We Can…
How fossil-fuel advertising is undermining humanity’s greatest achievements
The Ministry for the Climate Emergency has created We Can, a new comic pamphlet and animation series that highlights a simple contradiction: humanity is capable of extraordinary scientific achievements, yet we still allow advertising for the fossil-fuel pollution that threatens them.
Humanity can measure carbon levels in the atmosphere with precision, monitor the health of forests from space, cure once-fatal diseases, and map our own genome. We have the intelligence and creativity to protect life on Earth.
At the moment, however, our public spaces are still filled with ads for fossil-fuel companies, SUVs, flights and other high-carbon products. These ads actively undermine the science, innovation and progress we rely on for a safe, healthy future.
There is a simple opportunity to stop promoting pollution. Ending adverts for fossil-fuel companies and heavily polluting products would bring advertising policy in line with science — just as past restrictions on tobacco ads protected public health.
Many cities and public bodies have already begun taking steps to restrict carbon-intensive advertising. Ending pollution-promoting ads is one of the quickest and most effective ways to reduce unnecessary, harmful and high-carbon consumption.
“We can precisely measure the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and we can track the damage being inflicted on the Amazon rainforest — but we seem incapable of stopping the promotion of the technologies and companies causing that damage. It’s time we stopped adverts for fossil fuel companies.””