The City of Edinburgh banned adverts for fossil‑fuel cars, cruise holidays, commercial flights and other high‑carbon products on council‑owned spaces in May 2024.
Other municipalities such as Hackney in London and Sheffield have also introduced bans or restrictions on high‑carbon advertising within council‑controlled advertising spaces.
These local policies demonstrate that advertising bans – once considered radical – are becoming mainstream tools for cutting demand for polluting products.
Protect
It’s not just about limiting misleading adverts — it’s about reshaping how society sees consumption.
Andrew Simms, the campaign co‑director and contributor to The Ecologist, explains: “Humans have cracked problems once thought impossible — from saving lives with penicillin, and sequencing our own genome to probing the planet’s health from space.
“But we seem unable to stop promoting the fossil fuel pollution that is simultaneously wrecking human health and the Earth’s climate.
“People will still travel and drive, but ending adverts for polluting products would remove millions of unnecessary, harmful and polluting journeys — just as banning tobacco ads cut smoking and saved lives.
“If we’re capable of such amazing, complicated scientific breakthroughs, we should be able to take one of the simplest steps to protect public health and the climate and stop advertising pollution.”
Satellites
People will still be able to travel, drive and fly, but this would stop ads creating and increasing demand for polluting choices where it didn’t already exist.
It’s about refusing to glamorise destruction. It’s about removing the unconscious pressure to consume high-carbon services and normalising lower‑impact alternatives.
For many, the failure of COP30 to commit to a fossil‑fuel phase‑out didn’t come as a surprise. For decades, fossil‑fuel interests have wielded power – often behind the scenes – shaping not only policy but public perception.
We Can flips the script. It argues that change doesn’t need to wait for grand diplomatic deals. It can begin in our cities, on our streets, across billboards and bus shelters. By removing the constant marketing pressure to fly, drive, pollute – we can begin to align culture with climate reality.
If humanity can send telescopes to the edge of the solar system, chart the secrets of our DNA, and monitor planetary health from satellites – we can also choose not to advertise our way into extinction.
This Author
Liam Killeen is a deliberative democracy researcher and works with the Badvertising campaign.
The Badvertising campaign aims to stop advertising fueling the climate emergency by implementing a tobacco-style ban on ads for cars, airlines and fossil fuel companies. www.badverts.org – it is a collaboration between the New Weather Institute and Adfree Cities.