18 August 2021. Advertising | Cities
It’s time to ban fossil-fuel related advertising; Questions for cities about extreme weather
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#1: It’s time to ban fossil-fuel based advertising
We don’t let people advertise cigarettes any more. It’s increasingly hard to advertise spirits in the UK. So why do we allow people to advertise fossil fuel products? Because, let’s face it, our television channels are full of them. That’s the challenge of a recent article in Canada’s National Advertiser. I’m going to pull out a few extracts from it to summarise the argument.
According to one study, over a recent 30-year period, the world’s five biggest oil companies spent US$3.6 billion on adsspecifically aimed at shoring up their reputation as green-friendly. Ads are one reason why gas-guzzling pickup trucks are so popular, even among those with no genuine need for them. As Quebec environmental group Équiterre found in a study released earlier this year,aggressive advertising helps to explain why light-duty vehicles — SUVs, pickups and vans — now account for 80 per cent of new vehicle sales in Canada, which in turn is a big reason greenhouse gas emissions from transportation are still rising.
Because advertising matters so much to the fossil fuel corporations, it ought to matter to the rest of us, too.
One of the things that seems to have prompted the article was the experience of watching the Olympics on television, where the coverage was inundated with car commercials. Because, as he says, this creates the sense that there’s something normal about selling products that will trash the planet:
Emergencies need to look, sound and feel like emergencies, and public messaging and education during an emergency needs to be consistent and coherent (just as we’ve all witnessed in the pandemic). But ubiquitous advertising of fossil fuel vehicles, gas stations, gas suppliers and appliances, air travel and the ongoing sponsorship of arts and sports events by fossil fuel companies all sends a confusing message — are we facing a climate emergency or aren’t we?
(Fossil free. Image: https://verbiedfossielereclame.nl/)
So he proposes that there should be ban on advertising for fossil fuel products. And maybe that it should go further. Cigarette buyers already get faced by big health warning stickers. Perhaps we should see the same on the sides of SUVs—or on travel websites when we buy plane tickets. And this is already happening in some jurisdictions:
Canada’s National Observer columnist Chris Hatch reported in May: “Amsterdam just banned advertising for ‘fossil products’ (including airlines and cars) from metro stations. France’s new climate law will prohibit ads for oil, coal or gas. A new initiative called Clean Creatives is getting ad agencies to stop taking contracts that promote coal, oil or gas. And activists around the world are pressuring museums and event organizers to refuse sponsorships from oil, gas or coal companies.” The move by Amsterdam comes out of a larger Dutch-based campaign to ban fossil fuel advertising.
In other words, it’s starting to happen. But, just like everything else connected to climate change, it’s not happening fast enough.
#2: Questions for cities about managing extreme weather
Carbon Radio has a post on Medium about how cities will need to adapt to extreme weather. The post is prompted by Seattle’s recent record 108 degree Fahrenheit heat (42 degrees C) which isn’t that far below the level at which humans start to become seriously distressed.
The post asks four questions for cities, which I’m going to quote pretty much in full:
1. Does my city have the necessary equipment to deal with abnormal heat, cold, flooding, snowing, icing, etc.?
This has a lot to do with a city’s vehicle fleet, but also other equipment. And, where the city doesn’t own the necessary equipment, it should be possible to contract with regional businesses to have plans in place should an extreme weather event arise.
2. Does my city have the necessary healthcare capacity if suddenly a large portion of the population were in need?
This local and regional healthcare capacity is currently being illuminated by the pandemic. Cities need to think about providing hydration in heat waves, providing shelter in extreme cold, and reducing dependencies on healthcare facilities...
3. Does my city have emergency evacuation plans and do the citizens of the city know about them?
In all likelihood, most cities have already developed emergency evacuation plans, but it is very unlikely that citizens are aware of them. Given that unpredictable weather events are unforeseen by nature, it is useful to spend time and resources communicating these plans to the general public.
4. What infrastructure does my city need to be more adaptable to extreme weather events?
This is perhaps the most important question as it reduces the stress on answering the previous three questions. In Seattle’s case, the city needs to encourage more air conditioning in homes and businesses. In some cities, flooding might be a higher risk or more pressing vulnerability than extreme heat, so the infrastructure need might be more related to diverting water effectively. Resilience and climate adaptation has become a central piece of city planning.
Of course, it’s already a bit more complicated than that. More air conditioning overloads electricity systems; the tunnels that the article commends for dealing with heat—thinking of Montreal’s tunnels, designed for extreme cold— are also much more vulnerable to heavy rain.
The other issue is that infrastructure is a slow-moving beast—60-80 years, if you’re lucky, and the extreme weather effects of global warming are coming along faster than that. So I wonder if we’re going to see solutions which are in the realm of lightweight or adaptive innovation, rather than significant rebuilding.
And as it happens, there’s an example of exactly such lightweight innovation from a town in Spain on the design site Core 77. Alhaurin de la Torre has rolled out a sunshade made of recycled materials each summer for the last three years.
(Source: Core 77)
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