Dutch City The Hague Is World’s First Banning Oil and Air Travel Ads

 The Hague has just become the first city in the world to ban oil ads and ads for large energy-consuming industries including air travel and cruise ships. 

The Hague, whose city council on Friday adopted the proposal to ban these ads from January 1, 2025, is the Netherlands’ administrative center, where the Parliament, the Supreme Court, and several major international courts are based.   

The city is the world’s first to adopt such a ban, after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier this year called on governments to ban these ads.

“Many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action – with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns,” Guterres said in June, when he called out oil companies for profiteering off the climate crisis.        

“Climate change is the mother of all stealth taxes paid by everyday people and vulnerable countries and communities,” Guterres said, adding that “Meanwhile, the Godfathers of climate chaos – the fossil fuel industry – rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies.”  

The companies “have been aided and abetted by advertising and PR companies – Mad Men – remember the TV series - fuelling the madness,” the UN secretary general said.

“I call on these companies to stop acting as enablers to planetary destruction.”

In recent years, Guterres has used nearly every one of his speeches to call out fossil fuels and the companies operating in the industry.

Just last month, called on world leaders to phase out oil and gas from their economies and stop new exploration in hydrocarbons.

Speaking in Tonga, during a meeting of Pacific Island leaders, Guterres said “This is a crazy situation: rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety.”  

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com

• Exxon, Shell Refineries Resume Gulf Coast Operation
• EU's Increased Electricity Exports to Ukraine Disrupt Regional Market
• U.S. Gasoline Prices Set to Drop Below $3 Before Election Day