I realize this is a meme, but isn’t it mostly linked to how many men died in wars last century, which disproportionately skews the numbers?

Ah yes “sustainability”. Whaling is such a sustainable industry that basically every civilized nation has banned it. That’s okay though, we’ve proven that we’re really good at farming and fishing sustainably, so I’m sure we’ll be just as good at whaling. We definitely aren’t fishing the oceans to extinction, or releasing millions of tons of methane from factory cattle farming.

Oh wait…

It takes a lot less time to grow a new cow than it does to grow a new whale.