Exxon-Mobil hot under the collar from parody!
16 June 2007 by Naomi
Civil disobedients shock industry conference with flesh-to-fuel proposition.
“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.
Two YesMen, anticorporate activists, managed to pose as spokesmen” announcing the findings of a Raymond-chaired study, commissioned by the Department of Energy, on joint US-Canadian energy policy”. Instead, the Exxon-Mobil and the Natural Petroleum Council attendees were told
…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. [BTW, the video takes a little longer to load than YouTube.]
Of course, it’s a horrible thought! However, the issue was addressed during the 2004 presidential campaign by one of the BigOil moguls, who was overheard to mutter, “There’s about five billion people too many in the world now…” Obviously, he’s not a xian! If he was, then he would be against birth control and abortion, now, wouldn’t he?
The images are of the candles “produced from the deceased janitor”; of course, they’re actually made from paraffin. And of the witless attendees cooperating with the impostors, by lighting the candles! I “borrowed” the images from the Vivoleum/”Exxon-Mobil” website.
Update: The hits just keep coming! Biofuels Could Lead to Mass Hunger Deaths.
16 June 2007, on 4:47 pm
Ethanol is already causing an increase in grocery prices due to farmers switching to growing corn because of federal subsidies for ethanol. That’s right, they aren’t growing corn to eat anymore.
Now I have nothing against alternative fuels (I myself am patiently waiting for the ULTIMATE HYBRID of EVERY SINGLE FUEL POSSIBILITY FOR CARS!!!!), but an increase in food prices = bad news for economy.
People can survive without cars, but not food, and with both going up, up, up, we the people are fucked, fucked, fucked.
16 June 2007, on 7:44 pm
Biology doesn’t have a conscience. So, when I tell you that we’re headed toward the Mutha of all population corrections, remember that I’m not the one ordering the destruction. I’m not the one trying to keep birth control out of the hands of the people. I’m not the Poop or Robertson or Dobson or any of the others who profit from numbers, at the expense of the future.
Overpopulation and ignorance are the real killers. Too many people using resources. Too many people having more people. Overcrowding causes friction between individuals and groups. Overcrowding leads to struggles for supremacy or ownership – in short, control. Overcrowding allows the rapid dissemination of negative-viral ideas (cartoons in Denmark cause rioting in Jakarta) and actual diseases (plagues are reported to have killed as many as 50% of Europeans).
From Medieval Demography:
There are clear parallels there, pointing to societal collapse. Are we, as a society, going to have this conversation? Or are we just going let it surprise us?
16 June 2007, on 9:15 pm
We’re not even using the Earth to it’s full potential as far as food production goes. Hell, the United States wastes HALF of its food production anyway.
The problem with hunger is that the parts of the world that could feed their people are all owned and controlled by corporations and governments with plans that are not in the best interests of those who live, and work those lands.
As for overpopulation, blame medicine and science. When people began living cleaner, healthier lives, people began living longer and longer.
However, even with education, the world population will not fall much. Seriously, educate all you want, there will always be people who want families far larger than one or two kids.
But even so, even if overpopulation is the problem, how do you propose to fix it without intruding on the lives of the entire world?
16 June 2007, on 11:06 pm
Ramen, Naomi, for bringing this topic to our attention.
As AtheistUnderMask points out; grocery prices are rising, related to the ethanol switch.
Yeah, ‘we’ can do without cars…but the addiction is heavy duty…heavy metal addiction?
Or, combining the addiction to the automobile with some peoples music tastes:
“Heavy-Heavy metal addition”?
I think the eventual BEST solution to the fuel controversy, is the totally Solar-based Electric car…self contained, recharging systems with only minimal supplemental external charging needed, if at all.
I know dream on…certainly for Moi…the current and near future, initial price tags, and obvious enormous switch-over problems make it highly unlikely.
At age 67, I’m pretty much out of the competition…me with my 1984, slowly rusting, Buick Century! I guess I’d better get used to the idea of resuming the good ole ‘Public Trans’ riding shtick. Well…I went for about 4 years back in the ’90s, NOT owning a car. These days, I travel a lot less.
However, the rising cost of food etc..THAT troubles me a lot more.
What’s that!…some Shakespeare?…erm…
“Death; where is thy sting? Grave; where is thy victory?”
Yeah…I’m kidding…am I not?
Wait! Forsooth!…did I hear some knocking at my chamber door…a Raven?…quoting, no less?
Bearing a ‘janitor’ candle under its wing?
I still drool, Naomi, thinking about that fantastic, sporty, Tesla electric car that you posted on, awhile back.
Maybe I’ll buy a Lotto ticket for my Non-Fathers day gift to myself…
for NOT having kids?
16 June 2007, on 11:39 pm
Here’s a suggeston: Stop treating fertility as a basic human right. Just as we now have the ability to determine our “carbon footprint”, we need an enlightenment on procreation. We need to spread the meme: Less. Less. Less.
Just because you can have children doesn’t mean you must (something the religions can’t or won’t understand; they are threatened by two problems – people are not joining the churches fast enough to replace those who are drifting away***, and the faithful are supporting a huge infrastructure that will collapse without constant infusions of people and money). And just because you can afford to support a tribe doesn’t mean you have the ethical right to increase your resource “allotment”. One exception to this is a wealthy family adopting without simultaneously birthing as well. I’ll give Jolie a pass if she has no more children from her body; otherwise, she violates my viewpoint.
Where is the wisdom on this issue? Why must it be only emotional?
Without a financial collapse, another world war or a pandemic, the world’s population will increase to 9billion by 2050. And just last month, we passed a milestone: now more than 50% of the world’s peoples live in urban settings. Does that leave the arable land so underpopulated that BigAgri can exploit it? And, in the process, ruin it?
***For instance, between 1990 and 2001, the xian faith grew by 8million in the US; however, the general population grew 32million, and
Eight million went to church but 24 million went elsewhere.
16 June 2007, on 11:45 pm
Yeah, Chuck, that Tesla haunts my dreams! And it’s a honey in stop&go city traffic – the regenerative-braking puts a charge back into the battery…
My friend works as the Appointments Director for a congressman. On his gmail.chat tab, there’s a picture of him standing next to a Tesla (someone else’s, alas). He put it up because he knows I’m envious that he got that.close.to.one before I did.
17 June 2007, on 1:26 am
Because fertility IS a basic human right. If a couple don’t want children, great. That’s their RIGHT, but the way you are talking is you want to remove it. You’re as bad as the religious who want to control who we can have sex with.
How do you care about freedom while advocating this intrusive, draconian violation of privacy? Would you support a eugenics program? Cull the inferior from the gene pool? The United States used to go about doing forced sterilizations, would you want to bring back that operation?
Do you have a list of who should be allowed to breed and who should not? There are plenty of people who do, and it would be a full time job trying to keep them from power.
And again, how would you enforce it? Would you enforce it? Fines, jail times? What?
You are in control of your own body, now stop trying to control everyone else’s.
17 June 2007, on 1:29 am
Chuck, as cool as that car would be (and think of all the design possibilities, not to mention redefining the SUN ROOF as we know it!), it would require a complete reworking of the engine, let alone the car, which is unfortunate since no one will spend the time/money to develop it.
Also, it would require drivers to develop a sense of decency and STOP GOING SO FUCKING FAST, mostly because early one I doubt the car could reach a very high top speed. Weren’t the first cars only capable of like 30 miles an hour maximum?
17 June 2007, on 7:24 am
You’re going way off course. It is becoming a luxury to have more than one child. And with all luxuries, we should tax the hell out of it. After the first child, the second one would cost half of everything you own. The third, half of what’s left. And so on.
One only need make a decision: Am I a citizen of this planet, complete with responsibility for my actions? Or am I a selfish breeder.
Eugenics? Scare tactics! Of course, it would be necessary to change hearts and minds out the worthlessness of the female entity. But then hearts and minds need to be changed about everything, anyway. Otherwise, we’ll be having this conversation while the crisis is ongoing.
Don’t worry – we won’t live long enough to suffer from my plan. Or even to know that it was needed. Or that the discussion came too late to save most of us.
It is an ethical imperative to have fewer children. It is NOT a biological imperative to have more – it is vanity and selfishness. Until men come to understand that, we’ll always be on the edge of an abyss.
17 June 2007, on 7:29 am
Actually, it goes 0-60 in four seconds. And has a top speed of 130mph. Check out the Tesla website with the performance and engineering stats. They have a lovely gallery of photos, as well. (*sigh*)
17 June 2007, on 2:27 pm
I totally agree with Naomi on the population issue. My not having any offspring, had relatively little to do with any real ‘wisdom’; more to do with my evolving circumstances along the way. (And…ahem…some luck?)
It’s becoming much more important for all people to be honestly informed about the important ramifications of overpopulation…and, of course, their individual responsibility for being less selfish in their personal input. With the brainwashing from religion in the delusional mix, it doesn’t portend any RATIONAL future result.
One thing I’ve always REALLY been against, is the all too greedy and irresponsible “Fertility Industry”; which seems to turn women into, litter breeding, baby mills.
I say, if you can’t naturally have a child…ADOPT…or not…or just get over that: “I must have a little baby to feel fulfilled” routine. Like…grow up!…A baby’s not a little doll, meant to fulfill some childish fantasy. And how many parents really even think about the child’s future…like, what kind of world is the child going to have to deal with in 20, 30 or more years; when the rather self-centered parent will likely be rotting away, or ‘blowing in the wind’?
Add to that, of course, the variations in potential genetic defects…erm…’challenges’…that the future world citizen will have to face!
Yeah…Yada, yada!
Ummm…AUM?…by now, I presume you’ve checked out Naomi’s link to the Tesla Site. I think the electric car has come a long way (baby?) from that 30MPH reference in your #8 comment.
Heck…just focusing on the solar aspect of recharging THAT wonderful model…and of course expanding the design variations (mini vans?); and we might be…”good to go”? Of course; bring the price down, so ‘peons’ like me can afford one!
I think it all ‘boils down’…(that reminds me of my old car overheating, 2 yrs. ago! on the way to my Sears Tower gig)…to having the WILL to make the transition. THAT’S the real hurdle to jump (drive?) over… i.e. Overcoming the stubborn, selfish, monopoly of the oil barons etc.; who basically have control over the current, AND projected future of the automotive industry.
Unless I had been following GifS last year; and if our dear, ‘Ultra-hip’ Naomi had not been so ultra-cool in being in touch with the latest electric automotive technology…I (we) probably would be totally unaware of that Tesla…drool worthy…dream car, fr’nstance.
I may be wrong, but I think the Corporate owned and controlled media might not really want the public to think too much about other options to the current gas/ethanol/hydrogen burning ‘monopolies’.
Hmmm…come to think of it; it’s kind of similar to what happened to Tesla, in his being overshadowed (ripped off?)by Edison, early in the electrical industry competition. If it wasn’t for my own dad, back in the late ’60s, I’d probably be totally unaware of Tesla’s inventive genius.
As previously linked on GifS; check out this info about Tesla, the inventor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
Erm..”I case my rest”?
18 June 2007, on 8:02 am
Thanks Naomi. My spouse and I are childless by choice. I too am a huge supporter of large tax mandates for large families. I agree that you get one “free pass” then I think the taxes need to be huge. That isn’t taking away peoples rights to choose, but it is making them be responsible for those choices.
The way it is set up right now, there are deductions and rewards for poor population choices.
18 June 2007, on 10:16 am
Oddly enough many of the green groups are for reducing the world population as well, namely all the poor people, which is why they’re so against DDT and third world development. They couch it in terms such as “saving the planet”, but there are quotes from several leaders of these groups which betray their true agendas, the deconstruction of the industrialized world and everything which extends life.
18 June 2007, on 10:23 am
The way I see it, we have a stark choice. This planet can support a population of about three or four billion living the all-electric 21st century lifestyle; or a population of about ten billion scratching out a meagre living in the dirt.
So which is it to be?
(Some problems could be solved at a stroke by the transplant of a live foetus. Woman A wants an abortion, woman B wants kids. B gets A’s cast-off, everyone happy. How far away this is from being practical is anyone’s guess …..)
19 June 2007, on 2:42 am
I think that Chuck and Naomi should have kids together… I’m not just saying that to piss you off either. Fact is that the conseravtive fucks are passing ideas on to their many children, while many secular progressives are biting off their noses to spite their faces. I realize that there are many other ways to pass on ideas and that cultural evolution can be a community process, but there’s no getting around the fact that the wealthy conservatives will continue to procreate. If we did have sterilization programs, think what would happen if they became corrupted.
19 June 2007, on 2:43 am
What is the significance of the three dildos that that guy is holding up to the camera in the top photo?
27 June 2007, on 7:09 pm
Hmm, jimmy dean, I think I better go out there and adopt me some kidlings to continue my liberal legacy!
I’m only half joking; it’s certainly an alternative to bringing a new baby into the world: take care of one who’s already here.