Tagged: climate change

In central Brussels, hundreds of spectators witnessed, with approval or horror, a slick new tech startup, RefuGreenErgy, that converts the power of bicycling refugees into electrical energy—giving the refugees 24-hour periods of amnesty and 1.60 euros per day, and Belgians "green electricity" and a "guilt-free way to help others." A website, promotional video, and Facebook and Twitter accounts helped with the illusion. The launch event was exposed when a member of the public, who happens to work with refugees, revolted loudly against the concept—almost the first time this has happened with a Yes Lab project. (See reveal video and selected Belgian media coverage.)

The hoax—carried out by WAAR (We Are All Refugees), a group of "artivists" from Belgium and abroad, in cahoots with several refugee groups—was designed to call attention to the moral responsibility of developed countries for the so-called "refugee crisis," which is partly due to climate change (caused by rich countries) and partly due to colonial and current-day exploitation.

WAAR asks that you:

• Support the collectives and organizations of the undocumented, their occupations, and their demand for equality.
• Support passengers who have opposed the deportation of refugees by air, who are now being prosecuted by the Belgian justice system.
• If you are in Belgium, welcome a refugee from Maximilian Park (Brussels) into your home to allow him/her to rest and protect him/her from police raids.
• Visit asylum seekers in the Belgian refugee centers.

Graduating Reed College students and their parents gave a standing ovation to an announcement by their commencement speaker that the college had decided to divest from fossil fuels. But the President and Chair of the Board of Trustees, who were sitting onstage with the speaker, quietly wrung their hands—because the announcement was a hoax, and the board had recently decided exactly the opposite.

Commencement Speaker, Yes Man and Reed alum Mike Bonanno, worked with student activists from Fossil Free Reed to show the grads, students, faculty, and families that they could be the change they want to see in the world starting with their own institution.

Democracy Now report:

Selected Press:

• The Oregonian - Igor Vamos of 'Yes Men' pranks Reed College during commencement speech
• Portland Tribune - Yes Men prankster fools media with hoax about Reed divestment
• Democracy Now - "Yes Men" Artist Unveils Fossil Fuel Divestment at Reed College in Commencement Prank
• Media Ethics: Reed College Oil Stocks Hoax, 2 Oregon media outlets fooled

In 2012, Royal Dutch Shell failed to drill a single hole in the Arctic off the coast of Alaska thanks to a series of dangerous blunders and mismanagement that led to the U.S. government calling the company "screwed up." This year, they trained their sights on the much less regulated waters off the coast of Russia, teaming up the Russian oil giant, Gazprom, to open up the newly accessible Russian arctic to drilling. 

Greenpeace didn't think enough people were paying attention to this, so they teamed up with the Yes Lab to create a spectacle in Amsterdam that would get people talking. 

On August 21st, a barge filled with Russian and Dutch officials, a marching band, a young Russian child singer, and a giant cage containing what appeared to be a drugged up polar bear, wound it's way through the canals of Amsterdam to the city's zoo. Gazprom held a ceremony presenting the bear to the city as a gesture of good will and partnership, launching the Polar Partners initiative, including an interactive website and video. 

The promotional video of the event immediately went viral with high-profile Twitterers like Pamela Anderson, Adam McKay, Occupy Wall Street, and 350.org tweeting their outrage.

Selected Press:

• Animal New York: The Yes Men Brought a Sedated Polar Bear to Amsterdam to "Celebrate" the Shell Gazprom Partnership
• Stuff: When Stuff hits an iceberg
• Platform London: Gazprom polar bear 'gift' seeks to gloss over the reality of Arctic drilling
• AT5: IJsbeer in gracht kwam rechtstreeks vanNoordpool
• RTV: 'Ijsbeer' vaart over Amsterdamse grachten
• NRC: Shell, Gazprom en de bedrieglijke list met de Artis-ijsbeer

A fuzzy cell phone video of an Elijah Woods sighting in Alberta, Canada. A fake Alberta Film website touting the advantages of filming at the Tars Sands. A fake production company website, a gossip video blog, an angry press release by the Tolkien family, a fake video blog by Peter Jackson himself, director of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and now The Hobbit, and of course a Facebook campaign against Jackson, calling on him to stop filming in the Tar Sands: because it was too flattering to Mordor.

The only thing missing was a sighting of evil Lord Sauron.

This complex social media campaign, which had the blogosphere abuzz speculating as to when, how and why Jackson was shooting the Mordor scenes from The Hobbit in the Alberta Tar Sands, created an opportunity to further highlight the devastation caused by the Tar Sands. The Tar Sands, which NASA scientist and climate expert James Hansen has called Canada's "carbon bomb," is the country's single largest source of climate change enhancing greenhouse gas emissions. And at a time of worsening climate crisis, Canada is expanding operations at the massive industrial site.

The campaign was developed by a troupe of Toronto activists calling themselves Black Flood, along with the Yes Lab. The stated goal of the Canadian activists—"to stir up some hot and bubbly controversy on the Alberta tar sands"—worked like a charm.

Selected press:

• Rabble.ca: One Hoax to Rule Them All

Blame Canada?

What at first looked like the flip-flop of the century was soon revealed as a sophisticated ruse by a coalition of African, North American, and European activists including the Yes Men. The purpose: to highlight the most powerful nations' obstruction of meaningful progress at the UN Climate meetings in Copenhagen, to push for just climate debt reparations, and to call out Canada in particular for its terrible climate policy. Canada's breakneck rush to exploit the massive Alberta tar sands, one of the most energy intensive and carbon spewing projects on the planet, is the primary cause of Canada's outsize carbon footprint.

The elaborate operation to call out Canada's obstructionist ways was spearheaded by a group of concerned Canadian citizens, the "Climate Debt Agents" from ActionAid, art students from Denmark, and The Yes Men.

From deep inside an underground bunker in a secret location in Copenhagen, in a faux auditorium fashioned with cardboard boxes and pipe cleaners made to look like the UN climate conference center (Good COP 15), "Canadian government representatives" announced a bold new initiative to curb emissions and spearhead a "Climate Debt Mechanism" for the developing world. The ruse involved a flurry of press releases, announcements, retractions, and video footage of Canadian and African climate negotiators sparring over a number of contentious issues.

In the first release from "Environment Canada", Canada's Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, waxed lyrical. "Canada is taking the long view on the world economy," said Prentice. "Nobody benefits from a world in peril. Contributing to the development of other nations and taking full responsibilities for our emissions is simple Canadian good sense."

This was followed by a press release of the Ugandan delegation's supposed reaction, including a dramatic video, and a fake Wall Street Journal article about the whole thing. These releases were then followed by a supposed retraction. Out there in the real world, Dmitri Soudas, the Prime Minister's spokesman, went mental and was filmed screaming at a hapless Canadian ecologist, accusing him of having organized the whole thing. (Dmitri was sent home the next day).

Besides leaving Canada with egg on its face for its terrible climate policy, the point of this multi-media operation was also to highlight the concept of Climate Debt. While 75% of the historical emissions that created the climate crisis come from 20% of the world's population in developed countries (according to the UN), up to 80% of the impacts of the climate crisis are and will be experienced in the developing world, according to the World Bank. The developed countries got rich by endangering the developing ones—don't they owe them something?

A week after the historic presidential election that brought Barack Obama to the White House, the Yes Men were joined by hundreds of independent writers, artists, and activists in an elaborate project, six months in the making, to release a "special edition" of the New York Times in cities across the U.S.

The papers, dated July 4th of the following year, were headlined with long-awaited news: "IRAQ WAR ENDS". The edition, which bears the same look and feel as the real deal, includes stories describing what the future could hold, if we forced Obama to be the president we'd elected him to be: national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for CEOs, etc. (Less momentous, but poignant, was columnist Tom Friedman's letter of resignation, full of remorse for his consistently idiotic and fact free predictions about the Iraq war.)

"Is this true? I wish it were true!" said one reader. "It can be true, if we demand it."

"We wanted to experience what it would look like, and feel like, to read headlines we really want to read. It's about what's possible, if we think big and act collectively," said Steve Lambert, one of the project's organizers and an editor of the paper. (Please visit Steve's page about the paper for more paper, videos, and details.)

New York Times Special Edition Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008from H Schweppes

In response to the spoof, the New York Times said only, "We are looking into it." Alex S. Jones, former Times reporter who is an authority on the history of the paper, says: "I would say if you've got one, hold on to it. It will probably be a collector's item."

Bringing the much needed "good news" to a war weary public required the collaboration of hundreds of activists and volunteers, including the Anti-Advertising Agency, CODEPINK, United for Peace and Justice, Not An Alternative, May First/People Link, Improv Everywhere, Evil Twin, and Cultures of Resistance.

SurvivaBalls save managers from abrupt climate change

An advanced new technology will keep corporate managers safe even when climate change makes life as we know it impossible. (Speech here.)

"The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way," said Fred Wolf, a Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida. "This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate change," he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.

Most scientists believe global warming is certain to cause an accelerating onslaught of hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, etc. and that a world-destroying disaster is increasingly possible. For example, Arctic melt has slowed the Gulf Stream by 30% in just the last decade; if the Gulf Stream stops, Europe will suddenly become just as cold as Alaska. Global heat and flooding events are also increasingly possible.

In order to head off such catastrophic scenarios, scientists agree we must reduce our carbon emissions by 70% within the next few years. Doing that would seriously undermine corporate profits, however, and so a more forward-thinking solution is needed.

At today's conference, Wolf and a colleague demonstrated three SurvivaBall mockups, and described how the units will sustainably protect managers from natural or cultural disturbances of any intensity or duration. The devices - looking like huge inflatable orbs - will include sophisticated communications systems, nutrient gathering capacities, on-board medical facilities, and a daunting defense infrastructure to ensure that the corporate mission will not go unfulfilled even when most human life is rendered impossible by catastrophes or the consequent epidemics and armed conflicts.

"It's essentially a gated community for one," said Wolf.

Dr. Northrop Goody, the head of Halliburton's Emergency Products Development Unit, showed diagrams and videos describing the SurvivaBall's many features. "Much as amoebas link up into slime molds when threatened, SurvivaBalls also fulfill a community function. After all, people need people," noted Goody as he showed an artist's rendition of numerous SurvivaBalls linking up to form a managerial aggregate with functional differentiation, metaphorically dancing through the streets of Houston, Texas.

The conference attendees peppered the duo with questions. One asked how the device would fare against terrorism, another whether the array of embedded technologies might make the unit too cumbersome; a third brought up the issue of the unit's cost feasibility. Wolf and Goody assured the audience that these problems and others were being addressed.

"The SurvivaBall builds on Halliburton's reputation as a disaster and conflict industry innovator," said Wolf. "Just as the Black Plague led to the Renaissance and the Great Deluge gave Noah a monopoly of the animals, so tomorrow's catastrophes could well lead to good - and industry must be ready to seize that good."

Goody also noted that Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society was set to employ the SurvivaBall as part of its Corporate Sustenance (R) program. Another of Cousteau's CSR programs involves accepting a generous sponsorship from the Dow Chemical Corporation.

Watch the video!

Louise, Mike, and Andy decide to attend the Heritage Foundation’s annual Resource Bank meeting at the Renaissance hotel in Chicago, April 29-30, 2004.

Heritage is the biggest free-market think tank—in fact the biggest think tank period—in Washington. It has a budget of $80 million and provides "talking points" to conservative Congressmen who don't have time to do their own research. Heritage is a kind of "grey eminence" behind Congress, and very actively helps direct U.S. politics.

And what a bunch of radicals these folks are! Like the rare ultra-anarchist, they basically want to "smash the state"—but unlike such anarchists, they're rich, not so rare, and succeeding.

Heritage is very up-front about these goals. Paul Krugman and others have pointed out that the goal of the Bush administration seems to be to bankrupt the federal government; the Heritage Foundation indeed announces this vision up front: "Too many conservatives lose hope," writes Heritage president Edwin J. Feulner. "They doubt that the liberal welfare state can be brought to collapse.... In short, they doubt that The Heritage Foundation's Vision for America can be achieved." (By "liberal welfare state" he means Social Security, the Department of Education, and so on—but not the Department of Defense. Read on.)

Thursday, April 29

In order to register (free) for the Heritage conference, we've formed a right-wing think tank ($12 for the domain name). We've also registered for (free) table space, so when we arrive at the hotel we immediately go looking for an open table to display our wares: a foot-long Roman warship ($30) and some insane but fully fact-based "position papers." (Yes, the Bush Administration really has contemplated wafting oceans of hydrofluorocarbons into the atmosphere to help along global warming: download the full report at ems.org and search on "hydrofluorocarbons.") We eventually find an empty spot, next to the Cato Institute and not far from a table featuring books like Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Deathand How Union Bosses Have Hijacked Our Government.

The event teems with 650 smiling, friendly and blandly-dressed people hired by well-endowed think tanks fighting "socialistic" ideas: the Jesse Helms Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Atlas Foundation (based on the books of Ayn Rand), the Society for the Economic Study of Religion (which, a young representative tells us, has determined that Pentecostalism is the best religion for a free market, and so sends missionaries to Africa), and so on.

We dive deeper and deeper into the remarkable logic of conservative thought. For lunch, as brown-skinned people serve us chicken, millionaire money-manager Derwood Chase tells us about his personal efforts to help keep taxes down and end the government handouts that make people fat and lazy. Throughout the rest of the day, we attend foray after stultifying foray into the importance of bringing U.S. "socialism" (public education, public health care, Social Security) to an end. There's even a foreigner: a Chilean economist who describes the wonders of Chile's development since Pinochet.

After lunch, some young protesters wearing ostrich suits demand that lawmakers get their heads out of the sand and fix Social Security. When asked about their concept, the ostriches shrug and send us to a spokesperson for the lobby group "For Our Grandchildren," who reluctantly explains that the protesters are temps, hired that morning. "For Our Grandchildren," it turns out, wants to "reform" social security by letting people choose to invest wherever they want to. Perhaps their most visionary claim: Social Security is unfair to African Americans because "African Americans have lower life expectancies than other Americans. This means that in Social Security’s live-long-or-lose-out program, most African Americans lose out." That’s right: since African Americans have shorter life expectancies, we should get rid of the program that would help them in the unlikely event they make it to retirement age. We go over to the young African American woman in the ostrich suit and ask if she knows she's protesting against social security. "Against it?" she says, confused. "No, we want to fix it!" Not wanting to make a scene so early in this two-day affair, we put our heads in the sand and move on.

We (and the 650 other zealots) end the day with a delicious (free) dinner hosted by Ed Meese, Attorney General under Reagan, most famous for his role in the Iran-contra scandal. (Highlight of dinner conversation comes from Andy's neighbor, a young Russian turned strident American conservative: "I was there at the women's march in Washington. There were so many women, all of them single... lesbians... virgins.... DISGUSTING!"

The topic of the evening is “School Choice”—providing private-school vouchers instead of public-school funding—and the speakers enthusiastically let us know that public education (they call it "government education") is one of things they intend to "bring to collapse" because of the way it churns out Marxists (sic).

Finally, Meese presents the Salvatori Prize in American Citizenship to Virginia Walden-Ford, a woman who has managed to extract her son from DC's already gutted public education system via "School Choice," for which she is an ardent lobbyist. Now her son's in Iraq, with the Marines: standing ovation.

We toast the whole thing with glass after glass of free wine and later, accompanying the Heartland Institute's lovely desserts, drinks. The alcohol makes us punchy. When a publisher from Sacramento described the beauty of "population control by market forces," we strain in vain to muster a suitable reply. We do better with the Cayman Islands booster guy: when he explains that the Cayman Islands is able to have such "enlightened" pro-business laws because it's basically just "a rock," we burst out: "How can we make this country a rock?!" Later he explains the importance of the Iraq war by asking rhetorically, "What if we hadn't gone into Grenada?" "What if?" we ask. "Then Grenada would have become a dependency of Cuba," he explains. "Right!" we exclaim. "And if we hadn't gone into Iraq, it would have become a dependency of the USSR." "Right!" the Cayman guy says, before (presumably) realizing the absurdity of the concept.

Finally, as we're leaving the hotel, we go up to the Chilean who had explained his country's miraculous economy and gush "That was fantastic! We want to bring Pinochet to America!" Our government-educated brains are now in fine shape for thinking up what to do tomorrow.

Friday, April 30

The next day, Friday, we arrive just in time for the closing luncheon and another installment of free food. This time we sit right up near the front, so that we can be close to the stage—and Ed Meese. A few minutes after the opening prayer and Pledge of Allegiance (in that order), as the salad is being replaced by the main course, we make our move.

The sound of a wine glass being dinged by a spoon fills the banquet room (the microphone has been left on). The conversation of 650 zealots ceases as Andy, his face filling two screens on either side, announces a toast (video here). "To that very brave woman, Virginia Walden-Ford, who yesterday proved to us that through individual initiative and free markets, all of us can rescue our children from shoddy government education so they can learn what they need in order to compete in a free American marketplace.

"But there is a nine-hundred pound gorilla in the room. Instead of fighting in the free American marketplace, this brave woman's son is fighting for what I think we all, or many of us here agree is a case of crony corporate welfare, a market distortion on a truly gigantic scale.

"Ms. Walden-Ford's story convinced me that our political choices in the next election are simply not adequate. And I propose that on this historic anniversary of The Road to Serfdom, we take a giant step for Hayek's free markets by drafting a real free-markets candidate. And why not Ed Meese?"

"To the next President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America, Ed Meese III!"

Meese, sitting directly in front of the podium, screws up his face very strangely as he hears his nomination. Applause rings out for nearly ten seconds.

Later, Mike dons a gorilla suit (rental: $20) and tries to get attendees to sign a "draft Meese" petition until he's kicked out by angry Heritage employees. (Fee for dropped gorilla foot that Heritage person refuses to return: $10.)

All that remains is to get the hell out, and to tell the world what great, cheap fun this can be...

Divestment News Celebrated at Commencement Ceremony

Portland, OR (May 19, 2014) - Reed College's Board of Trustees approved with a majority vote a plan to divest its endowment of direct coal and oil industry investments and redirect funds to environmentally conscious investment managers and community owned renewable energy projects during a special meeting convened near the end of the academic term.

"This is the right time to divest," said Roger Perlmutter, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, "and even more importantly, to reinvest in the rapidly growing sustainable energy sector."

The announcement was made during the commencement ceremony the morning of May 19. Reed College is the first college in the Pacific Northwest to initiate a divestiture from fossil fuels, joining the ranks of other universities with large endowments that have recognized the compelling and urgent moral character of maintaining investments in companies characterized by fossil fuel extraction, refining, and transportation.

The Board's decision was made on the recommendation of a special committee composed of trustees, faculty, administrators, and students convened in February to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of divestment. The committee found that fossil fuel divestment was warranted under Article III of the College's Investment Responsibility Policy, particularly as a "widely-held, perhaps even universally-held social or moral position." Furthermore, increasing numbers of donors express reservation about donating to an endowment rich in fossil fuels.

"It is crucial at this moment in history for institutions like Reed to follow through on their commitments to serve the public good," says President John R. Kroger. "Climate change is likely to seriously affect the lives of our students, and financially supporting the industries responsible for it undermines Reed's Mission."

This action follows several by the college over the past few years to improve its environmental record following the adoption of the Environmental Policy Statement in February 2007, including:

• Restoration of the 28-acre Reed Canyon watershed in the heart of campus
• LEED certification of dorms built in 2009
• Development of an interdisciplinary Environmental Studies program in 2010
• Establishment of a Sustainability Fund for student and faculty projects in 2011
• Sustainable architecture of the Performing Arts Building in 2013
• Implementation of a 3-year $5.4 million energy efficiency upgrade contract with Amersco Quantum in 2013

More information about sustainable investments at Reed can be found on the website.

Contact: Kevin Myers
myersk@reedsustainability.org
Phone: (541) 357-8604