Europe wide action grows against adverts fuelling climate damage
A European Citizens’ Initiative has been launched to end adverts for polluting products and services across Europe, following the precedent of successfully ending tobacco advertising. In its wake, the 7th October marks the start of four days of action against fossil ads and sponsorship with citizens taking action against corporate polluters’ marketing strategies in different cities across Europe.
With only a month away from some crucial climate talks at COP26 in Glasgow, movements everywhere are rising up against the biggest polluters’ agendas.
It also follows the launch across Europe and beyond of a public information campaign by new created Ministries for the Climate Emergency.
The fight to end fossil fuels’ social licence
Climate realists have long called for the phasing out of fossil fuels to avoid climate breakdown and as an essential part of the transition to low-carbon societies. Campaigns have focussed so far largely on divesting from fossil fuels and removing their social licence to operate by ending sponsorship deals. But far less attention has been paid to the advertising itself carried out, not just by coal, oil and gas companies, but by those who promote pollution through the use of fossil fuels in the form of high carbon products and lifestyles.
Over the past year, Amsterdam has gained international recognition for being the world’s first city to adopt a motion banning advertising from all fossil fuel products and activities - including those from cars, airlines and fossil fuels. Not long after, Amsterdam’s transport metro operator took a similar step by deciding to remove adverts for short-haul flights and fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
With the issue now rising up the political agenda, people concerned about the climate emergency are pushing for a European-wide initiative to end advertising and sponsorship from all fossil fuel activities and products, in the same way that this was done historically for tobacco products. Known as a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), it has been tabled by Greenpeace Netherlands, and a multi-agency campaign to build support for the measure will begin later in 2021 ahead of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.
How a European Citizens’ Initiative works
The European Citizen Initiative (ECI) is a process which gives EU citizens the opportunity to directly participate in the development of EU policies. Once the required one million signatures have been gathered from at least a quarter (seven) of the European member states, the European Commission is obliged to formally consider the proposal or, if not taken further, explicitly state on what grounds it was rejected. The gathering of those signatures by civil society will be a huge undertaking in itself.
Among the many initiatives put forward to date, few have been successful in collecting the required amount of signatures. Proposals that met the target include the 2017 initiative to stop the European-US trade deal TTIP (which was however later rejected by the Commission) and one requiring a ban on glyphosate (approved just after the Commission renewed the authorisation for the pesticide for another 5 years). But, in 2021, the European Commission did approve an initiative demanding to phase out the practice of caged farming which will be fully enforced by 2027.
The ‘Ban Fossil Fuel Advertising & Sponsorships’ initiative calls for an end to direct or indirect promotion/advertising, promotional distribution and sponsorship of all fossil fuel products and activities. This includes promotional or sponsorship relationships for companies directly or indirectly involved in the production, extraction, refining, supply and distribution of fossil fuels; the industries that promote the use of fossil fuels via air, road or maritime travel; and of any fossil fuel products (oil, fossil gas and coal).
Fast forward to today
Since the early 2010s, the movement for fossil fuel divestment has grown from small campaigns across university campuses in the United States to large-scale initiatives calling on local councils and Government pensions schemes, as well as faith-based groups, to stop investing in fossil fuels. Alongside calls to end public and private financing of fossil fuels, the cultural divestment movement has also been fighting its own battle with the fossil fuel industry, to remove their sponsorship and partnerships from museums, art galleries, theatres and festivals.
But as Amsterdam's step towards being a fossil-free advertising city shows, fossil fuel subsidies and sponsorship are only one way to remove fossil fuels’ ‘social license to operate’. To achieve the necessary rapid transition away from fossil fuel dependence and use, its promotion via advertising and marketing campaigns urgently needs to end. That means including the largest consumers of fossil fuels - cars and airlines - in the ending of harmful advertising.
Less than a month away from a major climate change summit - the COP26 in Glasgow - which is at risk of being hijacked by corporate polluters - there could not be a better time to legislate against the promotion of those products and activities that are actively fuelling the climate crisis.