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6 great environmental pranks

Never underestimate the power of a good prank, especially when big business or big government is the victim.
By Shea Gunther
Fri, Feb 05 2010 at 12:42 PM EST
Read more: ACTIVISM, MNN LISTS

THUMBS UP: Environmentalists are gaining international attention with pranks. (Photo: Matthew McDermott/Flickr)
Never underestimate the power of a good prank. Humans have been pulling practical jokes on each other for almost as long as we've been walking upright. For some reason there's something about making other people look foolish that draws our attention. In recent years environmental activists have taken advantage of that phenomenon to generate exposure for important issues by pranking some of the world's biggest businesses, organizations and governments. Our examples our below, but feel free to add your own examples in the comments section below:
 
1. The Yes Men punk the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
In October 2009, the Yes Men, the godfathers of the eco-prankers movement, pulled one over on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by giving a news conference in which they posed as chamber representatives and announced their intention to stop their fight against climate change legislation that was working its way through the U.S. Senate. A real chamber representative got wind of the conference and managed to interrupt it, but not before the report went out on Reuters and was picked up by multiple other news outlets. See a video of the news conference here.
 
2. Reverend Billy punks Disney’s Main Street
Reverend Billy is to preachers as Stephen Colbert is to conservative pundits. Bill Talen has spent the better part of the last two decades portraying Reverend Billy, a high-energy, fast-talking street preacher with a message to stop buying so much crap at the stores. Reverend Billy is the leader of the Church of Stop Shoppin.
 
Reverend Billy likes to show up at stores and preach about the evils of mass consumption. Starbucks, Bank of America, Walmart and Disney have been favorite targets of Reverend Billy and his legion of culture jamming followers.
 
On Christmas Day 2005, Reverend Billy and his flock invaded the mecca of consumption that is Disneyland and led a choir down Main Street, U.S.A. singing anti-Disney and anti-shopping songs. Ignoring both the in-house Disney security and the Anaheim police in favor of continuing to sing, Reverend Billy was arrested for trespassing and resisting an officer.
 
3. The Yes Men punk ExxonMobil
In 2007, the Yes Men pretended to be officials from ExxonMobil and addressed a news conference at GO-EXPO, a huge annual gas and oil conference. As ExxonMobil, they announced that American and Canadian energy policies that focused on CO2-intensive oil sands and liquid coal would increase the risk of massive global disasters but that ExxonMobil had a plan to keep the taps running — they'd turn dead bodies into an oil they called Vivoleum. They described in detail how dead body refineries would produce oil, and even presented an animated walk through of a typical facility.
 
The oilmen in the audience didn't realize they were being punked until after they lit candles supposedly made of Vivoleum harvested from a janitor who had expressed his wish to be turned into candles in a video shown by the Yes Men. The Yes Men were escorted from the room and detained while the police were called. The police realized the men had committed no crime and they were permitted to leave. Their speech garnered major press coverage and helped bring attention to the ecological issue of tar sands oil.
 
4. The first Buy Nothing Day
Buy Nothing Day is as close to a holiday as it gets for the hardcore anti-corporate set. The annual celebration of non-consumption typically takes place after Thanksgiving and is billed as a day for celebrants to refrain from buying anything. It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and popularized by Adbusters magazine. Now celebrated in 65 countries, the first Buy Nothing Day took place in 1992 and deserves mention as one of the best eco-pranks ever because of the impact it's had over the years.
 
5. A slap on the back for Lord Monckton
The pranksters behind this one were not afraid to pull out a little middle-school magic. Some young climate change activists slapped a 350.org sticker on the back of global warming denier and all-around blowhard Chris Monckton and then filmed him.
 
OK, so this one is pretty silly and didn't really make any impact beyond making me laugh, but maybe that's what makes it work — Monckton and his fellow deniers deserve to be treated as the silly prats they are.
 
6. The Yes Men punk Dow Chemical
The Yes Men pulled off another great one when they set their sights on getting Dow Chemical to accept responsibility for and clean up the disaster at Bhopal. In 2002, they created a fake Dow website and sent out a news release announcing that the reason Dow wouldn't take responsibility for Bhopal was because the Indian citizens affected weren't shareholders. The press went nuts.
 
A couple years later an invitation came in via the sham website for someone from Dow to speak on a BBC news show. The Yes Men went on the show posing as Dow officials and announced that the company was finally accepting responsibility for Bhopal. Again, the press went nuts.
 
They followed up a few months later with an appearance at a banking conference where they explained, to wild applause, how Dow considers death acceptable as long as it's profitable. Finally, they hit up Dow’s annual shareholders meeting and yelled at the board for not doing enough to stop the activists. Watch the video here.
 
Additional photo credits: 
U.S. Chamber of Commerce: yesmen/babelgum.com
Rev. Billy: Jonathan McIntosh
ExxonMobil: ItzaFineDay/Flickr
Lord Monckton: Matthew McDermott/Flickr
MNN homepage photo: Cveltri/iStockphoto
 


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Comments(8)

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Posted By Danielle Spot - Mon, Mar 08 2010 at 1:20 PM EST

No Crime Committed

I understand the pranks worked in getting alot of press but did they change the view of anyone of the people punked. Pranks should be for kids not serious activists.

Posted By Jerry Cope - Mon, Feb 08 2010 at 4:54 PM EST

A Classic Punk From Bobby Kennedy & Martin Short

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLBQxk72NY

Posted By patriotaxe - Mon, Feb 08 2010 at 4:35 PM EST

Moncton has balls?

I think that the posters who are defending the private parts of Lard Moncton know far too much about them and should be embarrassed to admit so in a public forum. Lard Moncton, please, sir, pull up your pants!

Posted By Jeff - Sat, Feb 06 2010 at 5:42 AM EST

Monckton a prat?

"Monckton and his fellow deniers deserve to be treated as the silly prats they are."

Monckton has the balls and the facts to back his statements that global warming due to human activity and excessive (life-promoting) CO2 is a sham. You sir, are the prat.

Posted By Anonymous - Sun, Feb 07 2010 at 7:26 AM EST

Monckton = a prat

Monckton does have balls comparable to shriveled raisins, yes, you are correct.
Do a little research; you will find that Global Climate Change does exist, and that he is denying it with false statistics. There was a man who could disprove that smoking caused harm, but guess who he worked for? Check your sources.

Posted By James - Sat, Feb 06 2010 at 3:45 PM EST

You really don't get it do you

Water is life promoting, but you can drown in it. Food is life promoting but if you eat to much you become overweight, develop diabetes, and heart disease. Oxygen is life promoting, but if increase our the oxygen content of our atmosphere significantly above 20% it would quite literally burn the inside of our lungs. So yes, plants need CO2, but too much CO2 and everything goes to hell and since industrialization CO2 levels have increased 22%.

To put this in perspective of an above.... More

Posted By vesuvius - Sat, Feb 06 2010 at 3:59 AM EST

silly prats

" Monckton and his fellow deniers deserve to be treated as the silly prats they are "
There's only one set of silly prats I can see here, and it ain't Monckton & co

Posted By maddog - Sat, Feb 06 2010 at 1:59 AM EST

best pranks

The best prank was when a person or persons still unknown revealed all the e-mails and exchanges from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University that refused to cooperate with the British Freedom of Information act. Those guys, who came up with the "double hockey stick" meme are now being actively investigated by the British Parliament and will probably be charged under the FOA act and may go to prison. This is what is known as "Climategate." They are also being investigated for.... More

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