’s action is an attack on the rule of law,” So what else is new? It’s been that way from day 1 with this administration.

Elizabeth Tjader January 16, 2008 · 2:19 pm

I don’t want to hear the bull coming from the Whitehouse. Why in the name of God can’t we get rid of this idiot. George Bush has absolutely no regard for what used to make this country attractive: the democratic process. Isn’t Bush’s presidency another word for despotism?
I shouldn’t be surprised.

“This exemption will enable the Navy to train effectively and to certify carrier and expeditionary strike groups for deployment in support of worldwide operational and combat activities, which are essential to national security.”

Am I to understand this right? We spend 4 billion dollars on retaining the most powerful military position in the world and somehow with all that appropriated money for outdoing every other country some 20 times over, the Navy cannot conduct those same exercises outside the whale safety zone?
This ruined my day for many reasons, not only because of the whales. We have 11 more months of this despot in power.
Elizabeth Tjader

Paul R Cooper January 16, 2008 · 2:25 pm

I am beginning to doubt whether we remain a nation of laws. Presidential signing statements, rejection of oversight, refusals to testify, unequal application of law for the rich and white, abuse of Social Security, road and other trust funds, abuse of prisoners in violation of international treaties, refusal to reveal special industry consultants to the president, invasion of privacy in defiance of law and the Constitution as generally understood, expansion of U.S. presence abroad without informing Congress, a secret intelligence establishment big enough to field armies yet unable to provide reliable intelligence. What have we left if dissing of law becomes OK for everyone?

cynthia January 16, 2008 · 2:31 pm

It seems like every time there’s the slightest conflict between people and our environment, the environment loses out. The Navy’s case isn’t compelling here. We’re not under any immediate threat that warrants over-ruling the judge’s recent decisions.

This is why I’m such a pessimist about addressing AGW in a timely fashion. Any price to protect natural resources, no matter how small – in this case inconvenience to the navy – is regarded as being too high.

And to have this circus following right on the heels of the Alaska oil leases acceleration vs. polar bear endangered species decision delay. Do these guys think no one is watching?

Sorry for my attitude, but I seem to have misplaced my rose-colored glasses today!

This is especially bad news as the seasonal migration of the gray whales is occurring along the CA coast from now through Mar/April.

jay January 16, 2008 · 2:33 pm

where’s moby dick when you need him? somebody, please, eat this man.

George Bush January 16, 2008 · 2:33 pm

I’m a Malaka…what more do you want?

SJ January 16, 2008 · 2:33 pm

Amen to everything the others have said.

Naturboy January 16, 2008 · 2:34 pm

NO! I mean yes.. as in:
Can I please hate this man now??
Seriously this is serious. I want to put him in a hyperbaric chamber and project massive hyper-frequency descibles at his inner ears.

Forget all my prior analogies invoking the antics of Vlad the Impaler, I want slow torture for botch by soundwaves, this is the only possible punishment. This is very bad, I must hate now…

This stuff you find makes it impossible to believe. OK so botch is a psychopath, but what is wrong with the rest of them? People voted for him, and are about to do the same sort of thing again.

EngineerGA January 16, 2008 · 2:39 pm

How smart is it to publish that we can’t use medium-range sonar within 12 miles of our coast? Isn’t that inviting subs to enter that are to avoid detection? Drug smugglers use submarines to get the product in the US. 12 miles is a large space that could be exploited easily.

Is there a rational alternative to using medium-range sonar that is proposed? If not, I see no other method for protecting our coasts from underwater threats, and I see why the president issued the exemption. I hate that whales may be harmed, but I would rather whales be harmed than a suitcase nuke or 100 kilos of heroin come in on a small sub undetected.

ADS99 January 16, 2008 · 2:40 pm

Is it any wonder the current Republican candidates won’t go near the guy.

rupa January 16, 2008 · 2:40 pm

Why is it that we need a military that is stronger than all of the other nations in the world combined?

Who is it that threatens us so?

A handful of Islamic malcontents who once in a while successfully set off a bomb is worth paying $trillions for?

If we do not violate our own laws, and threaten the whales, the terrorists will win!

Willie January 16, 2008 · 2:43 pm

Next thing you know Bush will begin referring to whales as enemy combatants. I hope Bush takes the time to stop by the SF zoo the next time a tiger escapes. Let the animals have their revenge.

Martin S. Litwin January 16, 2008 · 2:44 pm

This “despot”, President George W. Bush” has made the streets of our country safer. His handling of the War on Terrorism, while not perfect in the eyes of “some”, has helped in no small way to make it possisble for idiots like Elizabeth Tjader to speak her mind. Perhaps if she knew what the Navy’s tests were all about, she might better understand their importance. We did not become the world’s most powerful Navy by sitting around doing crosswords in the NYTimes.

Paula January 16, 2008 · 2:46 pm

It seems he does not consider the destruction of the earth and all of its inhabitants via environmental catastrophe a security risk.

Elaine Haberkamp January 16, 2008 · 2:47 pm

Aarrgghh!!!!!!!!!

Buzz Daly January 16, 2008 · 2:47 pm

If whales complain about this, they are supporting the “terrists”. If waterboarding worked on whales, I think GWB would order that as well. What an embarrassment this yokel is to the US.

Whaley Barber January 16, 2008 · 2:49 pm

We need to re-commune in Crawford and let Bush spend his vaction listening to a sampling what the whales are being exposed to.

Bob J. January 16, 2008 · 2:50 pm

I’m convinced that he does not make decisions for this regime. A much more powerful set of people tell him what to say. He is nothing more than a spokesperson for that group of people, people who probably “picked wings off of flies” as children with no concern for wanton cruelty to living things (and should have been sent to bed without their supper to think about what they did).

Steve Robbins January 16, 2008 · 2:53 pm

And this surprises you…why?

This is the same presidweeb who fought to gut the Endangered Species Act and raised the limits for arsenic in local water supplies. Who has tried over and over again to allow drilling in ANWR, despite the constant rejection from the public (democracy, anyone?) Who forces abstinence-only education on AIDS workers in foreign countries, causing an astronomical increase in AIDS cases. The same idiot who keeps trying to go to war with Iran (three-front war anyone? We barely have enough troops with the current two-front war).

Last I knew, al-Qaeda didn’t have any submarines. We need to maintain military readiness against whom? Aren’t satellite communications enough?

Elizabeth Tjader is right – we only have 11 more months of this tyrant. Let’s hope we can keep him on a short leash for that time.

A. Viirlaid January 16, 2008 · 2:56 pm

[First the Japanese, now us — how can we in good conscience criticize others? — Pure hypocrisy! — my poem for the whales and their cousins in the oceans.]

Lament of the Whale

I cry for our shared grace
I cry for your human family
I cry for your whaler’s family
I cry for my family
I cry for me

With your warm hand you could stroke my skin like so many of your family have chosen to do
You would feel my warmth and gratitude

Why do you touch me only with your cold harpoon as you thrust it into my flesh?
I thought after so much killing that we would both crave harmony

That we had learned that we both feel and love
That we both treasure life
That we revere our comrades
That we embrace our children

That we share the same blood of our ancestors
That our hearts both beat the rhyme of life

How my child will cling to me as you haul my dying carcass out of the sea
How she will cry
Until you kill her too

A. Viirlaid, Toronto

Morty January 16, 2008 · 2:57 pm

It is O.K. to have thousands of incidental civilian casualties in the name of promoting democracy and fighting terrorist. So what difference will a few hundred beached whales make?
The Impeachment process needs to begin so the rest of the world knows that
americans have some sense of right and wrong

Brian January 16, 2008 · 3:01 pm

Does Bush even have the authority to override a federal ruling? Or does his order only apply outside of the area where the judge enjoined the sonar activity?

Thank goodness the Constitution prohibits the president from making laws on personal whims.