NOAA recently proposed removing most of the world’s humpback whales from the endangered species list, and for good reason. Whales are back. With many species hunted nearly to extinction at the turn of the 20th Century, a number of factors are responsible for their incredible comeback.

A curious baby humpback whale inspects the author off Oahu’s North Shore, March, 2015.

While rarely mentioned, one of the biggest factors in whale recovery is economic. As E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., mentions in the documentary BLUE, nobody is concerned with running out of whale oil anymore, but in the late 19th Century they were. Whale oil was one of the main energy sources used for lighting homes and businesses. But as whale populations declined, the price of whale oil rose. Then, along came Thomas Edison with the incandescent light bulb. That amazing invention, coupled with more efficient methods for extracting fossil fuels, vastly reduced the demand for whale oil.

Did you catch that? Inexpensive fossil fuels, those chemicals that global warming doomsayers love to hate, are undeniably one of the key players in the recovery of humpback whales! For all intents and purposes, whales are completely ignoring the global warming hype. They are posed to breach right over Al Gore’s prediction that, by 2016, Earth may be past the point of becoming a “total frying pan.”

I have never met anyone who doesn’t love whales. They are magnificent creatures that completely defy naturalistic explanations of our world, pointing us instead to their Creator. And because everybody loves whales, I think humans are perfectly capable of voluntarily conserving them, which is why I think humpbacks can be delisted as an endangered species. If you agree, now through July 20, 2015, you can voice your approval for delisting humpback whales here. And like the whales, feel free to ignore the global warming hype, too!