Issue and Opponent: Diesel is generally considered to be a “dirty” type of fuel for the environment. It can be helped by including a filter on the engine, but that is costly and needs to be replaced after only a few years. VW installed it but disabled it when the car was driving on the road. It then launched a greenwashing campaign for the cars saying that they were “clean.” The lie was discovered, and VW “apologized,” but it didn’t come with any real concessions.
Dilemma action: The Yes Men created a car for the Houston art car parade that had “We’re sorry” on the side and a fog machine. They then had a team walk with it and offered a twelve-step program to get over fossil fuel addiction. They pretended to be sorry on behalf of VW. They also created an accompanying website that explained the 12 steps.
Outcomes: The event raised awareness during the event, but a lot of the participants did not agree with them, and some didn’t understand it was a hoax (see link). When contacted for comment in response to the DA, VW noted that in addition to apologizing, VW had committed $ 2 billion to environmental remediation in the US and bought back or modified over 465,000 cars. The consequences to VW were also likely connected to investigations by the EPA–and not wholly attributable to this DA.