Whatever happened to... whales?

Only joking, of course, because whales aren't extinct or anything. Not yet. Amid the ludicrous and frankly sickening advertisers' feeding frenzy around the World Cup (remember that? England knocked out on penalties - again?) one advert stuck in my mind, to such an extent that I wanted to reproduce the text of it here:

"Since the World Cup kickoff, an area of ocean floor the size of 12,949,640 football pitches has been destroyed by bottom trawling."

Read it again: over 12 million football pitches. Can you imagine that? Picture it? Of course not. Who can? When our wanton destruction of our finite resources is so unimaginably huge, what can we do about it? March on London/Washington/Tokyo? Write to our MP?

In an increasingly 'single-issue' politicised environment, maybe some of these things might help, a bit. If you really want to know, I've got a suggestion: support Greenpeace (the above was one of their ads, of course,not Nike or McDonalds or Budweiser). For this reason I've decided to add a link to them to my list of links - over there on the left of the screen, take a look.

You can become what they rather sweetly call an 'Ocean Defender' (no, you don't have to wear your underpants - or your Speedos - outside your trousers). I'm one, and if you've read this far, maybe you should be too. Go here to find out more: http://ctk.greenpeace.org/mgm/en_EZINE10_2572705

Maybe if enough of us sign up, and send stroppy emails, and wear the t-shirts, then our kids won't end up asking the question I began with. Has to be worth a try, right?