# The Netherlands Considers a Fossil Fuel Advertising Ban

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 14 Jul 2020, 20 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/4cbf025b-ace4-4c3b-8095-b3ec00f39619/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

An advocacy group in the Netherlands is calling for a ban on fossil fuel ads. Campaigner Femke Sleegers joins us to explain the roots of the campaign, its goal, and the initial response to it. Additional resources: Ban Fossil Fuel Advertising; a Dutch Citizens’ Initiative See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:10] Speaker 1: Hey, drilled listeners, we are talking today to FUMCUS leaguers.
[0:15] Speaker 1: She heads up a group in the Netherlands that's working
[0:18] Speaker 1: to ban fossil fuel ads, and I wanted to talk
[0:21] Speaker 1: to her because that is an idea that has been
[0:23] Speaker 1: floated here as well, and I was curious to hear
[0:28] Speaker 1: if she had the same sort of reception there as
[0:30] Speaker 1: people have gotten here, how the media is reacting to it,
[0:34] Speaker 1: all of those kinds of things. One of the really
[0:37] Speaker 1: interesting things that she mentioned was that in the Netherlands,
[0:41] Speaker 1: Shell sponsors a lot of educational and science and culture
[0:46] Speaker 1: events and that is one of the biggest ways that
[0:48] Speaker 1: they advertise, especially to young kids. So they are tackling
[0:53] Speaker 1: that part of advertising as well, so not just media ads,
[0:57] Speaker 1: but also event sponsorship, which would be a huge deal
[1:02] Speaker 1: if people in the US picked up because the oil
[1:05] Speaker 1: companies very much do the same thing here. If you
[1:08] Speaker 1: listened to our episode on Louisiana, you would have heard
[1:12] Speaker 1: about Shell sponsoring JazzFest there, and BP sponsoring all kinds
[1:18] Speaker 1: of museum exhibits, and Chevrons sponsoring various educational and arts groups.
[1:26] Speaker 1: Oil companies do that kind of thing to establish what
[1:29] Speaker 1: they call a social license to operate. This is an
[1:33] Speaker 1: idea that BP first formalized in a couple of papers
[1:37] Speaker 1: following the Deep Water Horizon spill. It's the notion that
[1:42] Speaker 1: the most important thing really to fossil fuel's ability to
[1:46] Speaker 1: stay alive and stay profitable is a social license. In
[1:51] Speaker 1: other words, a license from the public to continue doing
[1:56] Speaker 1: what they're doing, a sense that whatever damage they might
[1:59] Speaker 1: be doing is outweighed by the good that they do.
[2:03] Speaker 1: We're going to get into all of that and more
[2:05] Speaker 1: on today's episode coming up right after this message from
[2:09] Speaker 1: today's sponsor. I'm Ami Westervelt and this is Drilled.
[2:29] Speaker 2: I was wondering you could start with having you introduce
[2:33] Speaker 2: yourself and.
[2:33] Speaker 1: Talk a bit about this fossil fuel ads ban.
[2:38] Speaker 2: Campaign that you're working on, kind of how it came
[2:40] Speaker 2: about and what you guys are trying to do.
[2:43] Speaker 3: All right, I'm Famcus Snakers. I'm with the Dutch brand
[2:47] Speaker 3: of the Worldwide Fosil Free Movement, and we want to
[2:50] Speaker 3: put an end to the misleading of the public and
[2:53] Speaker 3: the politicians by banning advertisements and marketing by the fossil
[2:57] Speaker 3: fuel industry. And yeah, we can paign for a tobacco
[3:04] Speaker 3: style ban of fossil fuel advertisements, and this band would
[3:06] Speaker 3: prevent greenwashing, branding, sponsoring, and it basically forbids fossil fuel
[3:11] Speaker 3: companies to use their logos on any other place than
[3:14] Speaker 3: they're direct selling points, so at the gas stations and
[3:19] Speaker 3: at these gas stations, we want a warning, just like
[3:21] Speaker 3: on a pack of cigarettes, so people can make an
[3:24] Speaker 3: informed choice. And we arrived at this campaign because we
[3:28] Speaker 3: were campaigning at child marketing and the influence of companies
[3:35] Speaker 3: like Shell in education.
[3:39] Speaker 1: That's interesting, that's really interesting. We're working on a series.
[3:42] Speaker 4: About Oh great, because it's so pervasive.
[3:47] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's really Yeah, it's really struck. Yeah, it's
[3:51] Speaker 3: really systematic. And it started out when there was a
[3:55] Speaker 3: child marketing festival in the Hague, the city where I
[3:58] Speaker 3: live and where also headquarters of Shell is and this
[4:03] Speaker 3: festival it's called Generation Discover, nice name, of course, and
[4:07] Speaker 3: it's part of the world wide Make the Future campaign
[4:10] Speaker 3: by Shell. But this campaign was aimed at kids from
[4:15] Speaker 3: six years old till thirteen year old, and of course
[4:19] Speaker 3: it's all about windmills and clean energy and our local
[4:24] Speaker 3: city council was subsidizing it from the yeah, the difucation
[4:31] Speaker 3: budget and yeah, so we were campaigning against that. And yeah,
[4:36] Speaker 3: we dove into the message of Shell. What is Shell
[4:41] Speaker 3: really telling us at this festival? And yeah, we discovered
[4:46] Speaker 3: that between all the green and shiny technolological innovation kind
[4:52] Speaker 3: of messages and of course they were fully aligned with
[4:57] Speaker 3: sustainable development goals, and we covered that they also had
[5:02] Speaker 3: some climate lies. And so they made a children lay
[5:07] Speaker 3: a puzzle about the energy mix in twenty seventeen, and
[5:12] Speaker 3: of course the puzzle has fixed pieces, so there was
[5:15] Speaker 3: no Yeah, they didn't ask kids, how do you think
[5:19] Speaker 3: the energy mix will look like in twenty fifty? And
[5:23] Speaker 3: of course twenty fifty is the year when we should
[5:26] Speaker 3: all be at zero emissions according to the PIRS agreement.
[5:30] Speaker 3: And in the puzzle that Shell made can relate it said,
[5:34] Speaker 3: in twenty fifty there will still be seventy percent cool
[5:38] Speaker 3: oil and gas in the energy mix.
[5:40] Speaker 2: Wow.
[5:41] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And I asked an employee at festival, from
[5:47] Speaker 3: why are you telling these two children? You say, Shell
[5:51] Speaker 3: says it's aligned to Paris, and you say, at the festival,
[5:54] Speaker 3: you teach kids that in twenty fifty there's still seventy
[5:57] Speaker 3: percent cool oil and gas in the energy mix. And
[6:00] Speaker 3: then he said well, we have to be realistic and
[6:04] Speaker 3: we want to we don't want to lie to children
[6:07] Speaker 3: and yeah, so yeah, and and let's you see that. Yeah,
[6:13] Speaker 3: Shell wants kids too. It's really proper Conna. They are
[6:17] Speaker 3: really influencing kids to think in us in a way
[6:22] Speaker 3: and to keep yeah, oil and gas normal for for
[6:26] Speaker 3: decades to come. Yeah. Shell has is of course very
[6:30] Speaker 3: big on gas. And they had this this fuel Guests
[6:34] Speaker 3: to Liquid and they were advertising at it with the
[6:37] Speaker 3: festival and they said it's Guests to Liquid aligned to
[6:41] Speaker 3: the Sustainable Development Goal number seven for clean energy and
[6:45] Speaker 3: and of course it was also again a big lie,
[6:50] Speaker 3: and we thought we were fighting this lie at the
[6:54] Speaker 3: Ethical Board for for advertisements and we won so so
[6:58] Speaker 3: Shell had to to say it was sorry. But then
[7:01] Speaker 3: we thought, well, we are chasing each advertisement by Shell,
[7:06] Speaker 3: but this is really systematic and we can't. We don't
[7:10] Speaker 3: have the money to run after every lie that they tell.
[7:15] Speaker 3: And then we thought, well, how how did they do
[7:18] Speaker 3: it at a tobacco industry because they also went to
[7:22] Speaker 3: schools and told lives to kids and like Shell does
[7:26] Speaker 3: and Axon and all the others. And then we thought, well,
[7:30] Speaker 3: we need a tobacco law for the fossil fuel industry.
[7:35] Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, the tobacco industry can't use their logo
[7:38] Speaker 3: anymore and h and the same should be for the
[7:42] Speaker 3: for the fossil fuel industry.
[7:45] Speaker 4: It's interesting that you extended to, you know, sponsoring these
[7:50] Speaker 4: types of events too.
[7:51] Speaker 2: If we did an episode.
[7:53] Speaker 4: With some folks in Louisiana recently and.
[7:56] Speaker 1: They were talking about how much the oil companies sort
[8:00] Speaker 1: of embedded.
[8:01] Speaker 4: Themselves in the local institutions there, you know, and so
[8:06] Speaker 4: that a lot of the educational organizations and art museums
[8:12] Speaker 4: and community groups and whatever are sort of dependent on funding.
[8:16] Speaker 3: And it's probably the first thing they hear they learn
[8:22] Speaker 3: about climate change, and it's it's coming from philosophiel industry
[8:26] Speaker 3: exactly the way they think.
[8:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so what like, what when did you start
[8:35] Speaker 1: and what has the response been so far from either
[8:39] Speaker 1: the oil companies or politicians or you know, what's you know,
[8:42] Speaker 1: how's it going so far?
[8:45] Speaker 3: Yeah, we started out with a citizens initiative and for
[8:50] Speaker 3: that we need four few thousand signatures and then we
[8:52] Speaker 3: can really address it at at our national government. And
[8:57] Speaker 3: yeah that we because of Corona, our campaign a little
[9:00] Speaker 3: bit changed. So so we have about five thousand signatures
[9:05] Speaker 3: at the moment that could be far more. And the
[9:11] Speaker 3: politicians it's really yeah, yeah, it's it's it's not Yeah,
[9:20] Speaker 3: it's really a logical thing if you ask politicians. But
[9:25] Speaker 3: why what's a good reason to not introduce a band
[9:29] Speaker 3: for fossiphal advertisements? I think they can answer it because
[9:33] Speaker 3: really dangerous and there yeah, there's no way to defend this.
[9:39] Speaker 3: But of course they are all conservative and and of
[9:43] Speaker 3: course there are also next year are the elections and uh,
[9:48] Speaker 3: and maybe the Green Party wants to join the liberals
[9:53] Speaker 3: and so they're a little bit hesitant to speak out.
[9:58] Speaker 4: Yeah, that's interesting.
[10:01] Speaker 1: What about have you heard anything from media outlets like
[10:06] Speaker 1: either TV, radio or magazine newspaper that that might have
[10:11] Speaker 1: some amount of their revenue attached to these ads.
[10:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a very interesting one because we we we've
[10:17] Speaker 3: red campaigning for the city of Amsterdam to ban all
[10:20] Speaker 3: fossil fiel ads in the city, in the capitol and
[10:25] Speaker 3: and it's really hard to make a connection to the media.
[10:28] Speaker 3: And I think that's partly because they are funded by
[10:32] Speaker 3: flossi few ads and there's the the main they're the
[10:39] Speaker 3: most elite newspaper in the Holland like the New York Times,
[10:43] Speaker 3: it's it's it's running branded content for for shell a
[10:49] Speaker 3: lot and and yeah, and and that's really something we're
[10:53] Speaker 3: going to address that within the editorial board. There is
[10:57] Speaker 3: already they are not and seface. So there was an
[11:01] Speaker 3: opposition with in the in the paper that's interesting.
[11:05] Speaker 1: So have you looked at I know, there's the one
[11:08] Speaker 1: newspaper in Sweden and then the Guardian.
[11:10] Speaker 4: I think they're the only too so far that I
[11:12] Speaker 4: have done this right.
[11:13] Speaker 2: And they've they've I mean they've they.
[11:14] Speaker 1: Have really good answers for all of this stuff. The
[11:18] Speaker 1: thing that the Guardian woman said to us that I
[11:23] Speaker 1: thought was so interesting was and like makes it so easy,
[11:27] Speaker 1: because a lot of people have been kind of like, well,
[11:30] Speaker 1: you know, where does it end?
[11:31] Speaker 5: Do you ban car ads and you know travel ads
[11:36] Speaker 5: and you know, any kind of ad could have a
[11:38] Speaker 5: carbon footprint associated with their right, So her response was that,
[11:45] Speaker 5: you know, fossil fuel.
[11:46] Speaker 1: Companies are never advertising a product. They're always just advertising
[11:51] Speaker 1: sort of a policy position or trying to make people
[11:56] Speaker 1: think a certain way about their brands. And so it's
[11:59] Speaker 1: very it's very.
[12:01] Speaker 4: Easily distinguished from other types of advertising because they're not
[12:04] Speaker 4: selling anything, so anyway, Yeah, I mean, I guess, is
[12:13] Speaker 4: there a sense do you have any any sense at
[12:16] Speaker 4: all of sort of how much revenue these folks might
[12:21] Speaker 4: be getting from fossil fiel companies, because that was one
[12:23] Speaker 4: thing that when we were talking to the Guardian, folks like,
[12:26] Speaker 4: I don't think a lot of oil and gas companies
[12:29] Speaker 4: were advertising in the Guardian anyway.
[12:33] Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent, was though, Yeah that's true. Yeah, but they
[12:38] Speaker 1: but they did, they said they it represented I think
[12:41] Speaker 1: like one percent of their of their ad revenue, which
[12:44] Speaker 1: you know, especially right now, is a lot. So anyway,
[12:47] Speaker 1: but I'm curious if like you have any sense of
[12:50] Speaker 1: of how much they might be spending on particularly.
[12:54] Speaker 3: Media bias not yet, not yet, do you.
[12:59] Speaker 4: Think it might be impacting how the media is even
[13:03] Speaker 4: covering your campaign?
[13:07] Speaker 3: Yeah, we can't say that for sure, but yeah, and
[13:10] Speaker 3: because yeah, we went live during Corona Sol, so it's.
[13:17] Speaker 1: It's hard to tell. Yeah, Okay, And then I know
[13:20] Speaker 1: you emailed me initially because you had noticed shortly after
[13:26] Speaker 1: you launched that a shadowy figure was visiting your website.
[13:31] Speaker 2: Can you say a little bit about that, Yeah, yeah.
[13:34] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we just launched our websites like two weeks
[13:37] Speaker 3: and I was checking if if if there was already
[13:39] Speaker 3: incoming traffic and and I saw, Yeah, amongst the familiar names,
[13:44] Speaker 3: I saw a name I didn't know, and it was
[13:46] Speaker 3: sick Watch, And I ran a quick Google search and
[13:51] Speaker 3: found that this company monitors and gos and grassroots activism
[13:56] Speaker 3: against multinationals. And then it's like big agro bit, big food,
[14:00] Speaker 3: big oil, and big tobacco, and they also teach multinationals
[14:05] Speaker 3: how to mute activism. So I dove somewhat deeper and
[14:09] Speaker 3: I discovered sick, which was founded in the nineties. And
[14:13] Speaker 3: for me, yeah, that was reason for mald suspicion, as
[14:16] Speaker 3: in the nineties all kind of denihilism sprang and was flourishing. Yeah,
[14:24] Speaker 3: I found that the founder of sick which was Road Blood,
[14:27] Speaker 3: and then I ran a search on Robert Blood and
[14:30] Speaker 3: I discovered this a guy named Robert Blood helped casting
[14:35] Speaker 3: doubt about the health hazards of smoking for British America tobacco,
[14:40] Speaker 3: and he even linked opposition to tobacco regulation to opposition
[14:44] Speaker 3: on environmental issues. And it was suggesting that the best
[14:47] Speaker 3: way to counteractivism is showing understanding and using fair words
[14:53] Speaker 3: and taking very small actions refer to that.
[14:59] Speaker 1: I get a that they are The fossil fuel industry
[15:03] Speaker 1: in general is getting quite worried about its social license
[15:07] Speaker 1: being eroded.
[15:08] Speaker 2: Have you guys connected with groups elsewhere in the world
[15:11] Speaker 2: that are looking at a similar kind of approach.
[15:16] Speaker 3: No, we know that that in the UK there's a
[15:21] Speaker 3: group and and they're trying. Yeah, they have a different approach.
[15:27] Speaker 3: They say, well, all all greenwashing should have a warning
[15:30] Speaker 3: on it, and if they don't, then well we need
[15:33] Speaker 3: a ban. You think a warning of also feel ads
[15:37] Speaker 3: is not enough because the misleading can still go on.
[15:42] Speaker 1: Yea.
[15:44] Speaker 3: And in Norway there was an editorial letter from the
[15:50] Speaker 3: Climate Youth and they also were pleading for a band.
[15:54] Speaker 3: But I don't know if if a campaign is attached
[15:57] Speaker 3: to it, if if if there are any other initiatives,
[16:00] Speaker 3: because I think the timing is just right, And yeah,
[16:04] Speaker 3: we really must step up, and yeah, we don't have
[16:07] Speaker 3: time for nudging every consumer to make the right choice.
[16:10] Speaker 3: And we can't expect children and adults to be aware
[16:14] Speaker 3: of misleading ads all the time, and we don't have
[16:16] Speaker 3: to chase every ad, so so yeah, we must be open.
[16:20] Speaker 3: We must open the conversation to strict legal regulation. Yeah,
[16:25] Speaker 3: but I think it's still a taboo because we always
[16:29] Speaker 3: solve things with nudging and with self regulation. But it's
[16:34] Speaker 3: not enough in the right of climate change.
[16:37] Speaker 2: Are you making any kind.
[16:38] Speaker 1: Of inroads with politicians that might take this up or
[16:43] Speaker 1: or even like sort of you know, legal organizations or
[16:46] Speaker 1: civil society groups or anything like that that might you know,
[16:49] Speaker 1: take this up and turn it into legislation.
[16:53] Speaker 3: Yes, we are.
[16:54] Speaker 2: We are.
[16:56] Speaker 3: Planning to make our own tobacco style law. So so
[17:01] Speaker 3: we will make a proposal. We are already talking with
[17:04] Speaker 3: lawyers about it, and we will present this this uh yeah,
[17:08] Speaker 3: this law to the politicians and perhaps some who favored this,
[17:14] Speaker 3: so they will propose it in parliament. And we already
[17:18] Speaker 3: ran a test with the tobacco law and it's just yeah,
[17:22] Speaker 3: the tobacco law that advanced uh tobacco advertisement. And it's
[17:26] Speaker 3: it's really easy to convert it to the fossil fuel industry.
[17:30] Speaker 3: So so it's like one of one. So it's also
[17:34] Speaker 3: a concept that many countries can uh can do. Yeah,
[17:40] Speaker 3: many countries will plead for it for such a law.
[17:46] Speaker 2: H h.
[17:50] Speaker 3: H h h m.
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