CT Blue

This is cool:

“Without oil, at least four billion people would starve. This spiral of trouble would make the oil infrastructure utterly useless” – unless their bodies could be turned into fuel.

That was the satirical message delivered by two corporate ethics activists to the Gas and Oil Exposition 2007 in Calgary, Alberta. The activists, part of political trickster collective the Yes Men, used the Exposition to stage their latest theatre of corporate absurdity, with Exxon/Mobil and the Natural Petroleum Council playing the fools.

The prank, intended as a critique of the fossil fuel industry’s influence on energy policy, caused confusion and consternation on the final day of the Exposition, one of the industry’s largest gatherings.

The NPC, which is led by former Exxon-Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, advises the White House on gas and oil issues. They were expected to announce the findings of a Raymond-chaired study, commissioned by the Department of Energy, on joint US-Canadian energy policy.

Instead, attendees of the day’s $45.00 keynote luncheon were addressed by the Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum, who identified himself as an NPC representative named Shepard Wolff.

After noting that current energy policies will likely lead to “huge global calamities” and disrupt oil supplies, Wolff told the audience “that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could “keep fuel flowing” by transforming the billions of people who die into oil,” said a Yes Men press release.

Yes Man Mike Bonnano, posing as an Exxon representative named Florian Osenberg, added that “With more fossil fuels comes a greater chance of disaster, but that means more feedstock for Vivoleum. Fuel will continue to flow for those of us left.”

The impostors led growingly suspicious attendees in lighting Vivoleum candles made, they said, from a former Exxon janitor who died from cleaning a toxic spill. When shown a mock video of the janitor professing his desire to be turned in death into candles, a conference organizer pulled Bonanno and Bichlbaum from the stage.

There are pictures, and supposedly videos (though I couldn’t find them) here.