Apologies for the brief hiatus, in which I put everything I own in boxes and moved the boxes around in a truck. Now I’m living out of those boxes and working in the desperate land of dial-up, but Sludgie is back in action. On Sunday in Tathra Beach, Australia, an unusual protest took place over global warming, in which thousands of people gathered to spell out a message with their bodies on the beach. The event was spearheaded by Bega Valley orthopedic (or, in his bizarre native tongue, orthopaedic) surgeon Mathew Nott, who wanted to do something memorable to inspire discussion about energy solutions.

The protest was aimed squarely at the biggest violators of healthy global climate - migratory birds. After all, birds raised the loudest stink about the U.S. proposal for an offshore wind farm, protesting that they might get sucked up in the propellers (and a few of those birds own beachfront property in Hyannis Port, but they didn’t let that influence their opinion.) It’s hard to say whether the birds got the message – they tend to look forward when they’re flying instead of down – but it was certainly a nice demonstration.

…Over three thousand people [created] a human sign on Tathra Beach spelling CLEAN ENERGY FOR ETERNITY that dissolved and reformed to spell IMAGINE.

The poetry of the moment was slightly marred when the crowd reformed once again to spell out “A MESSAGE FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT BEGA VALLEY ORTHOPAEDICS.”

Three Thousand People Make Global Warming Statement With Human Sign (ABC South East)