The Wedding Present + more across Manchester Academy.
The founder of Sea Shephard talks about his new anti-whaling campaign with the Paul Watson Foundation, his fallout with Sea Shepherd, which he formed, his philosophy and how to change the world with direct action.
02:00 About to take the new boat to Iceland to block whaling 07:00 There is no economic justification for whaling – useless products like making whale penis into beer. 08.00 the 4 whaling nations must be stopped 08.20 Japan Bringing Back Whaling 10:30 The Faroes are the most stubborn of the four offending countries – Iceland is the easiest to stop but Japan is the key 11:20 Japanese public opinion is going with us 12:00 One of the reasons I was ousted from Sea Shephard was my Iceland campaign, which they wanted to ‘rebrand’ because it was too controversial and they wanted to work with corporations 12:30 Sea Shepherd is now in bed with big corporations. I wanted a 75 year moratorium on fishing but they are now in bed with these companies 15:30 The success of Whale Wars made Sea Shepherd really popular and money, and people had comfy jobs – literally didn’t want to rock the boat. 19:00 They kicked me out despite the fact I started it, and they took our ships and archives and organisation, but the three things you can’t take are passion, courage and imagination. They don’t have any of those .. three different groups within Sea Shepherd didn’t go along with them, though 20:00 I’m now forbidden from using the logo I designed 20:52 Paul Waston Foundation – I don’t want to use my name but they can’t take that away from me 25:33 Ironically, Greenpeace are now doing actions I agree with, unlike Sea Shepard 26:00 Visions of the future ‘Don’t worry about the future – you have absolute power over the present, which will define the future…’ 28.40 I set up my own church of biocentrism – we are globally interdependent and not human at the centre 30:00 It’s not about saving the planet. It’s about saving ourselves and the species we will bring down with us – in 250 million years’ time, we may not be here. We may have destroyed things, but the niches will be filled by nature, and there will not be much evidence we even existed. The only thing left will maybe bronze statues like in Planet of the Apes!
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