5th June 2024 - Responding to comments from the UN Secretary General that countries and companies should ban fossil fuel advertising, Louis Wilson, Head of Fossil Fuel Investigations at Global Witness, said:
"The UN Secretary General is right. Not only should
the industry be banned from advertising their toxic products, they should also
be shut out of politics and decision making.
Polluters and petrostates have turned COP, the UN’s own climate talks – the world’s only hope to avoid breaching 1.5 degrees – into a trade show, doing billions of dollars of oil deals while millions suffer the effects.
Those causing most harm are raking in record profits and government subsidies. The warning of a UN Secretary General cannot be ignored."
As the world both suffers from and grapples with solutions to the climate crisis, one thing is obvious. Those who caused the problem cannot be trusted to provide the solution. It's time to put the fossil fuel age behind us."