Let’s Ban Fossil Fuel Ads  – TO save our health, our economy, our planet and future.

Because the world has changed! Between 2010 and 2020, the world went through an incredible transition that most people still do not understand, as renewable energy technology like wind and solar went from the being most expensive energy to being the least expensive. Not only is it cheaper, but it can be installed far more quickly, pollutes less, costs far less to run, is easy to roll out in even remote locations, and does not force dependence on corrupt elites and totalitarian petro-states.

In the short term, the campaign aims to raise public awareness about the damage being caused by the the fossil fuel industry, the deceptive advertising tactics it uses, and how citizens can challenge its social licence.

Our long-term goal is to force fossil fuel companies to transform themselves for social benefift, or go out of business, while for now we render their marketing and advertising efforts less convincing.

We want to end the profound threat that the fossil fuel industry has come to pose to South Africans and humanity at large. It’s now technically completely possible for us to transition to a world without fossil fuels – and it will be a better world in every way, with a more stable climate, less sea-level rise and air pollution, fewer droughts and wildfires, more secure marine biodiversity, less corruption and inequality. We can’t change the whole world, but we can change our part of it, and hopefully that change will help create similar change elsewhere.

We’re still busy researching the legalities of a fossil ad ban, but we hope to start with a local ban on advertising on sites and properties controlled by one SA town or city, such as Cape Town, and extend that as far as possible to eliminate all forms of advertising and branding by the industry across the country.

Fossil fuels are coal, crude oil, gas and coal. The fossil fuel industry is the companies involved in exploration for, extraction, distribution and sales of fossil fuels, and the companies that invest in and provide services to these companies. 

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Fossil fuels always have real but hidden social and environment costs that now far outweigh their benefits. Using fossil fuels delivers growth that is “uneconomic”. Using fossil fuels for our 21st century energy needs is now like trying to run the internet over a landline. It’s also wildly inefficient – for example, an electric car uses most of the energy it gets from charging, but internal combustion engines can only turn 25% of the fuel you put in your tank into  mechanical energy – the rest is just wasted as unused heat.

Humanity has expanded its use of fossil fuels so much that we have exceeded the  biosphere’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide, and this excess carbon dioxide is destabilising our climate and acidifying our oceans.

South Africa would in fact be far less vulnerable to loadshedding if it had implemented renewable energy technology faster; and the roll-out of wind and solar energy is already helping reduce loadshedding.

Sticking with fossil fuels means sticking with antiquated, polluting, climate-breaking and expensive technologies that foster dependence on volatile commodity prices and nasty regimes, and risk expensive penalties being levied on carbon-intensive exports, while the rich countries expand their already formidable advantages and leapfrog even further ahead with low-cost, low-externality technology. Our development is already being slowed by excessive fossil fuel dependence, and the longer we stick with fossil fuels, the longer we will remain in a development morass.

You can read more about this in an article we recently had published by News24: ”Two things South Africans need to know about the fossil fuel industry”.

Nation states are acting too slowly to stop climate change, but cities and regions often create and lead the change that is needed at a national level, and show what is possible. 

A fossil fuel ad ban will not end the power of the fossil fuel industry by itself, but is one of many parallel strategies that can help restrict its influence.

Fossil fuel companies particularly love to sponsor good things because it makes them look good. We love our sports teams, and they want some of that love. But sports teams should not be accepting sponsorship from human rights abusers. The problem is that it’s not yet widely enough understood that the fossil fuel industry is as morally compromised as the arms industry or industries that rely on human trafficking – and no-one would support sports teams with those kinds of sponsors. We don’t want to see sports teams struggling to keep going – but we really encourage them to seek out more ethical sponsors. 

We’re still dependent on fossil fuels because the fossil fuel industry has “rigged the game” in their own favour, undermining the extent of the climate threat to slow down public support for climate change, lobbying for massive government subsidies that should be going to clean alternatives and to citizens, corrupting politicians who should be regulating down fossil fuel use faster.