Hoping to defuse a three-decade feud over whale hunting, three academics are making an audacious proposal: The world should put a price on killing whales and allow conservationists and whalers alike to bid on the right to take them. Calling it “a market that would be economically, ecologically and socially viable for whalers and whales alike,” an economist and two marine scientists suggested in a commentary published Wednesday by the journal Nature that the International Whaling Commission (IWC) could allocate catch quotas between whaling and anti-whaling nations while holding some back for an open auction.