The 3 “G” – Greenwashing, Geoengineering & Governance vacuum

Greenwashing

Recently, ASA (UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all media) has chided¹ Deutsche Lufthansa AG (see above picture which is the statement in question of this article, from their website) over one of its current ongoing Advertisement.

The issue is whether the ad gave a misleading impression of the advertiser’s environmental impact. The Ad breaches CAP Codes for Misleading advertising and Environmental claims.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG answered the challenge in writing; however ASA upheld the challenge and demands from Lufthansa to ensure that the basis of future environmental claims was made clear and did not give a misleading impression of the impact caused by travelling with the airline and that robust substantiation was held to support them.

Source¹: https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/deutsche-lufthansa-ag-a22-1169419-deutsche-lufthansa-ag.html

ASA, although having no binding powers, nevertheless serves consumers with a very necessary guardian duty on greenwashing. Each individual consumer has to decide his or herself weather the proven environmental impact of flying and therefor control his or her purchase decision.

Geoengineering & Governance vacuum

What about Geoengineering such as solar radiation modification (SRM) or others? Started by commercial ventures that want to start to plow forward with geoengineering plans of their own, with a profit-seeking motive.

Scientists are slamming the brakes² on deliberately interfering with the climate to temporarily counteract global warming until the pros and cons are more fully known.

Source²: https://www.axios.com/2023/02/28/geoengineering-climate-change-research-scientists#

The issue is that there remains a government vacuum on geoengineering as no examining of scientific, technological, legal and ethical issues for geoengineering has yet taken place.

Since the beginning of commercial fossil fuel exploration, the decision on its use and distribution have mostly been made by the executive boards of the major 15 Oil companies, which, by the way, knew it`s negative impact already in the 1970`s. The acceptance of us the consumers was required, to be fair.

A growing number of us are realizing what this compliance has created. (hint: CO2 level in the atmosphere as per time of writing this, is 419.6 ppm)

Should we, the consumers, not demand a better examination of the impact before we let some commercial venture with profit seeking motives start working on our atmosphere?