Image: Adfree Cities

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned two HSBC ads for being “misleading” about the company's work to tackle climate change following a complaint from the Adfree Cities group. One poster showed an image of waves crashing on a shore, while the other featured tree growth rings. Both used the headline "Climate change doesn't do borders” with copy claiming “That's why HSBC is aiming to provide up to $1 trillion in financing and investment globally to help our clients transition to net zero” and “in the UK, we're helping to plant 2 million trees which will lock in 1.25 million tonnes of carbon over their lifetime”. The ASA ruled that the ads "omitted significant information about HSBC's contribution to carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions”. This the first time it has taken action against a bank for Greenwashing. More here

V&A Dundee curator Laurie Bassam talks about the museum’s Plastic: Remaking Our World show (opening October 29) to the Dundee Courier website: “The intention is to make people think about plastics, and their relationship with plastics, rather than feeling very doom and gloom about it…There are lots of things people can do to change their relationships with plastics, both as individuals and collectively.” More here

Charity On Road Media, which seeks to “change hearts and minds by bringing people, campaigners, journalists and broadcasters together”, has produced a guide to help combat attempts to pit tackling climate against tackling the cost of living crisis. Based on research carried out in August and September 2022 with 10,000 people in the UK, it proposes communications strategies that stress the importance of seeing the two crises as interlinked and that they must be solved together. Download the report here

Backed by Seth Godin among others, The Carbon Almanac is a book “full of ideas, data, perspectives and resources to help us understand the realities of climate change and what we can do to fight it” pulled together from over 300 contributors. Order it here

In the New Statesman (taken from its current issue guest edited by Great Thunberg), historian and activist Rebecca Solnit argues that climate despair is a luxury afforded only to those in the Global North: “We who have materially safe and comfortable lives, and who are part of societies that contribute the lion’s share of greenhouse gases, do not have the right to surrender on behalf of others. We have the obligation to act in solidarity with them. This begins by recognising that the future has not yet been decided, because we are deciding it now”. More here

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