Car ads 'should carry climate health warnings'

MP Colin Challen accuses motor manufacturers of not telling whole truth in green claims

James Randerson
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 May 2009 15.16 BST

Car adverts should carry prominent climate change "health warnings" akin to those on cigarette packets, according to a Labour MP who is critical of the government's progress on climate change legislation.
Colin Challen MP, who is chair of the all-party climate change group, said that government warnings on car ads might force car companies to be more "honest". He said many cars are promoted as being "greener" when they are actually environmentally damaging.
He said the car industry was spending £800m a year on UK advertising prior to the recession, while the government's public education campaign ActOnCO2 cost just £12m over three years. "It's no contest," said Challen, writing in an online comment piece for the Guardian. He added that it is "wholly counter-intuitive to expect people to change their behaviour when most of the daily messages they receive tell them it's business as usual".
Car promotions should carry climate change message, said Challen, who is a member of the Commons Energy and Climate Change select committee. "You maybe have 25 or 35% of the space of any promotional material given over to a health warning. These warnings would be graded depending on the emissions from the vehicle, with the worst gas-guzzlers carrying the most severe warnings. "It would have to counter the impression given by some manufacturers that their vehicles are greener," Challen added.
The warnings would be based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 4th Assessment report, regarded as the foremost authority on the state of climate change science. The warnings would highlight the consequences of dangerous climate change such as sea level rise, increasing deaths, species extinctions, food and water security, and heightened regional conflicts.
A spokeswoman for the Society of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Traders, a UK trade body, said that vehicle advertising was already heavily regulated and that print adverts had to carry information about CO2 emissions and fuel consumption. "People are a lot more savvy as to what CO2 from vehicles means," she said, "People understand that they will have an impact on climate change."
She also questioned why motoring should be singled out ahead of advertising for, say, aviation or plasma TV. To be fair, any such health warnings should apply to any activity that generates CO2, she added.
Challen said that society is only just beginning to wake up to the threat posed by climate change. "We are still playing footsie with climate change," he wrote. "Our effort is improving, but in dribs and drabs, suggesting that we've not entirely convinced ourselves that the threat is real." Drawing an analogy with the second war he said Britain was "staggering between appeasement and phoney war".
Challen said he favoured a personal carbon trading scheme to get on top of emissions in which every citizen has an annual carbon allowance. Those who went beyond their carbon budget would need to buy carbon credits from people who had not. "It would be no more difficult to operate than a Nectar card," he said, "Good behaviour would be rewarded. Bad behaviour would have to be paid for."