Local Authorities and the Sixth Carbon Budget: What it means for regulation on high-carbon advertising
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Last December, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) - who are the UK government’s advisers on climate change - released a report on the role that local authorities play in meeting the Government’s national climate targets. The report sets a strong precedent for local authorities’ lead in many areas including transport, food, procurement and supporting sustainable behaviour change and lifestyles. While the CCC’s report makes no strict mention of the need for local authorities to step up against advertising for high-carbon goods, it certainly provides significant evidence to support the claim. If local authorities are to be tomorrow’s leaders in the fight against climate breakdown, we would argue that their powers need to extend as far as placing checks against ads from the biggest polluters.
Local authorities: a powerful role model
The CCC’s comprehensive report outlines the different roles that local authorities can play in driving down carbon emissions. As seen in their diagram (figure 1.2), communications and public engagement, is one of the six key areas that local authorities can (and should) be thinking about in their efforts. This is the area in which advertising policy would fall.
Source: Local Authorities and the 6th Carbon Budget, p.29
“Local authority control, leverage and influence spreads out from direct services and contracts through its policy and enforcement duties to its leadership and convening role in the wider area. As ability to control emissions reduces further away from its own operations, the quantity of emissions increases, so the enabling and influencing role of a local authority has an important impact on a significant proportion of UK emissions. (p. 28)”
If local authorities have a leadership role in driving forward action on climate change,should they not also be looking at communication activities that are hindering their efforts? One way of doing this would be for local authorities to make use of their power to place bans on adverts featuring high-carbon goods in public spaces. If local authorities fail to tackle high-carbon adverts, they remain complicit in providing a platform to companies whose business model directly undermines their efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Amsterdam’s recent ban on high-carbon adverts is proof that some authorities have already shown leadership in this area - so why not others?
What are the impacts of behaviour change?
The report suggests that almost 60% of changes leading to net zero emissions will be driven by societal or behavioural shifts (see figure 1.4). This is an important point for this campaign - as it highlights the societal need to shift away from harmful consumption habits that are currently considered normal (i.e. driving large vehicles, eating meat products and flying).
Source: Local Authorities and the 6th Carbon Budget, p.43
These products and behaviours are not consumed out of a void. Their prevalence in our communities reflects a particular set of values and preferences which have been marketed to us via repetitive advertising messages. As we’ve discussed previously, scientific evidence shows that advertising contributes to the degradation of our climate and ecological foundations by encouraging materialist values and unhealthy levels of consumption. Advertising for tobacco and beef has been found to positively correlate with climate and ecological harm as these ads lead to greater consumption of those products. We can predict this to also be the case for ads about SUVs, airline flights or fossil fuels products.
Conclusion
Whilst The Climate Change Committee’s report doesn’t explicitly call for regulations on high-carbon advertising, we can safely conclude that advertising should not be ignored. Instead, we suggest that this should feature on local authorities’ list of measures to reduce carbon emissions and encourage low-carbon lifestyle changes.
With the effects of the climate crisis already being felt across the globe, the next obvious target to be subject to regulation in advertising (after tobacco, alcohol, gambling and junk food) has to be high-carbon goods and services. And with more than 300 local authorities having now declared a climate emergency, it is only right that authorities make use of their regulatory powers in the field of planning to rein in high-carbon advertising.