I confess I don’t know how much of a threat lobstering poses to right whales. I have a suspicion that neither does Robert Charles (“Maine Voices: Stop trying to shame Maine’s lobstermen,” Nov. 30), nor does he seem to care much.

The choice isn’t between putting “whales over people,” as Charles writes. It’s whether human commercial activity should drive right whales to extinction. Charles wants to make it sound like we’re arguing over whether whales or humans should be able to buy Taylor Swift tickets first.

Also, the line “lobstering to Maine is like oilfields to Texas” gives away Charles’ attitude. There is no greater threat to humanity (along with a substantial number of other species) than continued carbon fuel production. Yet he seems to argue the opposite – that limiting people’s ability to profit from oil wells would be an existential threat to a “way of life.”

Plenty of people profit from plenty of awful things. Maine’s economic development benefited enormously from the slave trade, but hopefully we don’t mourn the passing of the “slave trade way of life.” The refusal to explore the dangers of profit-at-any-cost has gotten us to this point.

Dan Kolbert
Portland

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