United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres used his World Environment Day address Wednesday to call for a ban on advertising by the fossil fuels industry, and he asked public relations firms and ad agencies to stop representing fossil fuels.'I call on these companies to stop acting as enablers to planetary destruction,' Guterres said in a speech on climate action delivered at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
The group launched in 2020 to encourage a shift in the advertising agency away from greenhouse gas polluters.'Essentially every misleading thing that anyone thinks about climate change began with an ad agency or PR agency working with fossil fuels,' he said.Meisel said Guterres' speech is validating for people involved in a movement within the public relations industry who are trying to align their work with their values on climate change.