Pave the Whales!

Greenpeace is through playing around. A handful of species dies every day and they're not going to sit around and take it anymore. When these hardened eco-warriors march on Washington, nothing happens. People cry, people chant, and everybody heads out for Thai food at eight. Now, all that has changed. Greenpeace has developed a foolproof way to gain worldwide attention and accomplish all their goals in a single, broad stroke.

They had two guys climb a big, thick rock.

The Totem Pole, a long natural shaft about 65 meters high, towers menacingly in Australia's outback. Described as one of the most difficult vertical climbs in the world, this really big rock has become the eye of an environmental hurricane, the focal point of decades of transgressions finally ending. After all, nothing stops marine piracy like climbing a really big rock. As soon as that flier came up, the hundreds of Russian and Korean fishermen pirating the toothfish immediately hoisted their sails, returned home and scrapped their ships. Even though absolutely no one would know about the climb if it weren't for Greenpeace's website, www.greenpeace.org, they accomplished something special. Honest. They didn't just waste their time for an organization of hypocritical liberal delinquents who care more about the inky-toed water weasel of Madagascar than their own families. Seriously.

Well here's an idea. Fuck that water weasel. Also, screw the manatees; those dopey walrus-wannabes latch onto rotor blades like a remora onto some endangered, delicious shark. And for god's sake, pave the whales. Free Willy has done enough damage already.

Environmental concern is fine to a degree, but some people just take it too far. Let's say Dick Cheney decides to pump a few million into Texas by financing a large nuclear power plant next to an elementary school and the Houston Water Reserve. Okay, that's a problem. Children in Texas are ugly enough without massive physical deformities and they sure as hell don't need to be trading tumors at recess. Mutant toddlers aside, even the most expensive of those Brita water filters won't take the quaint green glow off the tap. If Greenpeace wanted to step up to that, fantastic. We could all drive down together and have a sing-a-long.

But Greenpeace doesn't care about that. Unless the power plant's new home infringes on the mating grounds of the sap-sucking sand marmot, they don't care. There's too much attention on saving ugly animals with no reasonable use to mankind. The toothfish is tasty. That's a fact. Sure it lives 50 years but can't reproduce until age 10, but that's not our problem. We're not preaching fishy abstinence in those big schools they swim around in. Why can we fry the Icelandic cod with a clear conscience, but we can't bread and bake other forms of marine life? People need to accept that dolphin tastes delicious and whales make a hell of a soup base.

It's not like we haven't given the whales a chance. Our nation's top marine biologists and emcees have been experimenting on Shamu and Mamu for years. Safe in the confines of Sea Words nationwide, these playful and rambunctious sea mammals have proven their worthlessness. They can't save drowning sailors and they can't protect our nation's burnt-out surfer dudes from bloodthirsty sharks and jellyfish. Hell, half the time whales can't even leap up and grab the little fish that blonde lifeguard waves at their noses.

Last July, 55 pilot whales picked a bad time to skirt the sand and found themselves beached at Cape Cod during low tide. Teams of rescuers spent the better part of a day laboring under these massive monsters, finally the 46 surviving whales back into the ocean. Those dumb whales were beached again the very next day and a third time the day after that. In the end, most of them were put to sleep. In Japan, government officials suggested eating beached whales; their "waste not, want not" policy earned them the wrath of environmentalists anyway. But why not at least get some use out of the animals?

Whales do nothing for us. They support a booming whale-watching industry in Maine, but that's it. We can take care of plankton on our own. It's not like these animals are hauling cargo for us across the Atlantic, and as cool as it sounds, the government isn't strapping missiles to them in an attempt to fight terrorism. The ballistic anti-nuke whale unit will never be reality. Worse yet, these filthy animals are urinating where we swim.

Help fight Greenpeace. Interested readers can contact their headquarters in Amsterdam via telephone at +31 20 523 62 22 or e-mail them at supporter.services@ams.greenpeace.org. America needs to quit letting a few hemp-weaving hippies guilt us out of a good meal.