Hamza Khan, West London Socialist Party
Multi billion-pound British advertising conglomerate WPP has been accused of breaching its own climate policy in a recent report by climate investigations platform DeSmog. The report finds that major oil companies Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron spent over $1.5 billion buying advertising space in the USA since the signing of the Paris agreement in 2016.
A 2024 US congressional investigation found that these companies have been using ‘deceptive and misleading’ communications to counteract policies designed to address the climate crisis through reduced reliance on fossil fuels. Oil companies have continued to increase the extraction of fossil fuels while promoting speculative solutions to the climate crisis in order to wash their hands of the urgent responsibility and maintain their profits.
WPP’s various agencies have worked on several US ad campaigns including a 2019 ExxonMobil ad that compared the pairing of natural gas and renewable energy to ‘a peanut butter and jelly [jam] sandwich’, and a Shell advertisement with the tagline ‘We see possibilities in planes that fly on garbage.’
Such behaviour by advertising companies working on behalf of the oil industry is to be expected, all they care about are their profits. While the energy industry is left in the hands of the profit-hungry bosses, money is invested in maintaining the huge amounts to be made from oil and gas – not in the interests of the working class who will pay the price of the climate catastrophe.
In order for a true green transition away from fossil fuels, and to combat the looming climate crisis in any meaningful way, modest policy reforms within the capitalist framework are insufficient – agreements like the Paris Accord are ignored. The energy industry cannot be left in private ownership, it needs to be nationalised, democratised and run for the benefit of all of us.
