Fossil Fuel Advertising Gets Its Tobacco Moment

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Fossil Fuel Advertising Gets Its Tobacco Moment

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It was a grievous assault on tobacco-makers—until it wasn’t—when they were banned from pitching products that kill people when used as directed. In the end, the culture changed. Now it's oil's turn.

MITCHELL BEER FEBRUARY 11, 2024

Canadian doctors seem to have touched a raw nerve this week with their support for a private member’s bill calling for a ban on fossil fuel advertising.

We should all be lining up to thank MP Charlie Angus (NDP, Timmins-James Bay) and the small but mighty Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) for what will likely be the most important public health intervention many of us will receive this year.

The news was not well received by the fossil fuel lobby, or the network of alt-right publications that reliably carry its message. You can expect that reaction to amp up in the weeks ahead.

But, really—if they’re all as grievously offended as they claim to be, that’s just one measure that Angus is onto something good with Bill C-372, the Fossil Fuel Advertising Act. [ https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/4 ... st-reading ] And that CAPE is doing the right thing by supporting the bill.

Truth In Advertising

At its most basic, Bill C-372 is about truth in advertising.

After seeing the fossil lobby in general, the Pathways Alliance in particular, [ https://www.theenergymix.com/suncor-bos ... liability/ ] shamelessly and erroneously promote expanded fossil fuel extraction as a path to bringing Canada’s climate pollution to net-zero, the bill sets out to enforce some principles that most of us should have learned in kindergarten.

That we’re supposed to tell the truth.

That we aren’t supposed to hurt other people.

That we’re allowed to make mistakes, but when we do we own up, make it right, learn from the experience, and do better next time.

None of this is rocket science. So it’s a bit astonishing, and on one level astonishingly sad, that it took an opposition MP stepping in to try and armtwist an industry that is so smart technologically to understand something so basic about how people get along with each other.

(Oh, wait…unless maybe they do understand and don’t want us all getting along? Discuss—the comment box is open.)

At a news conference last week, Angus connected the dots from Bill C-372 to the tobacco advertising bans of the 1990s, arguing that today’s fossil industry has shifted its “propaganda” by claiming its products are clean and part of the solution to climate change. "That's like Benson and Hedges telling you they can help end lung cancer," he said. "This is because Big Oil has always relied on the Big Tobacco playbook of delay and disinformation." [ https://www.theenergymix.com/u-s-gas-in ... itics-say/ ]

CAPE’s director of health and economic policy, Leah Temper, took aim at advertising claims by the Pathways Alliance, speaking for the country’s six biggest oil sands producers, that its members are on track to achieving net-zero emissions. "This is false,” she said. “Oil can never be net-zero because 80% of the life cycle emissions are released when oil is burned.” [ https://www.theenergymix.com/canada-fal ... emissions/ ]

CAPE has been running its own ad campaign on the health impacts of oil and gas, [ https://www.theenergymix.com/doctors-bi ... emergency/
] and earlier lodged a deceptive advertising complaint against the gas industry with the federal Competition Bureau. Now, the doctors are backing a private member’s bill that would have real teeth if it got through the Parliamentary process. . . . "

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