Today’s surreal new story comes straight outta bushfire country.

That would be Australia.

Ready? Let’s go!

Yep. Thou cannot maketh this shit up.

The details:

“Mining giant BHP has warned that smoke and dust from Australia’s deadly wildfires is hurting coal production.

“The world’s biggest mining company said production had slumped 11 per cent at its New South Wales coal mine and power station in the second half of last year, partly due to poor air quality resulting from Australia’s catastrophic bushfire season.

“Smoke from regional bushfires and dust have reduced air quality at our operations, which has impacted December 2019 production,” BHP said in a trading update on Tuesday”.

I wasn’t the only son of a gun to stumble upon this surreal story. There are pages and pages and pages and pages on it. Just type BHP coal bushfires into Google and trip out on the 73,300 results.

Indeed, as pointed out by Professor Jeremy Moss last year:

"BHP's emissions from its global fossil fuel operations alone were more than the whole of Australia's domestic emissions (534Mt CO₂-e) for 2018.

"If BHP were a country, the products it produces would cause emissions greater than those emitted by 25 million Australians."

I cannot even imagine the cognitive dissonance of being a coal miner and having to take leave to protect your home from a bushfire.

Not blaming them for being coal miners though. It’s our society that allows them to be coal miners, and a job’s a job.