As climate action gains traction across Canada, a quiet feud is brewing in the oilsands over the best way to continue extracting fossil fuels in an era of decarbonization.
Greenwashing should be illegal. Consumers trying to reduce their personal impact can have their decisions influenced by greenwashing propaganda and end up making misinformed decisions or not hold a company accountable for their true impacts.
I guess you could require green advertising spending to be some fraction of spending on being green, but that wouldn’t really apply to those meat ads about grasslands, because that’s genuinely a side effect of their trade. Banning most forms of paid advertising in general would also do it.
Y’all really don’t read the articles. The UN already has reports on greenwashing woth pretty solid definitions and recommendations. The report was linked in the article.
Excerpt from the linked UN report:
Our report also specifically addresses the core concerns raised by citizens, consumers, environmentalists and investors around the use of net zero pledges that make greenwashing possible. Our recommendations are clear that:
• Non‑state actors cannot claim to be net zero while continuing to build or invest in new fossil fuel supply. Coal, oil and gas account for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions. net zero is entirely incompatible with continued investment in fossil fuels. Similarly, deforestation and other environmentally destructive activities are disqualifying.
• Non-state actors cannot focus on reducing the intensity of their emissions rather than their absolute emissions or tackling only a part of their emissions rather than their full value chain (scopes 1, 2 and 3).
These recommendations explicitly cover the ad campaign discussed in OP’s article, as well as many other greenwashing ad campaigns.
I seriously doubt this campaign will have any impact other than reinforcing the views of people who already believe this nonsense.
Greenwashing should be illegal. Consumers trying to reduce their personal impact can have their decisions influenced by greenwashing propaganda and end up making misinformed decisions or not hold a company accountable for their true impacts.
“How is a natural gas leak bad? It’s back in nature where it came from!”
"Its an organic compound so its totally safe "
It’d be pretty hard to define it, though.
I guess you could require green advertising spending to be some fraction of spending on being green, but that wouldn’t really apply to those meat ads about grasslands, because that’s genuinely a side effect of their trade. Banning most forms of paid advertising in general would also do it.
Y’all really don’t read the articles. The UN already has reports on greenwashing woth pretty solid definitions and recommendations. The report was linked in the article.
Excerpt from the linked UN report:
These recommendations explicitly cover the ad campaign discussed in OP’s article, as well as many other greenwashing ad campaigns.
You’re right, I didn’t read this one. I’m surprised that was in there, my bad.
I’m glad and not surprised someone’s working on a definition.
Why do they limit that to non-state actors? Are they giving governments a free pass?