Also, you once mentioned a Chinese counterpart called “Panda Blog”, but I could find no such site. Could you post a URL (or a link from Archive.org if the site is down)?

They would have been correct to worry, though! Even after we magically found a superior substitute bubbling up out of the ground, and were lucky enough to have technology to bring it to market, many whales still almost went extinct before the International Whaling Commission started in 1946. And that was back before whalers would have formed a lobbying organization to protect their profits. Here’s how the think tanks would have argued, (thanks to dsquared at Crooked Timber)

ASK A NINETEENTH CENTURY WHALING EXPERT

My latest column at “Whale Central Station” is up, exposing the leftist myth of finite whale supplies.
1. Whales breed. Therefore, the potential supply of whales is unlimited.
2. As whaling technology improves, our ability to exploit this limited supply of whales becomes ever-greater. A few years ago, 40 whales in a four year trip was regarded as good going. Modern Norwegian whalers capture and process 40 whales a month. All of the estimates of the “sustainability” of the whale-based economy were put together before such inventions as exploding harpoons. And remember that the supply of whales is self-replenishing. Leftists seem not to understand that whales have sex.
3. Reducing whaling would cost vast amounts of money and destroy our economy; credible estimates would suggest that without whale-oil lamps we would all sit around in the dark until we die. This money would better be spent on providing aid to the Inuit.
4. We can’t give the Inuit property rights over their whales to help them manage the speed of whaling, because that’s just politically impractical.
5. Arrrrr!

And we’d have just about no whales left today.