In 72 hours the International Whaling Commission will hold its final vote on a proposal to legalize commercial whale hunting for the first time in a generation.
The outcome rests on whose voices are heard most clearly in the final hours: the pro-whaling lobby -- or the world's people?
More than 900,000 of us have signed the petition to protect whales -- let's get to 1 million!! At the whale summit in Morocco, an Avaaz team is setting up billboards, front-page newspaper ads, and a giant, constantly-updating petition counter -- all to ensure that delegates, from the moment they step off the plane until they cast their votes, will see from our explosive numbers that the world will not accept legal whale slaughter. Click to sign, and forward this to everyone:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/whales_72hrs_left/?vl
Thanks to the worldwide outcry, many governments have already pledged to oppose the proposal. Each time the Avaaz whale petition added 100,000 signatures, it was sent again to the IWC and key governments -- some of them thanked us, and Australia's environment minister is set to accept the petition personally in the midst of the tense talks.
But pressure from the other side has been relentless -- a newspaper investigation has triggered revelations about Japan effectively bribing small nations with aid. Other governments, especially in Europe and Latin America, could abstain... or even support the proposal. The vote could go either way.
Citizen pressure is our best hope -- and it's working. The whaling lobby expected to win easily, but thanks to actions like ours, champions of the ban are standing strong. It was an explosive worldwide social movement in the 1980s that led to the commercial whaling ban we're now protecting. Now civil society access to the talks is being limited, so this powerful petition campaign is a vital channel of worldwide pressure in the final 72 hours of negotiations.
Let's deliver 1 million signatures inside the talks before it's too late! -- sign now and spread the word:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/whales_72hrs_left/?vl
After the global ban was first implemented on commercial whaling, the number of whales killed each year plummeted from 38,000 per year to just a couple of thousand. It's a testament to the power of humanity to move forward. As we move to confront the other crises of the modern age, let's cherish this legacy of progress -- by joining together now to protect our majestic and intelligent neighbors on this fragile planet.
P.S.: Despite the ban, Japan, Norway, and Iceland have continued whaling -- and are now pushing to make the IWC proposal as lenient as possible. Expecting permission to catch more whales than ever, Japan is reportedly planning to buy its largest whaling ship yet. Click here to sign the petition against commercial whaling!
source: email from avaaz@avaaz.org
photos: photo from: planetsave.com and ens-newswire.com
more links:
"IWC whaling proposal 'offensive'", New Zealand Herald http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10640398
"Flights, girls and cash buy Japan whaling votes" - a new exposé by the Times of London http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7149086.ece
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