On January 3, the Natural Resources Defense Council won a big victory in court. U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ruled that because of dangers to migrating whales and dolphins, the Navy had to stay 12 miles off the coast when using a particular kind of mid-range sonar. She strongly criticized the Navy’s existing marine mammal protection “procedures” for being inadequate, and imposed additional controls such as proximity limits and requirements to search for marine mammals before and during the use of sonar.
This decision was supposed to be the culmination of an eight-year court battle by the NRDC to limit the Navy’s use of sonar, which causes marine mammals to panic, beach themselves, and bleed in the brain and ears. Gruesome videos and accounts of these consequences abound on the Internet. The NRDC has a video (narrated by Pierce Brosnan!) here and a full report on the issue here.
While touring the Middle East, President Bush took some time out from crying, giggling, and waving a sword to issue two exemptions for the Navy, essentially circumventing the court ordered protections and giving the finger to the judiciary (and, by extension, Congress). The exemptions are “emergency” waivers under the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) and NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act). NRDC is crying foul, especially over the latter waiver, which seems reasonable given that there’s no executive branch opt-out clause in that law.
The whole thing is especially ridiculous because of the emptiness of the Navy’s argument, nicely illustrated in this site which articulates and defends their position, complete with pictures of whales, ships, and American flags seemingly living together in harmony. There are volumes of articles on the Internet about the various types of sonar and their effects. The data is pretty overwhelmingly against the Navy, (and also suppressed) even if they boast about spending “more than $16 million” testing the effects of SURTASS.
Bush’s idea is essentially that no branch of government and no amount of popular support should be allowed to curtail an activity that the military says it needs. But just like the military has to sit in front of Congress when appropriations time rolls around, it certainly wouldn’t be out of line for the Navy to step up and explain why they need this sonar so damn much and why its use must be fully unencumbered by any consideration of the effects.
Let’s be clear: This sonar is designed as anti-submarine warfare. What subs are we so worried about that there is an imminent need to create a death trench of marine life everywhere our Navy boats roam? Our friendly Olympic hosts in China? New secret Al-Qaida subs? I mean, if they want to make the public case for the future of littoral warfare, let’s see them bring it. All we get instead is vague talk about the “potential threats” … and their diesel subs. Come on. Hypothetical Country X and its four subs have other problems fighting a war against the US besides their ASW disadvantage. And if all this is code for the (wait for it) Russians, well, we’d have other problems. Are we seriously still talking about maintaining a first strike capability against Russia? Do we think killing the globe’s whales is the price we pay for keeping their boats off the coast of Cuba? What is this, 1986?
Were the Navy boys so scarred by Col. Jessup’s insulting of their white uniforms in “A Few Good Men” that they have to stand up to those black-robed judges and flex their muscles to those freedom-hating whales? If so, they need to let it go, because that movie is, like, totally old.
