Research indicates that additional flights carried out due to their promotion by advertising could result in up to 34 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
Asked
CCCs new, official, evaluation of the UK’s climate action progress report is cruel reading for the UK government.
It finds that: its current Jet Zero strategy to meet climate targets carries “considerable delivery risks”; will lead to 70 percent increase in demand by 2070; there should be “no net expansion of airports across the UK”.
It also argues that “a cohesive strategy for public engagement on climate action is long overdue” and that this is essential to “empower and inform households and communities to make low-carbon choices” and reduce air and car travel.
In the absence of such a public engagement strategy, the unofficial climate emergency ministry is stepping in with a public health and climate campaign called “Planes on the brain.”
The main recommendation of the CCC regarding aviation is the need for a strategic framework to reduce the demand for flights.
Stop
The Airplanes on the Brain public information campaign responds to this call by raising awareness of the dangers of exposure to aviation advertising which seeks to do the opposite, increasing demand for flights, and makes proposals to end actively promoting the flight with a tobacco-style ending to airline advertisements.
According to the same recent CCC report: “Demand side management is an effective way to reduce aviation CO2 and without CO2 « »
By far the easiest and most painless way to start managing the demand for aviation is to stop promoting it with ubiquitous airline advertisements.
Ministry Highlights Airplanes on the brain campaign include a animation voiced by Dr. Chris Van Tullekenspecialist in commercial diseases – health problems resulting from the lucrative promotion of products with known harmful effects.
The film is about the dangerous new condition dubbed ‘planes on the brain’, caused by exposure to aviation advertising, and a unique travel brochure showing the reality of the impact of flying behind it the usual glossy advertisements.
A virtual poster campaign completes the picture.
Better travel
It is proving a disaster for the climate that, just as people had found less polluting ways to enjoy holidays – using other forms of transport and vacationing in less remote places – frequent flights have receded after been strongly encouraged by the airline industry.
Yet the scientific advice to reduce flight demand is now as clear as blue skies without the contrails.
Ending airline ads to stop the active promotion of pollution will save lives and help slow and reverse global warming, just as we reduced smoking deaths by ending tobacco advertising.
People will still be able to fly, but this will remove the additional thefts that occur due to the millions spent promoting frequent flights.
Insidious
Planes on the Brain shows the insidious effects of high-carbon advertising and how it works to undermine the best climate advice, locking down rich-world behaviors and lifestyles that drive environmental collapse.
“We had to do this campaign because the government is ignoring its own advisers. It’s time we stopped actively promoting our own self-destruction,” says my colleague, Leo Murray, director of innovation at climate action charity, Possible, and co-creator of the campaign.
The Planes on the Brain campaign aims to implement the advice of the UK House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee report behavior change end of 2022 which concluded: “The government should introduce measures to regulate the advertising of high-carbon and environmentally harmful products.”
This author
Andrew Simms is co-director of New meteorological instituteco-founder of the badvertising campaigncoordinator of the Rapid Transition Alliance, author on the new and green economy, and co-author of the first Green New Deal. Follow: t. @AndrewSimms_uk Mr. @andrewsimms@indieweb.social.
Learn more about the Ministry of Climate Emergency here.
