Where do we see advertising?
We are so surrounded by advertising that it can become oddly invisible. As a result advertisers shout louder and louder for our attention, using ever more clever techniques and digital media. Advertising is the cultural water in which we swim. It shapes our choices and wants, our priorities and what we consider to be ‘normal’ and part of the good life. More worryingly, research shows that we soak-up the messages and manipulations of marketing whether we are consciously aware of them or not.
Figure 1: Data adapted from Advertising Association, WARC (2018)
This table shows for one country - the United Kingdom - the different types of advertising people encounter. It’s fairly typical for a relatively wealthy nation. Online advertising, including social media platforms like Facebook, has become (measured by spend) the biggest advertising medium. Governments around the world are struggling to keep pace with new technologies. Regulation is running behind how our data is harvested, re-sold and used to target adverts at us. TV advertising continues to be key for big companies with sufficiently large advertising budgets.
Outdoor advertising such as giant billboards, digital screens, and panels placed at bus stops and other places for public transport, are particularly problematic because unlike other mediums, we have no choice over whether we view them or not. Unlike when you buy a magazine that you choose to read, adverts in the public domain are non-consensual intrusions. As the outdoor advertising industry likes to brag: “Outdoor advertising is a medium which cannot be turned off, closed, missed or minimised.” Digital advertising screens are also extremely energy intensive, with one large ad screen using the same electricity as 11 average UK households.
Digital advertising screens are also extremely energy intensive, with one large ad screen using the same electricity as 11 average UK households.
Throughout this toolkit we will outline policy measures for different levels of government and regulatory bodies to limit our exposure to high carbon adverts.
What is ‘high carbon advertising’?
This toolkit focuses on the climate damage done by advertising high carbon goods and activities (such as SUVs and air travel). But the ad industry has a track record of criticism for its negative impacts on health and well being, for portraying people in discriminatory ways, and promoting out-of-date attitudes. Health campaigners have been fighting for decades to strengthen regulations on tobacco, alcohol, gambling and junk food advertising. Feminist and equality movements critique the role of marketing in idealising certain body shapes or skin tones - and confront the industry’s attacks on self esteem and mental health.
Similarly, experts on wellbeing argue that the constant pressure to purchase and consume ‘must-have’ brands undermines mental health and promotes attitudes and values that make us feel worse (For more on this see Tim Kasser’s book The High Price of Materialism . Sometimes impacts can be quietly profound. Communities living next to large, new digital screens, for example, say that advertising billboards can create a subtle reduction in our sense of belonging and place, and intensify the commercialisation of our public spaces. It is important to keep these broader concerns in mind when discussing necessary checks and balances on advertising.
This toolkit looks at the ecological and climate impacts of advertising from these high carbon industries:
petrol and diesel car advertising, particularly for the largest and most polluting cars such as Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs)
airline advertising for flights
fossil fuel companies (such as Shell and BP)
While some may claim to be cleaning up their operations and going green, their track records on climate change are those of delay and spreading confusion. Car manufacturers and oil companies lobby to weaken climate action, and airlines are failing to take meaningful action to reduce their overall pollution whilst aggressively pushing to increase the number of flights.
From March 2020 onwards, both international air travel and urban transport around the world have been seriously constrained by the coronavirus pandemic and related social distancing measures. Now there is a real danger that, as people are warned to avoid public transport, even more polluting cars will clog up our streets and create soaring levels of lethal air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. When we urgently need cleaner air for our health, and more space on our streets for people, it makes no sense to have multi-million pound ad campaigns encouraging us to buy over-sized new SUVs.
Car advertising
Transport is Europe’s biggest source of carbon emissions, contributing a massive 27% to the EU’s total CO2 emissions in 2018, with cars and vans representing more than two thirds of these. In recent times, the auto industry has been mired in scandals relating to ‘cheat devices’ built into vehicles to get around laws and targets governing fuel efficiency.
Car adverts often display images of exotic, wild or rural locations surrounded by plenty of space. They promise adventure, escape and the open road; but the reality in many world cities is gridlocked traffic jams and soaring, illegal levels of air pollution. The car has become culturally dominant and car advertising has played a key role in positioning car ownership as the ultimate status symbol. Many urban centres are struggling to provide to transit systems based on majority public transport or active travel because cars are culturally locked into both our infrastructure (with space for roads and parking prioritised over cycle lanes and green spaces) and our travel behaviours.
The rise of SUVs
Over the past ten years, car manufacturers have shifted away from selling family cars towards ever bigger, more polluting - but much more profitable - ‘sports utility vehicles’ (SUVs). The industry’s drive to persuade us to buy these larger, dirtier vehicles has been so effective that it now threatens to trash our climate change targets.
Now, with the coronavirus pandemic, we also need as much space on our streets as possible for pedestrians and cyclists to get around and commute to work safely. But as well as being dirtier, oversized SUVs take up far more precious urban space than conventional cars. Why are we allowing marketers to push cars onto our streets that are so big they do not fit in a standard UK parking space?
Recent years have seen vehicle manufacturers move the bulk of their advertising spend to promoting their SUV ranges rather than traditional cars. In 2018, car maker Ford reportedly spent 85% of its advertising budget promoting SUVs and light trucks in the USA. As a result, more and more people are buying SUVs, when we could instead be investing in a cleaner future. If we want to encourage sustainable transport and travel, it’s time to end advertisements promoting big, polluting SUVs.
Key SUV facts
In 2019, over 150,000 new cars were sold in the UK that are too large to fit in a standard parking space (according to European Environment Agency vehicle sales figures).
For every one fully electric vehicle sold in the UK in the last four years, 37 SUVs were sold.
These unnecessarily large, energy hungry vehicles produce around 25% more CO2 emissions than a medium sized car.
Globally, rising sales of SUVs are the second biggest cause of increasing CO2 emissions (after power generation, but ahead of aviation and heavy industry)
Air pollution, largely from motor traffic, kills between 28,000 and 36,000 people a year in the UK.
The government’s statutory advisors the Committee on Climate Change have recommended a total phase out of sales of new internal combustion engine cars by 2030 to ensure the UK can meet its net zero commitments. Clearly advertising fossil fuelled cars should be phased out in advance of this date.
What are the limits on CO2 emissions from cars in Europe?
Since 2020, all new cars sold in Europe - including the UK - must not emit more than 95grams of CO2 per km. Carmakers breaching these standards will be required to pay a fine of €95 euros (the equivalent of £83) for every gram over the imposed limit, multiplied by the number of vehicles sold. According to a recent study, the 13 biggest car manufacturers are all set to largely miss the new CO2 emissions targets and will be required to pay billions of euros in compensation. In the UK alone, average CO2 emissions from cars were 127g/km, 35% above the 95g/km target. This is largely due to an increase in the sales of SUVs and other large vehicles.
Car manufacturers need to urgently switch away from the production of these vehicles - and stop promoting their dirty vehicles to consumers through multi-billion pound advertising campaigns. In France, the car industry spends €2.5 billion (£2.2 billion) on advertising making it the sector with the second largest ad budget (behind retail). Only 5% of the spending for these media ads was allocated for the promotion of electric vehicles.
Campaigners from Resistance A’Laggression Publicitaire and other networks have proposed in the Climate Citizens Assembly to the French government that curbs on advertising for the most polluting cars must be introduced soon.
Car advertising - industry pressure waters down European Directives
Car adverts in the EU are already required to feature the kilograms of CO2 per mile each car emits (under Directive 1999/94/EC, known as "the car labeling Directive"). However, a 2016 review found the directive has so far had limited impact. Motor industry lobbying pushed the information into the small print of adverts, and presents them without context, making it difficult for consumers to know what they mean.
What we’re calling for:
In the UK, we propose that publishing adverts for new cars with emissions exceeding 160g CO2/ per km or with an overall length exceeding 4.8m (that’s longer than your average crocodile) should no longer be permitted in the UK in any form. These thresholds would equate to an advertising ban on the dirtiest third of the UK car market in terms of carbon emissions; and on all cars which are too big to fit in a standard UK parking space.
The same does apply here on Menorca, there has been a steady rise of people driving around Ciutadella in these great big cars, which take up two spaces or stick out a mile, for what reason I don't know. There's not an awful lot of off-roading to be done here. The roads are quite narrow and mostly one way. We even had a Hummer once, however, there was an incident, in Mahon (a place of many hills) , I think,where the driver parked it up and forgot to put on the handbrake.
We do have problems here with elderly people driving when they really should have stopped years ago. I really don't know how they are still permitted on the road. The parking is awful, they either drive at breakneck speed or like a snail, either way it is so dangerous. One elderly lady, didn't see the roundabout with the horse on it (by the BP garage) and just drove straight onto it. It even made the daily paper here!
On that note I will leave you with the blog song for today:" pol;;;;;;klo (sorry that was one of the cats walking across the keyboard) "Telephone" by Lady Gaga.
TTFN
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