People in this Dutch city will never see a fossil fuel billboard again. Here’s why

Next year, if you walk down the street in The Hague, you’ll no longer see billboards advertising new cars—unless the car is electric. You also won’t see ads for flights, cruises, or anything else that runs on fossil fuels. The Dutch city is the first in the world to pass a ban on street ads for fossil fuels and the products that use them. The ban will go into effect in January. “Fossil ads raise emissions at a time when we should be cutting back emissions,” says Femke Sleegers, coordinator of Fossil Free Advertising, a Dutch climate action group that pushed for the ban. The law grew out of another campaign that targeted Shell, the Netherlands-based oil giant. “In The Hague, there was a big festival aimed at children, and it was all about sustainability and the sustainable development goals—and it was organized by Shell,” says Sleegers. The city subsidized the event. Over three years, starting in 2016, Sleegers and other activists pressured the city to stop supporting the greenwashing, and the festival eventually ended. It was a victory, but the activists realized it wasn’t enough. “We thought, Shell is such a rich company, and there’s also Exxon and BP, and they all can start a similar marketing campaign tomorrow,” she says. “As climate activists, we don’t have the people and the means to compete with that. Then we thought of the tobacco law and how the tobacco law banned advertising like this. We thought we needed a tobacco-style ban for the fossil fuel industry.” Tobacco ad bans started in the 1960s, when the health effects of smoking were too obvious to ignore, beginning with a ban on TV ads in the U.K. in 1965; in the U.S., Congress passed a ban in 1970. In 2003, the World Health Organization adopted a ban on tobacco ads, promotion, and sponsorship. The treaty binds 183 member states. The bans worked, and have successfully reduced smoking rates. At first, the Dutch climate activists considered pushing for a national ban on fossil fuel ads, but then they narrowed their focus. “Because the idea was novel at the time, we thought we had to start a campaign aimed at a municipality,” Sleegers says. They began talks with the city of Amsterdam, which had just adopted a sustainable new framework for its economy. Amsterdam passed a motion to move forward with a ban, and dozens of other cities around the world followed. But progress stalled. “They were wrestling with how they could do this—it was new territory,” Sleegers says. Most cities wanted to change their contracts with advertising companies, because they saw it as an easier step than passing a legal ban. The government in The Hague considered that, too, but the billboard company pushed back. “The advertising operator just said, ‘We’re not going to comply with this,'” she says. A local political party, the Party for the Animals, supported the idea of taking the next step and putting a legal ban in place. The activists also worked with local businesses and celebrities who gave the idea public support. There were inevitable challenges: Some politicians argued that the change would violate the right to freedom of speech. But tobacco ad bans are legal, and legal experts told the city that a similar ban for fossil fuel ads was also possible. The ban doesn’t include everything—plastic products, for example, are made from fossil fuels, but can still be advertised. The campaigners originally also wanted to ban any ad from a fossil fuel company (such as greenwashing ads for the small investments those companies make in clean energy), but that didn’t get support. Some campaigners also wanted to expand the ban to meat—another major climate polluter—but that also didn’t have enough support. Only ads for fossil fuels, and products that run directly on fossil fuels, are banned. Now, other cities are likely to follow. “We’ve already heard from some that say, ‘Okay, we can really go forward on this now,'” Sleegers says. In a speech earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres argued that every country should ban fossil fuel ads, explaining how critical it is to phase out fossil fuels now—and to “directly confront those in the fossil fuel industry who have shown relentless zeal for obstructing progress.”