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Renewable energy done wrong

Context:

By the early 1920s, the king penguin population in South Georgia and the Falklands was nearly wiped out by whalers on these islands. As the Falklands and South Georgia had no trees to use for firewood, the whalers burned millions of oily, blubber-rich penguins as fuel. Constant fires were required to boil whale blubber for extraction of the oil. The whalers also used penguin oil for lamps, heating and cooking, in addition to eating the birds and their eggs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_penguin#Distribution_and_habitat

2 comments
  • "I'm just a humble oilman."

    "Really? I didn't know we had any petroleum deposits down here."

    [holding a cleaver above a wriggling penguin's neck] "Petroleum?"

  • Sometimes I wonder why we're in such a terrible timeline, other times it makes total sense what got us here. A friend of mine always says something like "well I'm just an evolved monkey, what did you expect".