U.N. chief calls for global fossil fuel ad ban

The New York Times, one of the biggest purveyors of fossil fuel ads, did not respond to our request for comment.

Is this what it looks like inside an ad agency that makes fossil fuel marketing? Who can say! Source: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images

In a major speech that didn’t mince words, the United Nations Secretary-General on Wednesday called fossil fuel companies the “godfathers of climate chaos,” and urged all countries to ban fossil fuel advertising.

António Guterres also called on PR firms, media outlets, and tech companies to stop promoting fossil fuel ads that lie to the public and hide the role the industry plays in the climate crisis.

“Many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed even as they have sought to delay climate action,” Guterres said. "I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.”

Guterres compared ad agencies that create content for Big Oil to the morality-bereft executives from “Mad Men.” He said PR firms should “stop taking on new fossil fuel clients from today, and set out plans to drop your existing ones.” 

“Fossil fuels are not only poisoning our planet,” he said. “They are toxic for your brands.”

Duncan Meisel, who leads a group focused on pressuring ad agencies to drop their contracts with fossil fuel firms, told HEATED the speech was “a turning point for the advertising and PR industry.”

“When the world’s top diplomat calls out your industry by name, there’s no way to deny that collaborating with fossil fuel companies is doing damage to the planet,” said Meisel, the executive director of Clean Creatives. 

“I think today’s speech lays out a very stark choice: either continue being a part of the climate problem by working with fossil fuels, or drop polluting clients and join the world leaders and innovative companies trying to solve this problem.”

Call for ad ban comes amid global tipping point

The U.N. chief’s call for a global advertising ban comes as the world approaches a tipping point to preserve a livable climate. 

On the same day as Guterres’ speech, the University of Leeds released a report showing that the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions are still climbing, when they need to be decreasing by 9 percent every year until 2030 to avert dangerous, irreversible warming.

Those emissions are already driving record-breaking temperatures and fueling disastrous extreme weather all over the world. Last year was the hottest year on record, and this year may be even worse, according to the European Union’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 

The agency also forecast on Wednesday, that there is an 80 percent likelihood that the annual global temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5°C in the next five years.

“We must urgently do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay an increasingly heavy price in terms of trillions of dollars in economic costs, millions of lives affected by more extreme weather and extensive damage to the environment and biodiversity,” WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement.

The fossil fuel industry is the primary driver of this crisis, responsible for over 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.N. 

But you would never know that from Big Oil’s advertisements, which rebrand polluting products as “environmentally friendly;” overstate investments in renewable energy; and tout net zero promises it has no intention of keeping.

The worst offenders: Edelman and The New York Times

The fossil fuel industry’s misleading content would not be possible without the PR and media companies that create and publish it. 

Though Guterres did not call out those companies by name, HEATED has been covering them for years, and can identify some of the worst offenders.

A report released last year by Drilled and DeSmog found that The New York Times takes the most fossil fuel ad money of any major publication.

One of the fossil fuel industry’s greatest PR allies has been Edelman, which has taken tens of millions over the years to create slick campaigns for polluters. And they are far from alone: PR firms such as Glover Part, Cerrell, and Ogilvy—which created the concept of the “carbon footprint” to sell more BP petroleum—are all major players in climate denial and delay. 

“They are enormous actors. And nobody really writes about it,” disinformation researcher Robert Brulle told HEATED in prior reporting.  

On the news side, a report released last year by Drilled and DeSmog found that The New York Times takes the most fossil fuel ad money of any major publication.

From October 2020 to October 2023, the report found, The New York Times pulled in at least $20 million from fossil fuel ads. This is despite the fact that the Times pledged to ban oil and gas companies from sponsoring “its climate newsletter, its climate summit or its podcast ‘The Daily’” in 2021.

Other trusted news outlets that regularly run greenwashing fossil fuel ads include Reuters, the Financial Times, Politico, the Economist, Bloomberg, and The Washington Post, the report found.

HEATED reached out to all seven news outlets to ask for their response to Guterres' call. We did not receive any responses as of press time. (We will update you if we hear anything post-publication).

The movement to ban fossil fuel ads grows

The fossil fuel industry has already poured billions into the effort to greenwash its reputation. 

From 2008 to 2018, oil and gas trade associations alone spent $2.2 billion on ads and promotion, according to a peer-reviewed study by Brulle and co-author Cartie Werthman. Research also shows that this PR has directly obstructed policies to slow climate destruction.

But as the public becomes more aware of Big Oil’s greenwashing tactics, there is growing pressure to ban deceptive fossil fuel ads, and get climate policies back on track.

Last year, the United Kingdom’s advertising watchdog banned greenwashing fossil fuel ads from Shell, Spanish oil company Repsol, and Malaysian company Petronas, saying they misled  consumers about climate change. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing its “Green Guides,” the regulations for environmental claims in advertising.

And across the world, oil and gas companies are embroiled in lawsuits over deceptive advertising. In the U.S., at least 20 cases are pending, arguing that oil and gas companies purposefully deceived the public about their harmful products.

In his speech on Wednesday, Guterres compared the harmful impact of fossil fuel advertising to that of the tobacco industry’s. “Many governments restrict or prohibit advertising for products that harm human health like tobacco,” he said.

It’s the same argument Democrats made last month when they asked the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the oil industry in the same manner that it investigated tobacco companies in the 1990s. Advocates hope that a DOJ investigation, like the tobacco investigation, could eventually force the industry to stop misleading advertising. 

But instead of waiting for legal rulings, Guterres said on Wednesday that countries should act on their own. Because, he emphasized, time is of the essence.

“We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” he said. “And we need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell.”

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Related HEATED coverage:

• The NYT stopped shilling for cigarettes. Why won't it stop shilling for fossil fuels? HEATED, August 2021.

In conversations with HEATED over the last week, several current and former Times newsroom employees expressed concerns about the paper’s practice of creating and running fossil fuel ads. Their concerns ranged from undermining the Times’ own climate reporting, to harming Times readers’ health, to aiding industry attempts to mislead the public about the deadly effects of fossil fuels.

• Edelman's climate cop-out. HEATED, January 2023.

Tax filings showed that Edelman, a firm that claimed to be committed to climate action, was taking millions each year to create slick marketing campaigns for the world’s biggest climate polluters and their extreme anti-climate political lobbying arms.

• “The Daily” runs a greenwashing BP ad. HEATED, February 2024.

In 2022, peer-reviewed research found that BP’s climate advertising likely did amount to greenwashing, as there was “ no evidence that [BP was] investing in clean energy at a scale that would allow them to shift away from fossil fuels,” NPR reported. Still, it’s clear that BP still believes the benefits of greenwashing in outlets like The Daily outweigh the threat of legal liability for misleading consumers.

• These natural gas ads are full of hot air. HEATED, February 2023.

Politico and Axios each defended the practice of running the ads, despite concerns they may be misinforming millions about the climate crisis. ‘It is not up to us to decide what is factually accurate or what is not factually accurate,’ Politico executive vice president Cally Stolbach Baute told HEATED.

• Big Oil's favorite way to lie: paltering. HEATED, April 2023.

Paltering is when you say, “I finished my math homework,” when in reality all you did was take 5 minutes to write “666” in all of the answer boxes. So you did technically finish your math homework, but you did such a bad job that you’re still going to fail. The only thing you achieved is getting your parents off your back by actively misleading them about your activities. This is what oil and gas companies do in their advertisements.

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