Description
Spain's progressive party Más País is calling for a ban on fossil advertising (fossil industry, flying, cruises and cars). Congress rejected the proposal in February 2022.
The proposal sought to ban fossil advertisements from 2025 and sponsorships from 2027.
Pollution due to fossil fuels
Currently, transport is the sector that contributes most to climate change in Spain, and more specifically, road transport. According to official data from 2019, the latter accounted for 29% of all emissions generated by the country that year. At a global level, the trend is the same. Transport accounts for almost a quarter of emissions, of which almost three quarters of the total are attributed to road transport.
By 2050, the reference year for countries, institutions and specialists to achieve so-called climate neutrality, emissions associated with this sector could rise from 7 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2010 to 15 GtCO2eq if the current trend continues, according to the IPCC. This is equivalent to the emissions of China and the United States combined in 2018.
In Spain, around 45,000 people over the age of 14 die each year as a result of air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels. This figure, published just a year ago in the scientific journal Environmental Research , rises to almost 9 million people worldwide. A large part of these deaths are due precisely to transport (airplanes, ships and cars), which use fossil fuels to operate.
Sponsorships
The truth is that the relationship between advertising and fossil fuels is clear and very powerful, especially in the world of sport. Last year, an analysis also carried out by the New Weather Institute revealed the existence of at least 258 sports sponsorship agreements between companies that contribute to the climate crisis and the world of sport, from teams to leading organisations and institutions.
According to this research, 13 different sports have economic agreements with industries that promote products, services and lifestyles that contribute to driving global warming, such as oil and gas, aviation and automobiles.
The sport with the most sponsorships from polluting companies is football, with 57 agreements. In Spain, the trend is the same, as is explained in this report . The men's and women's football leagues are mostly dominated by Banco Santander, CaixaBank and Iberdrola , companies that directly and indirectly drive the climate crisis with their lucrative activities.