The campaign to "save the whale" has certainly impacted the human consciousness over the past twenty years. Most of the representatives at Shimonoseki this week are very familiar with the arguments in favor of total protection and sustainable use. The fact that this meeting is taking place under a media spotlight is testament to society’s general awareness of the issue, if not the details and nuances of the debate.

In another twenty years the same passion shown at IWC meetings by Mr. McClay and Mr. Morley may well be directed by their political successors at other causes and other issues in other fora.

Similarly, the whalers of Japan are careful to work within quotas set down by Japanese government officials who are themselves deferential to modern sensitivities engendered by the whaling issue.

Yet this attention to whales has endured through only a snapshot of man’s lifetime and can, ultimately, merely be regarded as temporary and passing. It is already clear that whale hunting is a long way from being a priority issue for most Americans, Europeans and Asians. The perspective of the immediate past cannot be relied on as a means of guaranteeing the future.

Much could happen in the next twenty years. The IWC may paralyze itself out of existence and become little more than a talking shop, unable to enforce its decisions. Nations may leave and set their own quotas, either individually or as another group of trading nations. Others may choose to follow the path of zero regulation and go about hunting whatever and wherever they wish.

Campaigns to "save the whale" cannot continue forever. The stark fact is that, at most, only five of the great whale species, out of seventy-five types of marine cetacean, are truly endangered. Even the spinmeisters must recognize their ability to milk public sentiment will be eventually limited by a growing acceptance of the facts - or by the emergence and dominance of new and more lucrative campaign issues.

If the IWC can agree the terms of the RMS, all the great whales will have been protected from over hunting. An RMS is therefore in the interests of all representatives at Shimonoseki, because it provides firm assurance that whale species will be comprehensively protected for the foreseeable future.

Assuming that anti-whalers are arguing in good faith, rather than for egotistical, political or pecuniary reasons, the logic of an RMS should be compelling for all.

For today’s anti-whalers, this means accepting the reality that whale species are much more secure within an RMS than being at the mercy of an uncertain future. It does not deliver a knockout punch to either side in the debate, but an RMS will set a new baseline from which nations, hunters and campaigners can deliberate how civilized it is to hunt whales at all, compared to breeding cattle, for human sustenance.

Once an RMS has been established, this ethical debate can predominate, with anti-whalers trying to persuade consumers in Japan and Norway why it is more wrong to eat whale meat than other types of meat. They can do this in the secure knowledge that, whatever response they get, all whale species will remain secure.