The head of the United Nations, António Guterres, has for the first time called on governments to ban fossil fuel companies from advertising, as many have already done with the tobacco industry.
In a speech to mark World Environment Day at the American Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, he said that “many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action – with lobbying, legal threats and massive ad campaigns”.
“I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies,” he said on Wednesday, adding that many governments already ban or restrict tobacco advertising – and that “some are now doing the same with fossil fuels”.
In 2022, France banned adverts for some fossil fuel products, and similar laws are being discussed in Canada and Ireland. The Dutch city of Amsterdam has banned fossil fuel adverts and the Scottish capital Edinburgh is set to do the same.
Guterres described the fossil fuel industry as “the Godfathers of climate chaos”, raking in record profits and feasting off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies. Meanwhile the oil and gas industry last year invested “a measly 2.5 percent” of its total capital spending on clean energy, he added.
“Mad Men fuelling madness”
The UN Secretary-General said fossil fuel companies “have been aided and abetted by advertising and [public relations] companies, Mad Men – remember the TV series – fuelling the madness”.
He called on them to “stop acting as enablers to planetary destruction” by refusing new fossil fuel clients and setting out plans to drop existing ones.
According to sector campaign group Clean Creatives, nearly 300 advertising and PR agencies held contracts with fossil fuel firms between 2022 and 2023.
Subsidiaries of the British company WPP had the highest number of fossil fuel contracts – 55 – despite having a pledge to reach net zero by 2030. Their clients include oil and gas giants Saudi Aramco, Equinor and BP.
On the other hand, more than 1,100 organisations in advertising and publicity have pledged to cut ties with fossil fuel companies and decline any contracts with them in future.
Clean Creatives executive director Duncan Meisel said Guterres’ speech was “a turning point in the advertising and PR industry’s relationship with climate change and fossil fuels”.
“There is no longer any cover for agencies to say that they are doing the right thing when working with polluters,” he said, “Everyone knows this is wrong, and everyone needs to act.”
Don’t take ads
Guterres also said that news media and technology companies should stop taking fossil fuel advertising.
Internal documents from fossil fuel firms like BP have shown that they consider placing sponsored content in the news media as a deliberate and effective strategy for influencing both public opinion and energy policy.
Research by investigative website DeSmog and Drilled showed that in-house advertising teams at international media outlets like Reuters, Bloomberg, The Financial Times and The New York Times facilitated this strategy, by promoting fossil fuel companies’ messaging through sponsored content like podcasts, newsletters and videos.
In April, The Financial Times and Reuters pulled content sponsored by Saudi Aramco that showcased the state-run oil company’s preference for technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.
DC political journalism is drowning in oil.@PunchbowlNews presented by @Chevron @axios Generate sponsored by @Chevron@politico Power Switch presented by @bp_America pic.twitter.com/9XfD3ifO7y
— Brad Johnson SUBSCRIBE TO HILLHEAT.NEWS (@climatebrad) November 13, 2023
As well as sponsoring content, fossil fuel companies take out regular adverts in mainstream and specialist media. For example, Chevron sponsors Politico’s energy podcast.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, received around $4 million from fossil fuel firms in return for running adverts spreading false claims over the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, according to research from Climate Action Against Disinformation.
Hottest May ever
Guterres’ speech was scheduled to coincide with World Environment Day on June 5 – also the day, he pointed out, that May 2024 was confirmed as the hottest May in recorded history
“This marks twelve straight months of the hottest months ever,” the UN chief said. “For the past year, every turn of the calendar has turned up the heat. Our planet is trying to tell us something. But we don’t seem to be listening.”
On the same day, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said there is an 80% chance that one of the next five years will be 1.5C hotter than pre-industrial times. In 2015, that chance was estimated at close to zero.
In the Paris Agreement adopted that year, all governments agreed to strive to limit global temperature increase to 1.5C “recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”.
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“WMO is sounding the alarm that we will be exceeding the 1.5C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency,” WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement on Wednesday.
“However, it is important to stress that temporary breaches do not mean that the 1.5C goal is permanently lost because this refers to long-term warming over decades,” she added.
The WMO also said there is a close to 50% likelihood that the global temperature averaged over the five years from 2024-2028 will exceed 1.5C above the pre-industrial era.
The UN decided to combine its scientific and advocacy powers on World Environment Day in a bid to push climate change back up the global political agenda, which has been dominated by conflicts and major elections this year.
The aim is to increase pressure on the richest nations ahead of the G7 summit this month – and on all governments tasked with preparing new climate action plans – to urgently step up their efforts to cut emissions.
“The battle for 1.5 degrees will be won or lost in the 2020s – under the watch of leaders today”, said Guterres.
(Reporting by Joe Lo and Daisy Clague; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post UN chief calls on governments to ban fossil fuel ads appeared first on Climate Home News.
Jackie Chesnutt, who lives outside San Angelo, is tired of pollution from wells she says should have been plugged years ago. Experts say Texas rules allow companies to defer plugging wells for far too long.
Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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The fourth installment in our special Earth Day series
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever.
David Ritter
So often in life, our most authentic moments of joy are the result of years of shared effort, and the culmination of a kind of deep faith in what is possible.
A few weeks ago, I had the honour of being in Canberra, along with some fellow environmentalists and scientists, to witness the enactment of the High Seas Biodiversity Bill 2026 by our federal parliament.
This was the moment that the Global Ocean Treaty—one of the most significant environmental agreements of our time—was given force through a domestic Australian law.
If you are part of the great Greenpeace family, you will know exactly why this was such a huge deal. The high seas make up around 60 per cent of the Earth’s surface and for too long, they have been subjected to open plunder. Now, for the first time in human history, there is an international instrument that enables the creation of massive high seas sanctuaries within which the ocean can be protected. This is a monumental collective achievement by Greenpeace and all the other groups who have campaigned for high seas marine sanctuaries for many years.
But as momentous as the ratification was, the parliamentary proceedings were distinctly lacking in drama or fanfare–so much so, that Labor MP backbencher Renee Coffey felt the need to gesture to those of us in the gallery with a grin, to indicate that the process was over and done.
The modesty of the moment had me thinking about the decades of quiet dedication by many hands that are invariably required to achieve great social change. In particular, I found myself thinking about researchers. So much of the expert academic work that underpins achievements like the Global Ocean Treaty is slow, painstaking, solitary—and often out of sight.
I think of the persistence and tenacity of researchers as an expression of love, founded in an authentic sense of wonder and curiosity about the world—and frequently linked to a deep ethical desire to protect that source of wonderment.
In 2007, one of the very first things I was given to read after starting with Greenpeace as an oceans campaigner in London was a report entitled Roadmap to Recovery: A global network of marine reserves. Specific physical sensations can tend to stick in the mind from periods of personally significant transitions, and the tactile reminiscence of holding the thin cardboard of the modest grey cover of that report is deeply embedded in my memory. I suspect I still even have that original copy in a box somewhere.
Written by a team of scientists led by Professor Callum Roberts, a marine conservation biologist from the University of York, the Roadmap provided the first scientifically informed vision of a large-scale global network of high seas marine sanctuaries, protecting the world’s oceans at scale. Of course, twenty years ago, this idea felt more like utopian science fiction, because there was no Global Oceans Treaty. But what seemed fanciful at the start of this century is now possible-–and I have every confidence the creation of large scale high seas marine sanctuaries will now happen through the application of ongoing campaigning effort—but we would never have gotten this far without the dedication of researchers, driven by their love of the oceans. And now here we are, with the ability for humanity to legally protect the high seas for the first time.
Campaigning and research so often work hand in hand like this: the one identifying the need and the solutions; the other driving the change. Because in a world of powerful vested interests, good science alone doesn’t shift decision makers—that takes activism and campaigning—but equally, there must be a basis of evidence and reason on which to build our public advocacy.
So, I want to take a moment to think with love and appreciation for everyone who has contributed to making this possible. I’ve never met the team of scientists who authored the original Roadmap, so belatedly but sincerely, then, to Leanne Mason, Julie P. Hawkins, Elizabeth Masden, Gwilym Rowlands, Jenny Storey and Anna Swift—and to every other researcher and scientist who has been involved in demonstrating why the Global Oceans Treaty has been so badly needed over the years—thank you for your commitment and devotion.
And to everyone out there who continues to believe that evidence and truth matter, and that our magnificent, fragile world deserves our respectful curiosity and study as an expression of our awe and enchantment, thank you for your conscientiousness.
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever. You have Greenpeace’s deepest gratitude. Every day, we build on the foundations of your work and dedication. Thank you.
Q & A
I have been asked several times in recent weeks what the ongoing war means for the renewable energy transition in Australia.
While some corners of the fossil fuel lobby and the politicians captured by these vested interests have been very quick to use this crisis to call for more oil exploration and gas pipelines, the reality is that the current energy crisis has revealed the commonsense case for renewable energy.
As many, including climate and energy minister Chris Bowen have noted, renewable energy is affordable, inexhaustible, and sovereign—its supply cannot be blocked by warmongers or conflict. People intuitively know this; it’s why sales of electric cars have climbed to an all-time high, it’s why interest in rooftop solar and batteries has skyrocketed in recent months.
The reality is that oil and gas are to blame for much of the cost-of-living pain we’re feeling right now; fossil fuels are the disease, not the cure. If Australia were further along in our renewable energy transition and EV uptake, we would be much better insulated from petrol and gas price shocks and supply chain disruptions.
Yes, we need short-term solutions to ease the very real cost-of-living pressures that Australian communities and workers are facing as a result of fuel shortages. While replacement supplies is no doubt a valid step for now—Greenpeace is also backing taxes on the war profits of gas corporations to fund relief measures for Australians—in the long term, we will only get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel dependency and price volatility if we break free from fossil fuels and accelerate progress towards an energy system built on 100% renewable energy, backed by storage.
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