A GB News presenter dismissed the hottest years on record with eight words: ‘It’s been hotter before. The coral will come back.’
I put my coffee down.
That mindset is precisely why we won’t be fine. The Earth has been hotter before. Never this fast. Never with eight billion people depending on climate stability for food, water, and survival.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the planet doesn’t need saving. We do.
The Planet Will Be Fine
In Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, ecological modelling shows what happens if humans vanished tomorrow. Forests reclaim cities within decades. Rivers run clear. Species rebound.
The Earth would recover. Without us.
So what are we actually protecting when we talk about ‘saving the planet’? Our food systems. Our water supplies. Our coastlines. Our children’s futures.
This isn’t about saving whales instead of people. When we protect ecosystems, we protect ourselves. A world safe for humans is a world where nature can thrive. The question isn’t whether the planet survives. It’s whether we do.
Why ‘Save the Whales’ Keeps Losing
We’ve framed conservation as charity. ‘Save the whales’ positions protection as something good people do when they can afford to.
Charity is optional. You donate when it’s convenient. You look away when life gets hard.
Survival isn’t optional.
ExxonMobil scientists accurately predicted global warming in the 1970s. The company spent the next fifty years lobbying to prevent action. We knew. They knew.
Nothing changed.
Don’t Look Up captured it perfectly. The science is certain. Politicians delay. Billionaires scheme. The comet keeps coming.
So what if we stopped asking people to care about nature, and started asking them to care about themselves?
What I Watched Fail in Iceland
In 2023, Iceland’s own Food and Veterinary Authority documented that forty per cent of hunted fin whales struggled for over eleven minutes before dying. Some took over an hour. The methods violated Iceland’s animal welfare laws, laws the country considers among the strongest in the world.
The science was clear. The cruelty was documented. The illegality was established by Iceland’s own government. A majority of Icelanders oppose commercial whaling. Whale watching generates more revenue than whale killing.
The Fisheries Minister suspended the hunt.
I was in Reykjavík when it happened. I shook her hand. It felt like victory.
It wasn’t.
The CEO of Iceland’s sole remaining whaling company applied pressure. The ban lifted. In the shortened season that followed, his ships killed twenty-five fin whales. One was a pregnant female carrying a full-term calf.
Two activists climbed whaling ship masts for thirty-three hours in freezing conditions. Recordings emerged suggesting backroom deals between politicians and the whaling industry. A parliamentary investigation was launched.
None of it mattered.
In December 2024, the outgoing Prime Minister, leading a caretaker government after a coalition collapse, issued a new five-year licence. Up to 209 fin whales per year through 2029.
The activists now face criminal trial. The dealmakers face nothing.
Everything the conservation playbook says should work, worked. The licence was issued regardless.
The Reframe
We asked people to care about whales. We should have asked them to care about themselves.
About their fishing industries, threatened by the ecosystem collapse that follows apex predator removal. About their tourism economy, built on whale watching. About their international reputation, damaged by corruption exposed in their own parliament. About their children, inheriting a world where backroom deals override democratic accountability.
When you frame it as ‘save the whales,’ people can look away. It’s sad, but it’s not their problem.
When you frame it as ‘your government is corrupt, your economy is at risk, and your children will pay the price,’ they can’t.
This week’s Voice for the Blue episode goes deeper, the science, the systemic failures, and what a genuine reframe might look like.
The full Iceland investigation: Even One Whale tells the story of how two women exposed a corrupt system and now face trial while the dealmakers walk free.
Ocean Rising covers the ocean stories mainstream media ignores. If this matters to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
