Harpoons and Heartstrings

BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT

of species such as blue and fin whales. The scientific response to this multi million-pound indus try (worth even more during the First World War, when whales were a source of glycerine for munitions) was led The Sounding F. BANFI/OCEANS-IMAGE/NHPA/PHOTOSHOT F. by zoologist Sidney of the Whale: Harmer, director of Science and the British Museum Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century (Natural History). D. GRAHAM BURNETT Harmer was the first University of Chicago ‘statesman-scientist’ Press: 2012. 824 pp. to voice concerns over $45, £29 dwindling whale num bers, some species of which seemed about to become extinct before they had been studied. In the early 1920s, Harmer’s deft lobbying of the British government produced gener ous funds for the Discovery research expedi tions, using the ship that had taken explorer Robert Scott to the Antarctic. The scientists’ aims were to establish breeding patterns, migratory routes and possible populations of blue, fin and humpback whales. They dis covered that, far from being as numerous as whalers claimed, many whale populations were diminished as a result of whaling in both their breeding and feeding grounds. These scientists moulded themselves in the guise of the great polar explorers, brib ing the whaling-station butchers with whisky Scientific studies of humpback and other whales in the 1920s were first to reveal their dwindling numbers. in exchange for whale fetuses and ovaries to study. Meanwhile, on Discovery’s sister ship, CONSERVATION William Scoresby, other scientists were shoot ing whales with metal darts to track their movements. It was a Faustian pact, Burnett relates, “buying whale science with whale oil”. Harpoons and The 1920s also saw the first stirrings of the public’s conscience over whaling (but not its stomach: 42% of margarine made in Britain contained whale oil at the time), with “Save heartstrings the Whales” appearing in a 1924 headline in the Liverpool Daily Courier. Here Burnett shifts his attention across the Atlantic to US A history of cetacean research highlights its precarious naturalist Remington Kellogg, assistant cura place between whaling and politics, finds Philip Hoare. tor of mammals at the Smithsonian Institu tion in Washington DC. No longer a whaling nation, the United States could take the moral istorian of science D. Graham history. The fact that it is about whales seems high ground in the move towards whale con Burnett is sly in his provocations. In almost accidental; its subject matter has servation. Pelagic fleets run by Russia, Japan The Sounding of the Whale, he has more to do with the human response to and the Netherlands were taking up to 50,000 Hpainstakingly gathered evidence for science’s whales than the creatures themselves. great whales (including blue, fin, sperm and conflicted role in providing rigorous data for Burnett begins with whaling in the early humpback) each year. Kellogg and his col the preservation — if not always conserva twentieth century, when only the United leagues struggled to assess population sizes tion — of whales. He wonders whether the Kingdom and Norway remained major play in the face of such slaughter. competing interests in this tale have reduced ers. The heyday of US whaling, extolled in The League of Nations took up the issue the science, buried under the cumulative Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick, as early as 1930, in a committee chaired by weight of that evidence, to an “elaborate had long passed. With northern stocks of the Argentinian academic José León Suárez, form of rhetoric”. sperm and right whales reduced, the whalers’ who declared that “the riches of the sea, This is a characteristically wry sentiment attention had swung south to the Falkland and especially the immense wealth of the from Burnett, whose book provides a synop Islands and South Georgia, where fast boats Antarctic region, are the patrimony of the tic survey of a century of human and natural and grenade harpoons enabled the hunting whole human race”. With the founding of

12 JANUARY 2012 | VOL 481 | NATURE | 141 © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS the International Whaling Commis ENERGY sion (IWC) in 1946 — the machinations of which Burnett lays out using newly uncovered archival material — matters became more complicated as cold-war Curbing urban greed politics kicked in. By 1965, a crisis point had been An overview of resource-guzzling US cities has lessons reached. Soviet whaling fleets were for us all, finds David Orr. exceeding their allotted quota, and seri ously under-reporting their catch. The IWC, and the uncertainty of cetacean ustin Troy concludes The Very Hungry infrastructure, peo science, sat uneasily in this sorry story City by writing: “Good cities are good ple and energy. The of ‘cetapolitics’. Radical conservationists places to live. But they take work.” In United States is littered suspected some scientists of perpetuat Athe United States, that is both the promise with extreme exam ing whaling because it supplied them and the problem. With few exceptions, such ples: on the one hand with the subjects for their studies; other as Washington DC, US cities grew by happen is Detroit, Michigan, researchers found their work being used stance, contrivance and often by connivance. a proud industrial city as a delaying tactic by the whalers, who The same is increasingly true of megacities of around 2 million could continue their culls under the pre worldwide. Growth without planning — as people in 1950 that tence of aiding science. Thus, the obses Troy shows in his trek through conurbations The Very Hungry is now reduced to a sive collection of data, Burnett writes, from Los Angeles to Copenhagen to Masdar City: Urban Energy beleaguered popula ended up “obscuring the seriousness of City in Abu Dhabi — has huge implications Efficiency and the tion of 700,000 circled the problem” by becoming an end in itself for energy use and the natural resources that Economic Fate of by affluent suburbs; Cities rather than addressing the pressing issue support it. AUSTIN TROY on the other is glitter of population depletion. Troy, an environmental economist, gives Yale University Press: ing, overbuilt Phoe Enter the contentious physician John us a sure-handed, cogent treatment of urban 2012. 384 pp. nix, Arizona, facing a Lilly, whose idea of cetaceans as ‘alien challenges, focusing on ‘urban energy metab $28, £25 future of extreme heat species’ and wild experiments (culmi olism’ — a city’s pattern of energy use deter and dessication. nating in dosing dolphins with the drug mined by its location, culture, history and size. Elsewhere, notably in the US Sun Belt, LSD) have been seen by some as setting Most US cities need massive energy inputs per ‘zombie’ urban subdivisions built far from the field back by years. But Burnett shows capita compared with many of their European, city centres drive up energy and resource use. how Lilly’s work was the crucial inter Chinese or developing-world counterparts. Even urban success stories elsewhere, such as face between military bioscience and a The price they pay is a vulnerability to scarcity, Stockholm, face the challenges of energy and new countercultural attitude towards rising costs and environmental decay. Troy resources that come with continued growth. cetaceans. That paved the way for the traces energy use through water consump How did we get to this point? Americans astonishing effect of a 1971 recording of tion, transport, construction, the heating and have traditionally regarded cities as places humpback whale songs by researchers cooling of homes, and the creation of workable where you make money fast and move on. Scott McVay and Roger Payne, which communities, and includes sidebars on energy The combination of greed and devil-take- sensitized a generation and galvanized choices from renewables, natural gas and coal the-hindmost economic theories led to the the anti-whaling movement. to nuclear power, oil and biofuels. abandonment of whole sectors of urban The same battle for the fate of the He describes a drearily familiar pattern that economies when people found their mobile whale is still being fought, three decades has accelerated since the mid-twentieth cen capital could earn them a bit more some after the implementation of the IWC’s tury. With little planning or foresight, inner where else. Racism also played a large part. moratorium on commercial whaling. cities are forsaken for suburbs, from which Banks refused to invest in minority-domi The scope and weight of Burnett’s book people flee to yet more distant ‘exurbs’ — a nated inner cities, resulting in segregated symbolizes that continuing inertia. pattern of urban greed that consumes land, poverty and crime. And then there is the car, Perhaps that is why, after his ten an indiscriminate wrecker of urban fabric, years of research, Burnett is left with a air quality and climate stability. Melvillean sense of existential defeat even As a result of all this, the United States still in his groundbreaking conclusion: “The does not have a coherent urban policy. That fundamental lesson I have taken from the has cost the country dear — not least in terms research and writing of this book amounts of the human cost of wars fought over the oil A. MACLEAN/GETTY to nothing less than a kind of sweeping needed to subsidize inefficient urban growth. epistemological humiliation.” Yet by ques Underpriced and oversubsidized fossil tioning the very nature of our scientific fuels made energy cheap, but that era is interest in the whale, he has set the tone stumbling to an end. Accelerating climate for a new century of discovery — and, one destabilization, peak oil extraction, water hopes, recovery. ■ shortages and rapidly growing urban popu lations are looming global challenges. More Philip Hoare is the Leverhulme artist- than half the people in the world live in in-residence at the Marine Institute at cities, and it is here that humanity’s future will Plymouth University, and a visiting be decided — albeit in fellow at the University of Southampton, a global economy with NATURE.COM UK. He is the author of Leviathan or, a diminishing margin Nature’s Science The Whale. for waste and policy and the City special: e-mail: [email protected] Overbuilt Phoenix, Arizona, faces a dry future. mistakes. go.nature.com/9233vu