Rethinking advertising policy in light of the climate crisis

Abstract

There is a significant need for a paradigm shift in advertising and climate change scholarship. While content- and consumer-based work in advertising is useful, especially in terms of creating messages to target deniers of global warming (Atkinson, 2017), it is limited in its ability to directly assist with climate change mitigation. Reimagining advertising systems as gatekeepers, that distribute advertisements under conditions that take into account production processes, may be able to make up for this limitation. Rethinking the manner in which advertising transactions occur in order to advertise in media, by moving them away from strict business and financial exchange interpretations, to a new exchange system also based on environmental concerns, may be the most effective contribution to climate change mitigation the field of communication can offer. There is limited time left to reverse the direction before dangerous, potentially irreversible changes in the Earth’s climate occur (Anderson, 2012; Foster, 2017).