What’s the weirdest thing you’ve stumbled across on the internet recently? Mine is the Wikipedia page about the time Australia declared war on emus. And lost.
It’s called The Great Emu War, and it happened in 1932. Aussie farmers were incensed about emus eating their crops, so the government sent in the military to wipe out the entire population of giant flightless birds. What happened next was like a real-life version of a roadrunner and Wil.E.Coyote cartoon.
The Australian army — carrying heavy-duty machine guns — spent weeks firing thousands of rounds of ammunition but the emus were too fast and tricky to get hit, and barely any were killed. In possibly the greatest moment for emus until Rod Hull came along, the military operation had to be abandoned, and the birds were thankfully left in peace.
When I first learned about this story, I immediately thought: wow, people back then really had a colossally backwards attitude towards nature, and we’d certainly never do anything that stupid.
But don’t be so sure. At this very moment, irresponsible corporations are on the verge of strip mining the last pristine natural environment on the planet — the seabed in the deepest and most unexplored parts of the ocean.
The damage to sea life will be catastrophic. What’s being proposed is the largest mining operation in human history — at least 400,000 square miles of sea bed will be devastated, killing billions of ocean creatures, and completely destroying delicate ecosystems that have taken hundreds of millions of years to evolve.
That’s not even the worst of it. What marine scientists are truly terrified about is the unpredictable damage caused by the vast amounts of debris and waste that mining companies will then spew into the oceans.
Corporations claim they have to strip mine the deep seas to get the metals and rare earths needed for electric batteries to power the green revolution.
In other words, they’re now saying we have to destroy the oceans to save the planet.
It’s a totally false argument: scientific studies have shown there are more than enough resources on land for all the batteries and new technologies we’ll need to go zero carbon.
No — this is just about short-term greed, at the expense of the fragile natural world around us.
Socially responsible businesses such as Volkswagen, Tesla and IKEA have pledged that they will never buy metals that come from deep sea strip mining.
We can build pressure for a global ban before it’s too late. I’m helping a charity called the Minderoo Foundation that’s campaigning to halt this madness — and there are dozens of other organisations fighting the good fight, from Greenpeace to the Blue Marine Foundation.
The emus miraculously won the war against humans. Billions of sea creatures might not be so lucky.
Todd Boehly makes me laugh
Some things make me laugh more than they should. Like the Twitter account that only posts photos of football mascots observing a minute’s silence before games. Cracks me up every time.
But I get the most pleasure from barmy football club owners. Like the time Mohammed Fayed put up a statue of Michael Jackson and his pet monkey in front of Fulham FC.
At the moment it’s new Chelsea owner Todd Boehly who’s making me chuckle. From signing players on eight-year contracts to sticking, until this week, with a manager clearly out of his depth, it’s been a disaster.
He’s spent £600 million, axed two managers and has just made Frank Lampard interim manager — he was sacked by the last owner. And despite all that, Chelsea have only scored one more goal this year than Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins.
