The lighter side – May 7

May 7, 2007

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage


World Naked Bike Ride coming in June

WNBR website
On March 10th and June 9th and 30th, 2007 cities across the world will experience the naked joy of the worlds largest naked protest against oil dependency and car culture in the history of humanity. It is time to stop indecent exposure to automobile emissions and to celebrate the power and individuality of our bodies! Naked Bicycle People Power!

Sign up to today to participate in an existing event or start a new one!

We face automobile traffic with our naked bodies as the best way of defending our dignity and exposing the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians as well as the negative consequences we all face due to dependence on oil, and other forms of non-renewable energy
(May 2007)
The website has much more information about the event. A DVD about the World Naked Bike Ride is available.; see the site for a YouTube trailer.


The (Fossil) Invaders

Aerobar, YouTube
21st century’s invaders are quite different from those who scared people in the 1960s… But they are much more real. A parody of famous TV series’ opening credits sequence: “… the nightmare has already begun.”
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‘The (Fossil) Invaders’ proposes new images to the unchanged, famous soundtrack. A 3D-model of Al Gore has replaced Roy Thinnes to play the leading role, who is discovering the consequences of greenhouse gases effects on climate and, particularly, food availability.

The coupling betwwen Peak Oil and Global Warming is illustrated: oil substitutes, such as CTL or tar sands, are high carbon diversions. The growing power of coal is highlighted: “the nightmare has already begun” (if CCS is not quickly deployed all around the world).
(May 2007)


It sucks the energy right out of you
Film’s weighty proposal – fix growing energy crisis by growing waistlines

Alwynne Gwilt, The Star
In Yotam Dor’s futuristic world, humans help power cars by donating their fat to have it turned into bio-diesel.
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If it sounds too weird to be plausible, a quick look at the 23-year-old’s film will set things straight.

Dor has just finished his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design in the integrated media program. To complete it he created a five-minute animated flick that takes a satirical joust at our overweight, over-consumptive society.

A Modest Proposal: For Tomorrow’s Energy Crisis, Today, imagines the world in 2039, 19 years after the oil crash of 2020. In it, a cyclical process finds humans modifying their bodies monthly by eating foods that raise their body mass index, or BMI – like Borks, a cross between beef and pork – to gain weight before having the fat extracted and turned into fuel.

“Sustainability only makes sense when we’re able to sustain ourselves and if we try to expand beyond ourselves to the point where we’re morbidly obese and need hip or knee replacements, isn’t that a harbinger of things to come?” says Dor, whose film premiered last Thursday at OCAD’s International Film Festival at Bloor Cinemas, and is available online at talkingcatproductions.net/modest/.

The inspiration came last spring when Dor read about a New Zealander who’d powered his boat by having fat removed from his, well, posterior.

“I thought it was the funniest thing,” says Dor, who will also screen the film at OCAD’s year-end festival this upcoming weekend. “I thought I should just try to work it in a more sardonic sort of way.”

To do so, the film razzes those classic corporation promotional videos, with the cheesy narrator voice telling viewers how the company works to make the world a better place and the cartoon-CEO, all tans and smiles, cheerily chatting about investor satisfaction.

“I thought about making it as deadpan as possible, and what’s more deadpan than a corporate video?” he laughs.

With a name borrowed from 18th-century writer Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” in which Swift suggests the Irish sell their babies to ease overpopulation, one could expect no less than pure satire. But, like many films making headlines, it hits on issues that people are starting to take very seriously: sustainability, obesity and alternative fuel sources.
(6 May 2007)
The short video is funny and horrifying. Thanks to Leanan of The Oil Drum for pointing out that the animation can be downloaded here. -BA


Tags: Building Community, Education, Transportation