Promoting Pollution - From Fast Fashion to Fancy Cruises

Controls on adverts for oil companies, SUV makers and airlines are already starting to happen - but what else should we stop advertising to raise our survival chances?

Heavily climate-polluting products and companies are increasingly seen as the ‘new tobacco’ with measures being taken to stop promoting them by controlling their adverts. What began with attention on oil and gas companies quickly shifted to focus on cars that use petrol and diesel and the aviation industry, because these are some of the main ways in which polluting fossil fuels are ‘consumed’. From small towns to big cities, more and more tobacco-style bans on advertising fossil fuels, cars and airlines are now being introduced.

Howls

These products and services are some of the most obvious pathways for pollution. But others might be as polluting, yet less easy to see. For that reason, some local authorities in the Netherlands, for example, who are introducing controls on polluting products have also listed things like red meat. So, beyond the clear cases for action, what should we stop advertising to raise our survival chances? The list for consideration is growing, from fast fashion to fossil finance, red meat and dairy products, to cruise liners, and long haul holidays. These all fall into the category of things for which there is a widespread understanding, and clear recommendations to government from official advisors, such as the UK’s Climate Change Committee, that demand needs to be reduced. Certain marketing trends also need scrutiny, such as the over-hyping of some technological fixes to global heating crisis.

Before there are libertarian howls of protest, it’s worth pointing out that, just as with tobacco, controls on advertising do not actually remove anybody’s access to a polluting product or service if they want to seek it out. But they do reduce demand that would not be there was it not for the marketing campaigns.