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