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'Architects of desire': Can advertising agencies glamorise climate solutions?

(Reuters, 13 Nov 2021) Too often criticised for promoting excessive consumption and greenwash, ad firms could use a new emissions metric to popularise climate-smart products.

As the world's "architects of desire", the advertising industry - criticised by some as complicit in greenwashing campaigns and for promoting excessive consumption - could play a major role in driving greener choices, executives said this week.

But making that shift might require new metrics to measure the climate-heating emissions from the "uplift" in sales advertising promotes, industry experts said at the COP26 U.N. climate talks, due to close this weekend in Glasgow.

"Some of the most creative, inventive, persuasive people come into this industry" - and that could drive "an incredible ability to engage and inspire people with climate solutions", said Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of Futerra, a creative agency focused on sustainability.

But right now advertising "is too often selling destruction", she said, whether promoting continuing use of fossil fuels or flogging other high-carbon, planet-endangering behaviour such as throw-away fashion.

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Reuters, 13 Nov 2021: 'Architects of desire': Can advertising agencies glamorise climate solutions?