Advertising to make fossil fuelled car travel easier - acceptable for how long?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

An advert from the 1950s - archived on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxrCjmqRTz0 - and an advert from 2019 that's been showing on my Facebook feed. The first promotes something that is really bad for our health. The second promotes something that is really bad for our planet.



How much longer will advertising be promoting the use of fossil fuel to the detriment of our children's and grand children's future?

[CyclingSid]

As long as they make money from it. Corporate Social Responsibility is ok as long as it doesn't affect the bottom line.

[TaplowGreen]

As long as they make money from it. Corporate Social Responsibility is ok as long as it doesn't affect the bottom line.

So where do you draw the line on advertising? Alcohol? Red meat? Airlines? Cars? Products containing sugar? Diesel trains? Coach travel?

[broadgage]

I would prohibit advertising for;

Fossil fuels, including petrol, diesel, LPG^▸ (Liquefied Petroleum Gas), heating oil, natural gas, coal, and coke.
Fossil fueled vehicles including cars, vans, trucks, tractors, motor yachts, motorcycles.
Fossil fueled machinery including generators, lawn mowers, air compressors and the like.

Airlines, air travel, and package holidays that include air travel.
TV sets and PCs that use more than 100 watts.
Any electrical appliance with a standby setting that uses more than one watt.
Electric lamps with an efficiency of less than 100 lumens per watt.

Single use or short life plastic products (unless essential for medical uses)
Foods, including drinks, containing excessive fat or sugar (as defined by the BMA)
Alcoholic drink of all descriptions.
Gambling, betting or gaming of any description.

I would not yet ban or prohibit use of these products and services, but would prohibit advertising or promotion. Just as smoking is permitted, but advertising of cigarettes is prohibited.
Excessive use of alcohol is a social problem, I therefore see no merit in advertising alcoholic drink.

I would still allow the advertising of diesel powered trains, coaches, buses, and ferries. Use of same is almost always preferable to driving a private car instead.

[grahame]

I would prohibit advertising for;

[snip]

Your list of a dozen major categories has left members shocked at the extent of the proposal, but yet it does bring home how the vey fabric o f our society needs to changes to meet sustainability targets.

It may also suggest we're headed for a nanny state where we're told what we can and cannot do to excess.   I note  you did not include a prohibition on political parties advertising ideas which are not well thought through and will be evaluated to being "nice idea but impractical" on 13th December.

[Celestial]

I would prohibit advertising for;

Fossil fuels, including petrol, diesel, LPG^▸ (Liquefied Petroleum Gas), heating oil, natural gas, coal, and coke.
Fossil fueled vehicles including cars, vans, trucks, tractors, motor yachts, motorcycles.
Fossil fueled machinery including generators, lawn mowers, air compressors and the like.

Airlines, air travel, and package holidays that include air travel.
TV sets and PCs that use more than 100 watts.
Any electrical appliance with a standby setting that uses more than one watt.
Electric lamps with an efficiency of less than 100 lumens per watt.

Single use or short life plastic products (unless essential for medical uses)
Foods, including drinks, containing excessive fat or sugar (as defined by the BMA)
Alcoholic drink of all descriptions.
Gambling, betting or gaming of any description.

I would not yet ban or prohibit use of these products and services, but would prohibit advertising or promotion. Just as smoking is permitted, but advertising of cigarettes is prohibited.
Excessive use of alcohol is a social problem, I therefore see no merit in advertising alcoholic drink.

I would still allow the advertising of diesel powered trains, coaches, buses, and ferries. Use of same is almost always preferable to driving a private car instead.

I need a drink after reading that list...

[Oxonhutch]

I need a drink after reading that list...

I'll bet!

[broadgage]

I am not yet proposing to prohibit any of the goods or services on my list, only to ban the advertising thereof.
I support the plans to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars from some future date, but prior to that upcoming ban, I would ban the advertising of such vehicles.

[TaplowGreen]

I am not yet proposing to prohibit any of the goods or services on my list, only to ban the advertising thereof.
I support the plans to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars from some future date, but prior to that upcoming ban, I would ban the advertising of such vehicles.

That's very generous of you 

[Celestial]

One of the biggest consumable items impacting climate change is red meat (BBC1 2100 tomorrow refers), which generates more greenhouse gasses than all transport industries combined.  So to be consistent I presume you never eat red meat, and that you feel it shouldn't be available on the Pullman services.  And those nasty steam trains on the WSR that puff out lots of smoke as they burn coal, and which people have probably driven to Bishops Lydiard to join, thus emitting totally unnecessary carbon emissions in the process too. They should be stopped too.

[TaplowGreen]

One of the biggest consumable items impacting climate change is red meat (BBC1 2100 tomorrow refers), which generates more greenhouse gasses than all transport industries combined.  So to be consistent I presume you never eat red meat, and that you feel it shouldn't be available on the Pullman services.  And those nasty steam trains on the WSR that puff out lots of smoke as they burn coal, and which people have probably driven to Bishops Lydiard to join, thus emitting totally unnecessary carbon emissions in the process too. They should be stopped too.

Absolutely - time for all steam trains to head for the scrapyard.

………...no more imports of Port either - it'd have to come by air or road (obviously ruled out) and marine diesel is pretty much the filthiest fuel of all so no question of allowing its import by sea...……..Broadgage your options are starting to look rather limited?

[stuving]

I feel this is all beside the point.

Little advertising today promotes the generic product, and a lot does not seem even to promote any one market choice - at least not directly. Nether of the two original examples promotes a product directly. And what happens on-line is dictated by US practice, and the substantial First Amendment protection granted to "commercial speech". In any case, "advertising" in the sense it is being used here - using relatively unselective media - is being replaced by a targetted on-line version, and that has so far proved very hard to regulate at all.

Now, if advertising of some thing stops, will that have much effect on whether people want to buy it? I doubt it. After all, absent advertising is, by definition, invisible. On the other hand, when most people accept that a product is unacceptable, advertising it will stop as it would be counterproductive. It's convincing the bulk of the populace that no-one, not even themselves, should go on consuming such things that is going to be the real problem.

[TonyK]

Before you all burst blood vessels at the Morality Police HQ^▸ (Headquarters), bear in mind that I can't remember the last time I saw a TV or press advert for petrol or steak or oil or sugar or bacon or a new motorway. Cars, yes, but I've got one already. Petrol - who is cheapest? Alcohol - mine's a pint, please or a glass of, depending on the context. Trains - I see the Famous Five having a wonderful time on GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), but I can't use any other company for much of my rail travel around home, and won't be going anywhere just because they have an ad on telly.

Holidays - I find the cheap flights, then worry about where I am going to stay later most of the time, using the internet. It looks like banning that would be the easiest way to spoil my planning for yet another break from the English winter in some far flung warm place. I can sit in the sunshine, sip my foreign beer and enjoy my roasted local animal, safe in the knowledge that easyJet are going to plant a tree somewhere to make up for my profligacy. Tax it more, and I will start my break with a train to Paris or Amsterdam or Brussels, have a couple of nights there, then fly back to Japan or Buenos Aires or wherever.

Banning one type of advertising in the mainstream media isn't going to do much good, unless targeted carefully. There are smokers in this country who weren't even born when the last advert for filthy fags appeared on TV or in papers, so banning adverts for bad things isn't a guaranteed path to social benefit. Writing stark warnings on fag packets, introducing generic packaging, and not having them on open display seems to be helping, but if somebody wants something, they will get it, advertised or not.

If I were to ban advertising on any general group of things, I personally would start with anything containing palm oil, because there are other ways. The manufacturers would quickly change what goes into their product if the only way of selling it was high volume advertising.

So, remember this? https://youtu.be/FvNdhriwGuM A type of advert last seen in a cinema on 29 October 1999, by which time tobacco and me had been divorced for over 8 years.

[eightonedee]

One of the biggest consumable items impacting climate change is red meat (BBC1 2100 tomorrow refers), which generates more greenhouse gasses than all transport industries combined.

But pastoral farming is an essential part of preserving some threatened habitats and ecosystems. There's a whole world of difference between clearing the cerrado habitat of Brazil for mass produced beefburgers (it's this savanna habitat that's take the real hammering, not the core rain forest) and low intensity pastoral farming that is dying out in places like Belarus and Poland due to rural depopulation leading to scrub invading the valley mires that are one of Europe's best biodiverse habitats, or low intensity grazing (better by cattle than sheep - see that classic "Highlands & Islands" by Fraser Daring and Morton Boyd) of the Scottish Highlands, or indeed sheep grazing maintaining the short grass sward that many insects, flowers and ground nesting birds find so attractive on the North Wessex Downs.

What we need is "sustainable" meat and other animal product production. It will mean less red meat, and if that is to be replaced by soya, an appreciation that much of this is grown on land following clearance of threatened habitats in places like Brazil too. There are no easy answers.

In the context of the morals of advertising (!), I do not have a problem with oil companies advertising fuel offers. It is not like tobacco, which has no intrinsic benefit to mankind but just creates medical prolems. We still need it for transport, and are likely to do so for some time. I am ambivalent about alcohol, but would ban gambling advertising, and (heaven help us) if we are foolish enough to legalise cannabis notwithstanding the well documented risk of psychotic side effects, all the upper respiratory tract health risks of smoking etc etc, then I would be against advertising this too.

As for electrical goods, like housing all we need is compulsory energy efficiency ratings on all advertising, as with house sales. I am not aware of anyone these days positively advertising plastic as a consumer product per se, but recently there has been an absolute rush of organisations replacing plastic wrappings on mailshots, in store bags for produce etc with paper or compostable products so the message is clearly getting home (putting on one side some doubt about how sustainable paper packaging really is).  

It really is impossible to take too wide a moral stand on such issues. Many jobs depend on many of the products and services on Broadgage's list. Many are essential part of the fabric of our society, and bring benefits too. So let them be advertised.    



 

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