‘Shifting Views’: Lessons from high-carbon bans in Amsterdam
Activists inside Amsterdam’s central metro station. Photo credit: Romy Fernandez
Reclame Fossielvrij is a newly-formed group in the Netherlands whose main priority is to campaign for a full ban on fossil fuel products’ advertising and sponsorship. We interviewed one of its founding members, Femke Sleegers.
- First of all, can you tell us a little about your organisation Reclame Fossielvrij - how it came about, what are your priorities and who is behind it?
“Our campaign Reclame Fossielvrij (Fossil Free Advertising) originated in The Hague, where Shell organised an annual child marketing and greenwashing festival aimed at kids from 6 to 13 yrs old called ‘Generation Discover’. It is part of Shell’s worldwide campaign ‘Make The Future’. With our campaign groups The Hague Fossil Free (Den Haag Fossielvrij) and Fossil Free Education (Fossielvrij Onderwijs) we protested against this festival and against the annual grant that the city of The Hague gave to Shell for this festival. We managed to stop the grant and to chase the festival away from The Hague. Shell was very annoyed.
Dutch PM Rutte at Shell’s Generation Discover Festival
By accident, we discovered on LinkedIn that Generation Discover had won the 'European Excellence award' for best festival in the category ‘Public Affairs’. So a children’s festival wins a lobby prize? That’s when we realised child marketing, lesson materials and advertising in general by the fossil fuel industry runs so much deeper than just showing a pretty face to society. Even children’s marketing is aimed to influence politics. And indeed each year several high ranking politicians visited the festival; including prime minister Rutte (see picture, PM Rutte in front of the big ferris wheel with the SDGs that is central to Shell’s Generation Discover Festival).
At the same time, with Fossil Free Education we were protesting against free lesson materials provided by the fossil fuel industry for schools. We managed to get the subject on the national politics agenda. Yet the ministry claimed they couldn’t protect kids against the fossil fuel industry at schools because of freedom of education. We realised if we were to keep fighting every marketing trick by the fossil fuel industry, we would be permanently lagging behind. And because the fossil fuel industry is so powerful they would always reach more people with their deception than we could, trying to debunk their lies.
That’s when we thought of stopping the fossil fuel propaganda at its root. We looked into the tobacco strategy of governments to curb influence by the tobacco industry at schools and in society. Together with a specialist in legal affairs, we studied the tobacco law and discovered it could similarly be applied to fossil fuels.
A tobacco style ban for fossil fuels would translate into:
A complete ban on the use of the name and logo for the fossil fuel industry and the airline industry
A ban on ads for air travel and cruises
A ban on ads for fossil fuel powered cars
So, our campaign originated from fighting child marketing by the fossil fuel industry. But we decided to include bans for the two big drivers of demand: ads for air travel and cars. We did this because the fossil fuel industry always claims they just serve the demand for fossil fuels from society and as long as the demand grows, they will keep digging for oil and gas. Shell CEO Ben van Beurden literally said on national tv: ‘“I will pump up everything I can pump up to comply with the demand.” This was after the Paris climate agreement.
All ads by the fossil fuel industry and for fossil fuel products and services serve to normalize fossil fuel use, production and industry. They also serve to ease politicians and consumers into certain ‘climate policy’ options that are most favorable to the fossil fuel industry (ie: plugging natural gas as a ‘transition fuel’, calling CCS (carbon capture) part of the energy mix in school materials or branding hydrogen as a clean option while it most often refers to fossil-fueled blue hydrogen (from gas and carbon capture)). As such, fossil fuel ads are an important obstacle to fighting climate change. They should therefore be banned.
Our priority is a national law that bans fossil fuel ads. But a new law - if our proposition is adopted - will take a long time and we want those ads gone now, because they hinder the transition [to a safe climate] right now. So that’s why we also campaign for cities and newspapers to take responsibility for their actions. At the city-level, we made great progress when Amsterdam declared it would ban all fossil fuel ads from the city. With the media, it’s much tougher. We had tough luck convincing our national elitist newspaper NRC to stop their cooperation with Shell in writing greenwashing branded content for them.
Behind the curtains of our campaign: we are a core team of three. We all switched careers to fight climate change. I did so early 2016. I then took a climate sabbatical from my work as a copywriter to fight climate change. But that sabbatical never ended. I first campaigned at The Hague Fossil Free, started Fossil Free Education and in February 2020 I stopped at The Hague Fossil Free and launched Fossil Free Advertising (Reclame Fossielvrij).
Activists gathered outside the Amsterdam metro. Credit: Romy Fernandez
In April 2020 we were joined for 12 hrs a week by George Ongkiehong, who is a former marketeer. And in October 2020 we were joined by Rosanne Rootert for 28 hrs/week who stopped her career at the judiciary to help us out for free in a one year sabbatical. We are helped by others, who have a full time job, for example Angie van Dijk who is a legal expert who helps us for free as part of the Dutch Committee for Human Rights Lawyers (NJCM). Dick van der Toorn does our art work in his spare time, Anne Maljaars runs our instagram and our board helps with financial stuff.
- On December 18th 2020, Amsterdam city council adopted a motion, supported by a number of political parties, to ban advertising for high-carbon products (fossil fuels and holiday flights). What were in your view the key steps that led to this development?
The motion also covered ads and marketing events by the fossil fuel industry.
The key steps were:
Timing: Amsterdam just proudly announced it would be the first Donut-city, making policy to fit within Kate Raworth’s donut. We then wrote a letter to the board saying they should align the advertising in the streets with their goals to curb climate change, air pollution and the donut-model. If they did not, those ads - normalising fossil fuels and seducing to use more - would undermine their policy efforts.
Precursor: Extinction Rebellion Amsterdam had protested Shell greenwashing in the public transport. And the public transport organisation GVB had declared that greenwashing didn’t fit their sustainability policy.
Show social support: we wrote the letter together with 51 Amsterdam based organisations, ranging from NGOs, grassroots to art institutions.
Show it is possible: we wrote a report, together with our lawyer Angie to show how the ban could be done. Under which existing laws and where to draw boundaries.
- Amsterdam’s metro operator recently banned ads for cheap flights and cars. Some are claiming that the ban only covers cheap flights and not long-haul flights (meaning that companies like KLM can still advertise for some flights). Can you tell us whether that is the case and if so, what can be done about it?
First of all, there’s no legal ban in place yet. The city board tries to make voluntary agreements with commercial operators. The operator in the metro has chosen to voluntarily only ban ads for cheap flights and fossil fueled cars. Since Shell and Vattenfall are two of their biggest clients, it’s quite logical for them to take this position. I think there should be no legal ground to just ban ads for cheap flights and to allow long distance ones. Because all flights are too cheap anyway as none of them cover the external costs of climate change and health issues. And as air travel is still subsidized. We think KLM should not be allowed to advertise at all. And the same goes for fossil fuel companies like Shell and Exxon. But nonetheless, this is an important first step that hopefully will inspire other cities to do the same - but better!”
Now that Amsterdam’s motion and the metro policy have passed, what are your current campaigning focus at Reclame Fossilvrije?
For now, we are aiming at the newly formed government. We started the ‘Social Tipping Point Coalition’, urging our government to adopt a strategy to bring about social tipping points that will fasten the transition. Because according to scientists from the Potsdam Institute, the social tipping points are our best chance to limit global warming to 1.5°C. An advertising ban is one of the social tipping point interventions identified by the Potsdam Institute.
Others are divestment, climate education, ending fossil fuel subsidy and the decentralisation of energy production and storage. We present these interventions together, because these measures strengthen each other. In this way they can kick start a chain reaction in society that will spread sustainable norms, values and behaviour, lower prices of already existing sustainable options and enhance societal support for climate policy.
With a huge and diverse coalition of climate groups, scientists, artists and many more, we call on the government to embrace the solutions civil society has been campaigning for years and decades. It’s our only chance to limit global warming to 1.5°C (according to the Paris climate agreement).
Apart from that, we keep campaigning in cities and against fossil fuel branded content in our national media. And we also pursue Shell’s offsetting advertisements at the advertising ethical board.
- There are many other groups in the Netherlands campaigning for instance against fossil fuel sponsoring of the arts (Fossil Free Culture NL) and against Shell (Shell Must Fall). How do you collaborate with these groups and to what extent is this helpful to your campaign?
We seek collaboration with them where possible. We exchange knowledge with Fossil Free Culture NL (FFCNL), for example on child marketing by their newest target - the NEMO museum. And we participate in decentralised actions from Shell Must Fall (SMF) campaign, for example around the remembrance of the ‘Ogoni Nine’ that were executed in Nigeria for protesting Shell. We held a protest at the newspaper NRC (to denounce the Shell-branded editorial content). However, we also believe in the diversity of tactics, as they [FFCNL and SMF] do. As we campaign for a law, we are open for talking to the government and political parties. FFCNL and SMF are more focussed on direct action. Their campaigns are wonderful and very powerful and are certainly helpful to our campaigns in that they raise important questions and move the overton window. And we believe ours helps them as well. It all adds up.
- What would be your key recommendations for groups wanting to campaign on ending high-carbon/fossil fuels advertising?
Don’t address the companies, but the authorities. We don’t have much time left to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Governments must step up and make regulations to ban ads that undermine climate policy and the transition. They will profit as well, because public support for climate policy will grow, as well as sustainable norms, values and behaviours.”
Keep stressing that the only way to avert physical tipping points are social tipping points. And a ban on fossil fuel advertising is one of the interventions a government can do to bring about social tipping points.
Add to the social tipping point strategy by highlighting other campaigns that also aim for the end of fossil fuel advertising. So we can create a giant snowball effect which de-normalises fossil fuel ads very fast.” (Like you do by interviewing me :)