ASA Bans Government Climate Change Ads

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned two of Ed Milliband’s Department of Energy and Climate Change advertisements after they received over 900 complaints about the £6m press and TV campaign aimed at global warming sceptics.

A DECC press release announcing the campaign said that:

…. the Government is today confronting the public with the reality and the consequences [of global warming]. The Government wants to educate people on the dangers of climate change and today launches its first ever direct public information announcement confirming the existence of climate change and its man-made origin.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn114/pn114.aspx

But the ASA say that, ‘the claims [that] “Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heatwaves will become more frequent and intense”‘ and ‘”… extreme weather conditions such as flooding heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense” should have been phrased more tentatively.’ They found that there had been a breach of three sections of the Committee of Advertising Practice Code dealing with substantiation, truthfulness and environmental claims. The report says that the advertisements ‘should not appear again in their current form’.

The campaign was launched in October 2009 and, as well as four press adverts, included a TV and cinema ad showing a father reading his young daughter a bedtime story. This depicts distressed farm animals and weeping rabbits in a drought-stricken landscape, and then a flooded town with people clinging to the rooftops and a dog drowning. The voice-over explaines, “There was once a land where the weather was very very strange. There were awful heat waves in some parts and in others terrible storms and floods. Scientists said it was being caused by too much C02, which went up into the sky when the grown-ups used energy. They said the C02 was getting dangerous, its effects were happening faster than they had thought. Some places could even disappear under the sea and it was the children of the land who would have to live with the horrible consequences.’

The DECC made very extensive representations to the ASA in defense of their advertisements. They also rely on opinions from the Royal Society, including a claim that ‘some individuals and organizations that disagreed with IPCC findings … appeared to be funded by fossil fuel interests’, although no evidence in support of this assertion appears in the report. As the Royal Society receives about £40m a year in funding from the government so it seems strange that the DECC should on their evidence as being impartial while condemning sceptical criticisms of the ads as being funded by lobbyists.

The ASA did not uphold complaints that the ‘Bedtime Story’ advertisement, which is still being screened in cinemas, suggested a degree of scientific certainty about the causes and consequences of climate change that is not reflected in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment report. Complainants will be astonished by this as the IPCC report is by no means unequivocal about the cause of global warming, and the Royal Society’s statement on their website is cautious about the consequences of climate change.

The IPCC report says that,  “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” According to the Royal Society:

Possible consequences of climate change include rising temperatures, changing sea levels, and impacts on global weather. These changes could have serious impacts on the world’s organisms and on the lives of millions of people, especially those living in areas vulnerable to extreme natural conditions such as flooding and drought. http://royalsociety.org/landing.asp?id=1278

Complainants are likely to be very surprised that claims made in the TV advert, which are very similar to those in the press adverts that have been banned, have escaped censure.

The precise number of complainants is not known, but the report says, ‘The ASA received 939 complaints … The number of individuals objecting to the ads is likely to have been higher; we advised subsequent enquirers whose points of complaint were already being investigated that they need not register a new complaint unless they wanted to.’ This compares with the most complained about adverts listed in the ASA’s most recent annual report (2008), which was 840 concerning a powerful Bernardo’s TV ad.

The chairman of the ASA is Lord Chris Smith of Finsbury, a one time labour cabinet minister who is also the chairman of the Environment Agency. An interview with The Times in November last year under the headline  ‘Chris Smith – the respectable radical who is plotting a green revolution’, says that:

Lord Smith’s favourite political heir apparent is Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, with whom he has worked closely since being appointed to the Environment Agency last year. “He’s been up for making big decisions. Far too often government ministers lose sight of the wood for the trees, Ed still sees the big story. He doesn’t dither.”‘ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6906852.ece?print=yes&randnum=1151003209000

Ofcom, the statutory broadcasting regulator, is still investigating complaints that the DECC campaign, launched during the run-up to the Copenhagen summit and when it was rumoured that the Government were considering calling an election in the New Year, breached a ban on political advertising. Apparently they will report later, although I seem to remember a letter from the ASA saying that both regulators would report together. I wonder what happened?

Press coverage of the ASA’s decision started on Saturday afternoon with an attempt to play down the story, on The Guardian website, using the headline ‘Climate change adverts draw mild rebuke from advertising watchdog’. The next day a clear and factually correct report by  Jonathan Leake appeared in the Sunday Times under the banner, ‘Ed Miliband’s adverts banned for overstating climate change’. This was picked up by The Telegraph and The Mail who had a quote from Ed Milliband claiming that his department has been  ‘comprehensively vindicated’. I wonder what which part of ‘comprehensively vindicated’ he doesn’t understand, but I am sure that we can believe anything his department tells us about global warming.  The Mirror’s coverage has a rather good parody of Dr Foster Went to Gloucester, and Express gave the ban a mention in an article about Amazongate. All these versions of the ASA’s decision seem to go with the line taken in the Sunday Telegraph, emphasising the ban on the press adverts rather than the more anodyne treatment of the TV commercial.

The story has crossed the herring pond too with the National Post heading its article, ‘Think of the children: British energy minister in hot water over climate change posters aimed at the junior set’, and Examiner goes into a bit more  detail.  The AP news agency has a brief summary of the story too, but none of them seem to think the Ed has been ‘completely vindicated’. I wonder why?

The blogosphere is having its say too. Deltoid, as one might expect, dismisses the whole thing out of hand without examining the issues by attacking the messenger, in his case Jonathan Leake, and suggesting that he is a lousy journalist.   Marketing Week just reports the facts and obtained a ‘no comment’ from the ASA. The Huffington Post takes a wry look at the idea of using nursery rhymes in this rather bizarre way. Lots of other blogs are now joining in too.

BNet UK seems to think that any criticism of the ads is unreasonable because, well, they are in favour of AGW, so what can the problem be.  Advertising Age, where someone doesn’t seem to have done their homework, refers to ‘those denialists over at the Advertising Standards Authority’, which at least was amusing although it obviously wasn’t intended to be.

All of which is quite encouraging, considering that the ASA won’t even publish their decision until tomorrow. It looks as though this story may run for a while longer so it really was worth making all those complaints and yes, the ASA seems to have done something about them too. On the other hand I don’t think that should prevent anyone from asking for a review of the decision. Arguably the TV commercial was every bit as misleading as the press ads that were banned, and in the same way. So why have the same standards not been applied?

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 Update 17/03/2010

This morning, Guy Parker, chief executive of the ASA, and Ed Milliband secretary of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change were interviewed by Justin Webb on the BBC’s Today programme about the Act On Co₂ advertising campaign. It’s well worth listening to.

 

Parker explained that the ASA arrived at it’s decision solely on the basis of evidence from the IPCC and other bodies submitted to them by the DECC, which they had then evaluated. What qualifies the ASA to assess such material is not clear, although Lord Smith, their chairman, has very decided views on the matter. See his recent contribution to the BBC website here. No neutral opinion seems to have been sought.

 

The head of the ASA, having explained that the adverts had exaggerated the confidence of predictions about extreme weather said:

 

“the main thrust of the message was proven and I guess the DECC are happy about that”

 

 which makes one wonder what the ASA’s priorities in dealing with this matter were.

 

Here are a couple of gems from Ed Milliband at the end of the interview:

 

“Part of the job of people like me is to be honest and up front when a mistake has been made …”

 

Perhaps he’d forgotten that he told The Mail that his department had been ‘completely vindicated’. (see above)

 

Summing up, there was this lovely slip of the tong:

 

“What was the message of the campaign? That if we don’t act on climate change, that we will face – err! are very likely to face – severe impacts on our way of life.”

 

Much of Mr Milliband’s defence of the ads relied on the attributions summarised in Table SPM.2 in the last IPCC report,  which has been extensively discussed here.

 

There is also a report on the ASA’s decision at the BBC News website.