Hrag Vartanian

Nothing is more contentious nowadays than oil. Wars are fought over it and economies are dependent on it like heroin addicts looking for a fix.

Wired just published a great interview with YES MEN‘s Andy Bichlbaum who, along with fellow Yes Men member Mike Bonanno, impersonated oil industry officials and announced a plan to turn human flesh into fuel at the Gas and Oil Exposition 2007 in Calgary, Alberta.

Can you imagine people’s faces then they heard, according to Wired Science:

“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...

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. (interview link)

Here’s the press release the Yes Men produced…enjoy.

By the way, their website will provide you will hours of enjoyment as you learn about their successful pranks in France (where they insisted there is NO poverty) or at the WTO (where they suggested formalizing a model of slavery in Africa–the Voice of America fell for it and reported the plan).

Here’s a BBC video of a Yes Men prank that caused international headlines when they pretended to be a Dow Chemical spokesman admitting their fault in the horrific 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster that caused 22,000 deaths.