The mass slaughter of whales destroyed far more than the creatures themselves.

Nov 2021: In the 20th century, the largest animals that have ever existed almost stopped existing. Baleen whales—the group that includes blue, fin, and humpback whales—had long been hunted, but as whaling went industrial, hunts became massacres. With explosive-tipped harpoons that were fired from cannons and factory ships that could process carcasses at sea, whalers slaughtered the giants for their oil, which was used to light lamps, lubricate cars, and make margarine. In just six decades, roughly the life span of a blue whale, humans took the blue-whale population down from 360,000 to just 1,000. In one century, whalers killed at least 2 million baleen whales, which together weighed twice as much as all the wild mammals on Earth today.

Australian entrepreneur Mark Carnegie’s $1m offer to island nations to build carbon sinkhole

Oct 2021: Island nations under threat from rising sea levels have been offered more than a million dollars to take part in a bold new experiment to explode the global whale population and turn the ocean into a giant carbon sinkhole.

The proposal, put forward by Australian entrepreneur Mark Carnegie and British climate guru Sir David King, would see the ocean “fertilised” in a way that stimulates the growth of phytoplankton, tiny creatures which absorb carbon and produce oxygen.