For decades, fossil fuel companies have fought action on climate change. They've done so directly – by challenging legislation that would help reign in emissions. But they've also done it indirectly, by funding organizations who lobby congress, launching fake grassroots campaigns, and perhaps most importantly, through advertising. These ads, according to Martin Watters at the nonprofit firm ClientEarth, are greenwashing. They help sow doubt about the fossil fuel industry's role in warming the planet. This week, we take a look at those ads and examine how they stymy the conversation on climate. We also talk to some people working hard to get rid of these types of ads. They aren't going after the fossil fuel companies directly. Instead, they're targeting the people who help fossil fuel companies greenwash their image: the ad creators.
Guests: Martin Watters, Duncan Meisel, Adam Lerman
Calls to action
If you’re an ad professional, you can consider signing onto the Clean Creatives Pledge or even push your company to sign the pledge as well. You can learn more about the pledge here.
If you work for a company that is a client of the influential PR firm Edelman, Clean Creatives is running a campaign to get Edelman clients to pressure the company to drop their fossil fuel work. Learn more about the #EdelmanDropExxon campaign here.
Check out Ads Not Fit To Print, a campaign pressuring publications to stop running fossil fuel ads.
To learn more, read How One Firm Drove Influence Campaigns Nationwide for Big Oil and check out ClientEarth’s The Greenwashing Files. If you want to go even deeper check out this review paper Climate Change Disinformation and How to Combat It.
Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. If you take an action we recommend in one of our episodes, do us a favor and tell us about it! We’d love to hear how it went and what it felt like. Record a short voice memo on your phone and send it to us via our Listener Mail Form. We might use it in an upcoming episode. Find all the actions we’ve recommended on our show here!
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This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by Anna Ladd and Kendra Pierre-Louis. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Rachel Waldholz, Hannah Chin, and Daniel Ackerman. Our supervising producer is Katelyn Bogucki. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Our intern is Nicole Welch. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard and Lonnie Ro with original music from Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, and Catharine Anderson. Our fact checker for this episode was James Gaines.
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