Speaker 1: Hey, drilled listeners, we are talking today to FUMCUS leaguers.
Speaker 1: She heads up a group in the Netherlands that's working
Speaker 1: to ban fossil fuel ads, and I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to her because that is an idea that has been
Speaker 1: floated here as well, and I was curious to hear
Speaker 1: if she had the same sort of reception there as
Speaker 1: people have gotten here, how the media is reacting to it,
Speaker 1: all of those kinds of things. One of the really
Speaker 1: interesting things that she mentioned was that in the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: Shell sponsors a lot of educational and science and culture
Speaker 1: events and that is one of the biggest ways that
Speaker 1: they advertise, especially to young kids. So they are tackling
Speaker 1: that part of advertising as well, so not just media ads,
Speaker 1: but also event sponsorship, which would be a huge deal
Speaker 1: if people in the US picked up because the oil
Speaker 1: companies very much do the same thing here. If you
Speaker 1: listened to our episode on Louisiana, you would have heard
Speaker 1: about Shell sponsoring JazzFest there, and BP sponsoring all kinds
Speaker 1: of museum exhibits, and Chevrons sponsoring various educational and arts groups.
Speaker 1: Oil companies do that kind of thing to establish what
Speaker 1: they call a social license to operate. This is an
Speaker 1: idea that BP first formalized in a couple of papers
Speaker 1: following the Deep Water Horizon spill. It's the notion that
Speaker 1: the most important thing really to fossil fuel's ability to
Speaker 1: stay alive and stay profitable is a social license. In
Speaker 1: other words, a license from the public to continue doing
Speaker 1: what they're doing, a sense that whatever damage they might
Speaker 1: be doing is outweighed by the good that they do.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into all of that and more
Speaker 1: on today's episode coming up right after this message from
Speaker 1: today's sponsor. I'm Ami Westervelt and this is Drilled.
Speaker 2: I was wondering you could start with having you introduce
Speaker 2: yourself and.
Speaker 1: Talk a bit about this fossil fuel ads ban.
Speaker 2: Campaign that you're working on, kind of how it came
Speaker 2: about and what you guys are trying to do.
Speaker 3: All right, I'm Famcus Snakers. I'm with the Dutch brand
Speaker 3: of the Worldwide Fosil Free Movement, and we want to
Speaker 3: put an end to the misleading of the public and
Speaker 3: the politicians by banning advertisements and marketing by the fossil
Speaker 3: fuel industry. And yeah, we can paign for a tobacco
Speaker 3: style ban of fossil fuel advertisements, and this band would
Speaker 3: prevent greenwashing, branding, sponsoring, and it basically forbids fossil fuel
Speaker 3: companies to use their logos on any other place than
Speaker 3: they're direct selling points, so at the gas stations and
Speaker 3: at these gas stations, we want a warning, just like
Speaker 3: on a pack of cigarettes, so people can make an
Speaker 3: informed choice. And we arrived at this campaign because we
Speaker 3: were campaigning at child marketing and the influence of companies
Speaker 3: like Shell in education.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, that's really interesting. We're working on a series.
Speaker 4: About Oh great, because it's so pervasive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's really Yeah, it's really struck. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: really systematic. And it started out when there was a
Speaker 3: child marketing festival in the Hague, the city where I
Speaker 3: live and where also headquarters of Shell is and this
Speaker 3: festival it's called Generation Discover, nice name, of course, and
Speaker 3: it's part of the world wide Make the Future campaign
Speaker 3: by Shell. But this campaign was aimed at kids from
Speaker 3: six years old till thirteen year old, and of course
Speaker 3: it's all about windmills and clean energy and our local
Speaker 3: city council was subsidizing it from the yeah, the difucation
Speaker 3: budget and yeah, so we were campaigning against that. And yeah,
Speaker 3: we dove into the message of Shell. What is Shell
Speaker 3: really telling us at this festival? And yeah, we discovered
Speaker 3: that between all the green and shiny technolological innovation kind
Speaker 3: of messages and of course they were fully aligned with
Speaker 3: sustainable development goals, and we covered that they also had
Speaker 3: some climate lies. And so they made a children lay
Speaker 3: a puzzle about the energy mix in twenty seventeen, and
Speaker 3: of course the puzzle has fixed pieces, so there was
Speaker 3: no Yeah, they didn't ask kids, how do you think
Speaker 3: the energy mix will look like in twenty fifty? And
Speaker 3: of course twenty fifty is the year when we should
Speaker 3: all be at zero emissions according to the PIRS agreement.
Speaker 3: And in the puzzle that Shell made can relate it said,
Speaker 3: in twenty fifty there will still be seventy percent cool
Speaker 3: oil and gas in the energy mix.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And I asked an employee at festival, from
Speaker 3: why are you telling these two children? You say, Shell
Speaker 3: says it's aligned to Paris, and you say, at the festival,
Speaker 3: you teach kids that in twenty fifty there's still seventy
Speaker 3: percent cool oil and gas in the energy mix. And
Speaker 3: then he said well, we have to be realistic and
Speaker 3: we want to we don't want to lie to children
Speaker 3: and yeah, so yeah, and and let's you see that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Shell wants kids too. It's really proper Conna. They are
Speaker 3: really influencing kids to think in us in a way
Speaker 3: and to keep yeah, oil and gas normal for for
Speaker 3: decades to come. Yeah. Shell has is of course very
Speaker 3: big on gas. And they had this this fuel Guests
Speaker 3: to Liquid and they were advertising at it with the
Speaker 3: festival and they said it's Guests to Liquid aligned to
Speaker 3: the Sustainable Development Goal number seven for clean energy and
Speaker 3: and of course it was also again a big lie,
Speaker 3: and we thought we were fighting this lie at the
Speaker 3: Ethical Board for for advertisements and we won so so
Speaker 3: Shell had to to say it was sorry. But then
Speaker 3: we thought, well, we are chasing each advertisement by Shell,
Speaker 3: but this is really systematic and we can't. We don't
Speaker 3: have the money to run after every lie that they tell.
Speaker 3: And then we thought, well, how how did they do
Speaker 3: it at a tobacco industry because they also went to
Speaker 3: schools and told lives to kids and like Shell does
Speaker 3: and Axon and all the others. And then we thought, well,
Speaker 3: we need a tobacco law for the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, the tobacco industry can't use their logo
Speaker 3: anymore and h and the same should be for the
Speaker 3: for the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 4: It's interesting that you extended to, you know, sponsoring these
Speaker 4: types of events too.
Speaker 2: If we did an episode.
Speaker 4: With some folks in Louisiana recently and.
Speaker 1: They were talking about how much the oil companies sort
Speaker 1: of embedded.
Speaker 4: Themselves in the local institutions there, you know, and so
Speaker 4: that a lot of the educational organizations and art museums
Speaker 4: and community groups and whatever are sort of dependent on funding.
Speaker 3: And it's probably the first thing they hear they learn
Speaker 3: about climate change, and it's it's coming from philosophiel industry
Speaker 3: exactly the way they think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so what like, what when did you start
Speaker 1: and what has the response been so far from either
Speaker 1: the oil companies or politicians or you know, what's you know,
Speaker 1: how's it going so far?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we started out with a citizens initiative and for
Speaker 3: that we need four few thousand signatures and then we
Speaker 3: can really address it at at our national government. And
Speaker 3: yeah that we because of Corona, our campaign a little
Speaker 3: bit changed. So so we have about five thousand signatures
Speaker 3: at the moment that could be far more. And the
Speaker 3: politicians it's really yeah, yeah, it's it's it's not Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's really a logical thing if you ask politicians. But
Speaker 3: why what's a good reason to not introduce a band
Speaker 3: for fossiphal advertisements? I think they can answer it because
Speaker 3: really dangerous and there yeah, there's no way to defend this.
Speaker 3: But of course they are all conservative and and of
Speaker 3: course there are also next year are the elections and uh,
Speaker 3: and maybe the Green Party wants to join the liberals
Speaker 3: and so they're a little bit hesitant to speak out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: What about have you heard anything from media outlets like
Speaker 1: either TV, radio or magazine newspaper that that might have
Speaker 1: some amount of their revenue attached to these ads.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a very interesting one because we we we've
Speaker 3: red campaigning for the city of Amsterdam to ban all
Speaker 3: fossil fiel ads in the city, in the capitol and
Speaker 3: and it's really hard to make a connection to the media.
Speaker 3: And I think that's partly because they are funded by
Speaker 3: flossi few ads and there's the the main they're the
Speaker 3: most elite newspaper in the Holland like the New York Times,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's running branded content for for shell a
Speaker 3: lot and and yeah, and and that's really something we're
Speaker 3: going to address that within the editorial board. There is
Speaker 3: already they are not and seface. So there was an
Speaker 3: opposition with in the in the paper that's interesting.
Speaker 1: So have you looked at I know, there's the one
Speaker 1: newspaper in Sweden and then the Guardian.
Speaker 4: I think they're the only too so far that I
Speaker 4: have done this right.
Speaker 2: And they've they've I mean they've they.
Speaker 1: Have really good answers for all of this stuff. The
Speaker 1: thing that the Guardian woman said to us that I
Speaker 1: thought was so interesting was and like makes it so easy,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people have been kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, where does it end?
Speaker 5: Do you ban car ads and you know travel ads
Speaker 5: and you know, any kind of ad could have a
Speaker 5: carbon footprint associated with their right, So her response was that,
Speaker 5: you know, fossil fuel.
Speaker 1: Companies are never advertising a product. They're always just advertising
Speaker 1: sort of a policy position or trying to make people
Speaker 1: think a certain way about their brands. And so it's
Speaker 1: very it's very.
Speaker 4: Easily distinguished from other types of advertising because they're not
Speaker 4: selling anything, so anyway, Yeah, I mean, I guess, is
Speaker 4: there a sense do you have any any sense at
Speaker 4: all of sort of how much revenue these folks might
Speaker 4: be getting from fossil fiel companies, because that was one
Speaker 4: thing that when we were talking to the Guardian, folks like,
Speaker 4: I don't think a lot of oil and gas companies
Speaker 4: were advertising in the Guardian anyway.
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent, was though, Yeah that's true. Yeah, but they
Speaker 1: but they did, they said they it represented I think
Speaker 1: like one percent of their of their ad revenue, which
Speaker 1: you know, especially right now, is a lot. So anyway,
Speaker 1: but I'm curious if like you have any sense of
Speaker 1: of how much they might be spending on particularly.
Speaker 3: Media bias not yet, not yet, do you.
Speaker 4: Think it might be impacting how the media is even
Speaker 4: covering your campaign?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can't say that for sure, but yeah, and
Speaker 3: because yeah, we went live during Corona Sol, so it's.
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell. Yeah, Okay, And then I know
Speaker 1: you emailed me initially because you had noticed shortly after
Speaker 1: you launched that a shadowy figure was visiting your website.
Speaker 2: Can you say a little bit about that, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we just launched our websites like two weeks
Speaker 3: and I was checking if if if there was already
Speaker 3: incoming traffic and and I saw, Yeah, amongst the familiar names,
Speaker 3: I saw a name I didn't know, and it was
Speaker 3: sick Watch, And I ran a quick Google search and
Speaker 3: found that this company monitors and gos and grassroots activism
Speaker 3: against multinationals. And then it's like big agro bit, big food,
Speaker 3: big oil, and big tobacco, and they also teach multinationals
Speaker 3: how to mute activism. So I dove somewhat deeper and
Speaker 3: I discovered sick, which was founded in the nineties. And
Speaker 3: for me, yeah, that was reason for mald suspicion, as
Speaker 3: in the nineties all kind of denihilism sprang and was flourishing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I found that the founder of sick which was Road Blood,
Speaker 3: and then I ran a search on Robert Blood and
Speaker 3: I discovered this a guy named Robert Blood helped casting
Speaker 3: doubt about the health hazards of smoking for British America tobacco,
Speaker 3: and he even linked opposition to tobacco regulation to opposition
Speaker 3: on environmental issues. And it was suggesting that the best
Speaker 3: way to counteractivism is showing understanding and using fair words
Speaker 3: and taking very small actions refer to that.
Speaker 1: I get a that they are The fossil fuel industry
Speaker 1: in general is getting quite worried about its social license
Speaker 1: being eroded.
Speaker 2: Have you guys connected with groups elsewhere in the world
Speaker 2: that are looking at a similar kind of approach.
Speaker 3: No, we know that that in the UK there's a
Speaker 3: group and and they're trying. Yeah, they have a different approach.
Speaker 3: They say, well, all all greenwashing should have a warning
Speaker 3: on it, and if they don't, then well we need
Speaker 3: a ban. You think a warning of also feel ads
Speaker 3: is not enough because the misleading can still go on.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 3: And in Norway there was an editorial letter from the
Speaker 3: Climate Youth and they also were pleading for a band.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if if a campaign is attached
Speaker 3: to it, if if if there are any other initiatives,
Speaker 3: because I think the timing is just right, And yeah,
Speaker 3: we really must step up, and yeah, we don't have
Speaker 3: time for nudging every consumer to make the right choice.
Speaker 3: And we can't expect children and adults to be aware
Speaker 3: of misleading ads all the time, and we don't have
Speaker 3: to chase every ad, so so yeah, we must be open.
Speaker 3: We must open the conversation to strict legal regulation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I think it's still a taboo because we always
Speaker 3: solve things with nudging and with self regulation. But it's
Speaker 3: not enough in the right of climate change.
Speaker 2: Are you making any kind.
Speaker 1: Of inroads with politicians that might take this up or
Speaker 1: or even like sort of you know, legal organizations or
Speaker 1: civil society groups or anything like that that might you know,
Speaker 1: take this up and turn it into legislation.
Speaker 3: Yes, we are.
Speaker 2: We are.
Speaker 3: Planning to make our own tobacco style law. So so
Speaker 3: we will make a proposal. We are already talking with
Speaker 3: lawyers about it, and we will present this this uh yeah,
Speaker 3: this law to the politicians and perhaps some who favored this,
Speaker 3: so they will propose it in parliament. And we already
Speaker 3: ran a test with the tobacco law and it's just yeah,
Speaker 3: the tobacco law that advanced uh tobacco advertisement. And it's
Speaker 3: it's really easy to convert it to the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 3: So so it's like one of one. So it's also
Speaker 3: a concept that many countries can uh can do. Yeah,
Speaker 3: many countries will plead for it for such a law.
Speaker 2: H h.
Speaker 3: H h h m.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's it for this time. Thanks so much for
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