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Fake Fakery Fakes Fakers Into Kicking Out Real Fake!
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Fake Fakery Fakes Fakers Into Kicking Out Real Fake!

YASAVA update from the COP26 action's architects: the company has been kicked out, and most traces of them wiped clean, from the "net zero" initiatives.

Scott Tully
Nov 21, 2021
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Fake Fakery Fakes Fakers Into Kicking Out Real Fake!
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Fake Fake Exposes Real Fakes: Yasava and the COP26 corporate #NetZero  Initiatives | The Yes Men

In Chompsky’s latest guest post, Andy Bichlbaum, Scott Tully and Cathel Hutchison of activist groups The Yes Men and Glasgow Calls Out Polluters give a behind-the-scenes update on the unbelievable YASAVA story from COP26.


After finding out that Swiss luxury-jet-interiors company Yasava was listed as "carbon neutral" in COP26's flagship "net zero" program, the Yes Men and Glasgow Calls Out Polluters (GCOP) announced that Yasava was our invention, then revealed that they were in fact real. The butt of the joke was the corrupt and meaningless "net zero" schemes whose only function is to let companies greenwash themselves.

As it turns out — and what we didn't know until Wednesday — is that the COP26 themselves had believed our joke, and kicked Yasava straight out of "Race to Zero," as they revealed to a reporter for The National.

The speed and impulsiveness with which the COP26 excluded Yasava seemed to reflect how little due diligence had gone into Yasava's inclusion — or the inclusion, for that matter, of Maersk, Chevron, Barclays,  Delta, Heathrow Airport, American, DL Piper, Edelman, JP Morgan, Hitachi, Iberdrola, Unilever, and thousands more from the transport, mining, and fossil energy sectors. Perhaps not surprising for an initiative that openly embraces lip service….

The gory details

On Monday, Nov. 8, the Yes Men sent out a fake press release on behalf of private-jet outfitter Yasava with some very real news about this utterly, profoundly not-carbon-neutral company: it had been accepted into two of the COP26's "net zero" carbon offsetting schemes, of the sort that scientists assure us make no sense at all, except of course to the companies who greenwash themselves in their bountiful eco-lather.

The reality of a private-jet interior decorator being part of these "net zero" initiatives was sure to expose them for the crap that they are. So to make sure it was noticed, and because confusion can equal attention, we sent out "admissions" that Yasava itself was a hoax made by the Yes Men, who'd even gotten them covertly accepted into the COP26 "net zero" schemes. 

It worked. The National (archived version; also available on the Wayback Machine) reported at length that Yasava was a Yes Men invention, with briefer pieces in The Guardian (as amended) and The Scotsman (hey fowk — gonnae no forget to update yer story!!)

We expected Yasava to insist on its own existence, or a journalist to suss it out quickly. Although some Twitter sleuths were indeed on the case, our "fully reveal everything quickly" policy was in danger, so we gave Yasava a nudge:

"CONGRATS!!!! on the wonderful prank…. A very thorough takedown of the whole Net Zero nonsense"

Though Yasava didn't respond, The National helped to unravel things when they asked the COP26 for comment.

The COP26 team commented, but also took drastic, swift action:

Text reads: A COP26 Spokesperson said: Yasava have been removed from the Race to Zero programme and we're working with UN High Level Champions to investigate this issue. It has been encouraging to see businesses demonstrating such incredible progress on driving climate action that companies, cities, investors and regions can move with conviction to put their commitments to tackle climate change into practice and help limit global temperature rising above 1.5 degrees."
Translation: "Yasava, which despite peer review we didn't realize was fake — which it obviously is, because yeah, right, 'air fleet couture,' duh — has been removed from our stamp-of-credibility, guiding star program, which, trust us, remains chock-full of companies that really, honestly deserve to be there."

The COP26 team simply had no idea whom they'd accredited, nor why. Nor did our respective reveals make them peer more closely — they simply put Yasava back in "Race to Zero." (Another “net zero” program, the “Science Based Targets Initiative,” seems to have airbrushed Yasava out of their records, but we know they were part of the SBTI as late as September.)

The National updated their article: 

Image shows a webpage with text "Sorry, we can't find that page. It may have been moved or the address mistyped"

The Guardian, for their part, merely added some words (underlined below); the rest of their article — about what one can deduce about a climate initiative that includes a private-jet-interiors company, whether fictive or real — didn't have to change even one bit.

It’s time for news of an elaborate Monday morning practical joke. The Yes Men, a group of activist pranksters, claimed to have had a fake company accepted as an official member of UN net zero initiatives at Cop26. (Underlined Sentence) It later transpired the company, Yasava, is real.  Alongside Maersk, Halliburton, Delta, United, American, Heathrow, Edelman, BAE Systems and many others, the Yes Men claimed they had managed to get Yasava, “the world’s leading designer of bespoke couture interiors for private jets”, accepted to two official Cop26 initiatives: the Race to Zero campaign and the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTI). (Underlined sentence) The company is listed as part of the Race to Zero campaign but is not part of the SBTI.  Check out Yasava’s website here. It appears to have been made on WordPress and includes phrases like “an aircraft does not simply accommodate you: you wear it”. Campaigners say it raises serious concerns about corporate greenwashing at Cop26
Alan Bell, of Glasgow Calls Out Polluters, said: “This should be a moment of profound embarrassment for Cop26 and the corporate hype around net zero. If the most ridiculous company imaginable can meet the flagship net-zero standard, then we should not take the concept of net zero seriously at all.”  This entry was updated on 10 November 2021 after it became clear that Yasava is a real company. They are listed as part of the Race to Zero campaign, but are not part of the SBTI. Chevron and JP Morgan, who were originally listed in this post, are also not part of the SBTI.

The Guardian had gotten the point.

So now what?

Our intention was to expose how insane it is that "net zero" CSR tripe — where sketchy accounting lets a company like Yasava discount flight emissions — can pose as action at the highest levels of the U.N. (No offense to haggis, a wonderful Scottish tripe product which, however, is definitely not carbon-neutral, not even when vegan.)

Rather than "offsetting" carbon by supposedly sucking it out of the atmosphere — a speculative possibility at best, a preposterous lie in general — we need measures to drastically cut profit-driven emissions. And we need serious government funding for alternatives. 

The only approach that has brought major changes against mainstream power is mass popular organizing. The mass demonstrations and direct actions in Glasgow, as well as the workers who struck in support, are examples. There can also be more unusual, creative approaches to pressure as well; check out these dozens of tactics for either contestation or to promote alternatives (and not only to adults). There are actually thousands of possibilities….

Though there's no magic bullet, one thing is sure: the answers being pushed in halls like the COP26's serve only the powerful, for the most part, not people and planet. As Yasava say: "life is defined by how time is used." Let's use our time to build a better world.

Glasgow Calls Out Polluters are a Glasgow-based climate justice group organized to kick big polluters out of the U.N. Climate Talks, COP26. 

The Yes Men are trickster activists who coach activist organizations, run workshops at universities, and occasionally perform tricks.

The links in the first paragraph are archived here and here — you know, just in case.


Read the original Yasava story.

Read my interview with The Yes Men.

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