Paul Watson: Polluting the language to ease our conscience

Paul Watson

Opinion

For years I have been annoyed at some of the terminology used in conservation and environmental circles.

I
think we should consciously try to think about changing the words we
use. We need to put an end to the utilitarian, consumeristic jargon
that is employed to justify ecological exploitation and the infliction
of cruelty on nonhuman species.

Let's start with this word sustainable. This gem popped up around the time of the UN Conference on the Environment and Development in 1992.

For
example, there's a great deal of talk about the value of "sustainable
fisheries". I can't think of many fisheries that are truly
"sustainable". Practically every commercial fishery in the world is in
a state of commercial collapse, yet you can still find
"sustainably-fished" cod or salmon (at least it says so on the label).

What does it mean? After you strip away the spin and the green-washing it simply means "business as usual".

Another word used these days is stocks.
It makes it sound like the ocean is our private warehouse. People use
terms in fisheries like "managing the stocks", or the "stocks have been
reduced" or the "stocks are healthy". It makes it sound like its all
neat and handy, and already on the grocery shelf. The correct term is populations.

We
don't say there is an "unhealthy stock of humans messing up the
environment". Nor do we say that the "stock of humans need to be
managed".

Then there's the Canadian seal hunt. This is
not really a hunt when you think about it. No one is tracking,
stalking, or pursuing seals. The sealers merely walk through a nursery
of defenceless seal pups and whack them on the head. The little fellas
can't escape, they can't swim, and they can't defend themselves. Let's
call it what it is – a slaughter or a massacre. I like to call it the
Canadian National Obscenity.

And you don't harvest
seals or fish or any other animal. That word has to go. You harvest
corn, oranges, or apples but not seals or fish. I notice farmers don't
even use the term for cows or pigs. They slaughter cows and pigs, they
don't harvest them. So, why the use of this word?

The Canadian government has even tried to label baby seals as adults
by defining an adult as any seal over three weeks age. It seems to me
that any seal that can't swim, can't escape, and is helpless on an ice
floe at three weeks of age qualifies as a baby seal.

When you
put some of these words together, you get the "sustainable harvesting
of stocks" of fish. Talk about separating ourselves from nature.

Sometimes the word fish is replaced by the word product.

"Yes
sir, we caught a million cans of product this season, all canned up and
ready to go to market, sustainably and humanely harvested, of course."

Which bring us to humane, as in "humane killing".

This term suggests that killing is acceptable as long as it is humane. It actually means killing of animals is acceptable by humans so long as we can appease our guilt.

This,
of course, has led to the absurd description of the Canadian seal hunt
or the Japanese dolphin slaughter as "humane sustainable harvesting of
stocks of seals/dolphins".

By simply using the word humane we can accept that being bludgeoned in the head with a spiked club is kind of okay.

Imagine the outrage if animal shelters put down dogs with a club instead of lethal injection. Of course, we avoid the word kill in the shelters by saying we put the poor animals "to sleep". It sounds much nicer.

We
always hear about how Faeroese whale killers "humanely saw through the
neck of a pilot whale to sever the spinal cord". It takes a few
minutes, but the Danish government has said that the slaughter of pilot
whales is a humane, sustainable, harvest of wild pilot whale stocks.

And to add insult to injury we name some whales right whales
because whalers viewed them as the right whales to kill because they
were slow and did not sink after they were killed. I would prefer to
see the Patagonia right whale called simply the Patagonia whale.

And the poor little minke
whale has been insulted with the moniker of a notorious Norwegian
whaler, a sadistic character by the name of Captain Minke who liked to
kill whales. I would prefer to have the whale named after someone who
likes whales or defends whales instead of some serial murderer of
whales.

And why is it that you can't describe an animal killer as a murderer?

Webster's dictionary defines murder as the killing of another human being, but it also says that to kill or slaughter inhumanely or barbarously is also murder.

Homicide
is the correct term for the killing of a human being. Cetacide is the
killing of a whale and simicide is the murder of a chimpanzee.

I
think that murder is an acceptable term for describing the barbarous
slaughter of a seal or the inhumane killing of a dolphin or an
elephant.

We just like to pretty things up to deny our responsibility in the wilful taking of life.

I also like how people who eat meat describe themselves as meat-eaters. Some even say they are carnivores.
A real carnivore would have a laugh over this self-aggrandising
description. Human beings are not meat-eaters. Carnivores hunt down,
pounce upon, and rip the flesh from the body of their prey while the
animal is still alive.

In fact, the average non-vegetarian
human is a carrion eater. They eat dead flesh. Sometimes the flesh they
eat has been dead for weeks or even years. It looks all red and fresh
thanks to chemicals, bleach, and dyes.

Humans are closer to vultures, hyenas, and jackals than to the noble lions, tigers, and wolves they try to emulate.

And
then there is the categorising of people into different camps in an
attempt at dehumanisation. Environmentalists are often called eco-terrorists
although no environmentalist has ever terrorised or hurt anyone. Yet
corporations like Union Carbine, Shell, and Exxon can kill people and
cause incredible environmental damage without the media referring to
them as eco-terrorists. Usually, it is the employees of these
corporations that call the nature defenders eco-terrorists. It figures.


We don't have a logging industry anymore, they call it silviculture. It goes along with the Healthy Forest Initiative where a healthy forest is a forest that is harvested, humanely and sustainably, of course. The loggers are now "forest nurturers" who farm the forests for the benefit of future generations.

And finally the word conservative.
What happened with this word? Conservative means to conserve, to
maintain the status quo. When did Conservative come to mean undermining
the Endangered Species Act or the Clean Air Act? When did conservative
mean being anti-conservationist?

As a conservationist, I've
always viewed myself as a conservative but now I find that the
right-wing, radical, wacko anti-conservationists who destroy forests,
overfish the oceans, and pollute our rivers are now calling themselves
conservative and accusing me of being a radical for working to conserve nature and endangered species.

*
Paul Watson was a founder of Greenpeace and is president of the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society. He lives in the United States.

*
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