Protests against SUVs and car advertising in Belgium
Image credit: IEW. French text in the image: Advertising for cars must be banned!
Motor show cancelled but advertising remains
Following the cancellation of Brussels 2021 Motor show, the Belgian car and two wheels federation, Febiac, joined forces with advertising agency Mediahuis Advertising on an ad campaign in its magazine Auto 2021. The campaign was aimed to reach up to 2 million Belgian citizens.
In protest over this ad campaign, a coalition of citizens and organisations pushing for low carbon transport launched a petition, now counting more than 6,000 signatures, demanding that public authorities regulate advertising of the most polluting vehicles. Their demands are clear;
Advertising for all cars should be banned at best
At least, this ban should include the most polluting vehicles - those emitting more than 95 CO2 g/km AND a limit on the weight of vehicles at 1400 kg max
To top this anti-SUV operation off, activists went around five Belgian cities and plastered stickers on cars to warn people about the dangers of SUVs for the planet.
Video credit: IEW
Why SUV advertising should be ended
If we are to tackle climate change, we need to drastically reduce our emissions from transport. That means we need fewer private cars on the road, particularly highly polluting SUVs. But representatives from the car industry like the Febiac in Belgium keep saying that there is no need to blame SUVs for carbon emissions since those have decreased on average in the past years.
While average CO2 emissions for SUVs decreased by 10.97% from 2019 to 2020, over the last three years those savings in carbon emissions were largely offset by an increase in the number of SUVs on the road. In fact, new research from the International Energy Agency shows that despite people buying more electric cars, these climate gains are being cancelled out by the increased popularity of SUVs.
The biggest misconception of all is that advertising is having no impact on our consumption habits. A recent report from Green House think tank specifically details how today’s dominant form of advertising has shifted from its early days purpose of information provider to being a “manipulative force”. In our latest research ‘Mindgames on Wheels’, we find that carmakers have worked very closely with the advertising industry to create misleading messaging around “getting back to nature” or “helping the environment” in order to promote their gas-guzzling SUVs.
It’s clear that if we want to stop people buying SUVs, we need advertisers to stop convincing us of their desirability as a status symbol.
Ads for SUVs increased after Covid
Since the start of the pandemic, Belgium has seen a massive increase in ads for SUVs. A comparative study between 534 ads from January 2020 and 164 ads released in Belgium cities over May-June 2020 shows that there has been a general trend towards promoting larger polluting vehicles. The car manufacturing industry has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. But rather than focussing on shifting their manufacturing processes towards electric vehicles, these companies keep producing and advertising ever larger gas-guzzling cars whose carbon emissions far outstrip the legal pollution standards.
Belgian environmental groups and citizens are rising up against the harmful climate impacts of advertising and are rightly campaigning for a full ban on car adverts. We need to do the same. Sign our petition to end SUV advertising in the UK, and join an international movement protecting our planet from harmful advertising.