The Yes Men Are At It Again

<p>First, take a look at this <a id="gkug" href="http://beyond-petrol.com/" title="website">website</a>. It’s the BP’s site, right? Nope. It’s an ingenious spoof on the real BP site by environmentalist pranksters — The Yes Men. The fake site has now been fully launched in part because of BP’s own legal team. <br /><br />

Here’s what happened. BP somehow stumbled upon an unfinished website spoof by The Yes Men, saw that the site looked identical to its own, and had the BP legal team send a strongly-worded letter to the wise-guys. This week, Yes Man &quot;Andy Bichlbaum&quot; (yep, that’s a fake name) responded to BP in a VERY apologetic email. Here’s what he had to say:</p>

<blockquote>Sadly, while we did get around to fully realizing some of the spoofs — including the ones on Exxon and Halliburton — we actually *forgot* about yours shortly after we began work on it, and it thus remained in the execrable half-finished state in which, to your horror, you found it last week. It didn’t even have its own URL!<br /><br />

I would like to sincerely apologize to your company on behalf of the Yes Men. Like morons, we were misled by appearances. Like morons, we thought — or rather, felt — that the malefaction of those other companies was more…maleficent than your own…<br /><br />

But I am here to tell you today that we are making efforts. We now understand that objectively, BP does every bit as much damage to this planet as does Exxon, Halliburton, or any other more obviously nefarious company, regardless of its carefully engineered professions of decency and concern. And we are ready today to prove our maturity, sincerity, and newfound intelligence by offering you a fully realized spoof of your own: http://beyond-petrol.com/. </blockquote>

<p>Well aren’t they just the nicest!!<br /><br />

Here’s a sarcastic little number from the section of the fake BP site called Environment and Society:</p>

<blockquote>At a time when climate scientists tell us we must reduce our carbon emissions by billions of tonnes per year or face a high likelihood of global catastrophe in the near future, BP is exceedingly proud to have a programme that will eventually permit us to cut ours by one million of those tonnes.<br /><br />

Of course, as a major corporation with many thousands of stockholders worldwide, we are also responsible for bringing financial returns at the same rate as always. This sometimes means spending many billions of dollars on the newest oil-extraction technologies, even when these are several times dirtier than previous ones, and risk putting billions <i>more</i> tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere (<a id="jz7." href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/06/bp.oil" title="link">link</a>).</blockquote>