[A-List] Tapping the Fat of the Land

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Gar Smith

CommonDreams.org (June 10 2008)


At the 2007 Gas and Oil Expo in Calgary, two keynote speakers introduced
as representatives from ExxonMobil and the National Petroleum Council
(NPC) addressed the specter of Peak Oil. "Without oil", NPC's Shepard
Wolf warned, "at least four billion people would starve". In order to
"keep the oil flowing", he suggested, "we need something infinitely more
abundant than whales". Wolf's solution: It's time to consider
transforming dying humans into biofuel.

"Some 150,000 people already die from climate-change-related effects
every year", ExxonMobil's Florian Osenberg argued. "Those bodies could
be turned into fuel for the rest of us". Wolf and Osenberg used a
PowerPoint presentation to introduce VivoleumTM, a new Exxon product
rendered from human fat. The attentive crowd of oil industry reps
happily lit the complimentary Vivoleum candles placed on their luncheon
tables.

Wolf and Osenberg were, in reality, The Yes Men, two anti-corporate
tricksters on a mission to save the world "one prank at a time". But
their Soylent-Green-Fuel stunt showed that Big Oil, as represented by
these industry higher-ups, was open to the idea of harvesting one of the
continent's greatest untapped assets - the tons of excess fat being
toted around by chubby masses of citizen-consumers.

In a world where federal corn subsidies, corporate fast foods, and
petroleum-based fertilizers have transformed Americans into fat-bearing
animals, it's no surprise that petroleum executives would see a kind of
logic in harvesting human lard to produce an infinitely renewable
resource to fuel America's economic engine.

America is literally collapsing under the strain of overweight citizens.
Disneyland's Small World ride, designed in the 1960s (when the average
male park visitor weighed 175 pounds) is now being re-built to haul
passengers weighing more than 200 pounds. In 2004, a Baltimore water
taxi built to carry 25 adults weighing an average of 140 pounds sank
because the combined weight of the boat's 25 passengers was 700 pounds
more than the vessel could handle.

Meanwhile, the fattening of America is fattening the coffers of Big Oil.
The World Health Organization estimates that 38.8 million Americans are
now "obese" - that is, thirty pounds or more overweight. That factors
out to 583 thousand tons of excess body fat. Since a kilogram of human
fat contains the 7,200 kilocalories of energy and a barrel of oil
generates 1,410,579 kilocalories, Americans are hauling around (at
minimum) the fat-equivalent of 2.92 million barrels of oil on their
bodies. Talk about an untapped domestic resource.

But it's all a joke, right? If the concept of "flab gas" leaves you
flabbergasted, prepare for a shock: Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital
has signed a deal to supply Norwegian entrepreneur Lauri Venoy with
3,000 gallons per week of liposuction leftovers harvested by its
clinics. Venoy figures each 3,000 gallons of biofat will produce 2,600
gallons of biodiesel, sufficient to fuel a Hummer for a week.

And, on March 1, 2008, New Zealander Peter Bethune launched his latest
attempt to break the around-the-world sailing record in his Earthrace
eco-boat, a vessel partially powered by human fat. According to Bethune,
"ten pounds of fat ... would drive a car about fifty miles, once
converted". Bethune and two crew members personally donated 2.5 pounds
of body fat to Earthrace's fuel tank - enough to travel nine of the
trip's 27,600 miles.

With liposuction already America's most popular cosmetic surgery
(455,000 procedures in 2006 alone), the day may soon arrive when
patriotic Americans can boost their health and the nation's oil reserves
by volunteering to make donations to a Federal Liposuction Aggregation
Bureau. FLAB's slogan could be: "A waist is a terrible thing to waste".

There is, of course, a simpler way of fighting Big Oil and the Big
Bulge. In his latest book, The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), slow-food
advocate Michael Pollan spells it out: Boycott corporate fast foods, eat
local, and eat less.
_____

Gar Smith is editor emeritus of Earth Island Journal and the cofounder
of Environmentalists Against War, www.envirosagainstwar.org
_____

See also Vivoleum from Harper's Magazine (October 2007) posted here on
December 21 2007 (Japan time) and at:
http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2007/12/proposal.html or
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/10/0081715

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/10/9518/


http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com
http://www.ashisuto.co.jp