The world ecology is in jeopardy, and, according to Andrew Tenachel, the only way for the situation to improve is if the people of the world start to realize their “individual responsibility toward a global environmental improvement.”

Tenachel, from the Chicago Chapter of Greenpeace, spoke before a crowd of more than 50 people last night at the Holmes Student Center’s Carl Sandburg Auditorium.

The environmental spokesman came to NIU to help address the problem status of our environment and to influence people through slides and discussion toward a more receptive attitude about our environment and the many creatures that face extinction. Tenachel discussed many environmental issues, including the continued whaling practices of some countries, pollution by corporations and the hazards of off-shore oil drilling.

Whaling, one of Greenpeace’s more visible environmental pursuits, has been curtailed through the ratification of an international whaling moratorium. However, the continued harpooning by such nations as Japan, Iceland and Norway has remained an area of great concern for Greenpeace.

“Iceland and Japan, in 1986, decided to continue whaling,” Tenachel said. “They claim it (whaling) to be part of their culture, and they claim it provides them (the citizens) with meat and other valuable products. The tail flukes of sperm whales sell as a delicacy for $100 a pound.

“Because of these reasons, they could not follow the moratorium, nor could they deny it, unless they wanted to cause international problems,” Tenachel said.

What the countries did to circumvent the problem, Tenachel said, was to try to introduce “scientific hunt” legislation into the moratorium’s makeup. The scientific hunt approach would allow the whaling countries to continue harvest of the whales in order to study such areas as whale gestation periods and feeding habits.

“While this legislation is being reviewed by the International Whaling Committee,” Tenachel said, “hundreds of whales are being slaughtered.”

Tenachel also discussed the need for the world to protect the areas of wilderness that, as of now, remain relatively untouched or untainted by humans.

The spokesman said that he, as well as a vast majority of the scientific community, is deeply concerned with the possible exploitation of the polar reaches of the Antarctic.

The pristine state of the “very fragile ecosystem” is at stake now that nations have discovered oil and other valuable resources under the ice of the continent.

“Since 1959, peaceful, scientific research has taken place in an atmosphere of coexistence,” Tenachel said. “But the discovery of important resources now threatens a very vulnerable ecosystem.”

Tenachel said there is great concern that an oil spill of any size in the Antarctic region could cause enormous damage.”The creatures in those waters have adapted to a very harsh, fragile environment, and any pollution could be devastating.”