Environmental and Climate Justice Groups Call on PR and Ad Agencies to Quit Fossil Fuels

Today, 22 leading environmental and climate justice organizations released the following letter calling on PR and ad agencies to end their relationships with fossil fuels. The letter was organized by Clean Creatives, a campaign to bring together agencies, their creatives, and clients to decline future contracts with fossil fuel companies, their trade associations, and front groups. Agencies, individual creatives, and clients are invited to take the Clean Creatives pledge here.

Full letter text:

March 9, 2021

Today we are calling on PR and advertising agencies to cease all client relationships with fossil fuel companies, industry associations and related front group entities as they continue their decades-long efforts to undermine climate action and spread climate disinformation.  

The stakes could not be higher, or the timeline more urgent. The fossil fuel industry is fueling a climate crisis that is increasingly spiraling out of control. Over the last year, we’ve seen the devastating impacts of climate related disasters, from worsening wildfires to floods to hurricanes. These impacts, along with the pollution released every day from the burning of fossil fuels, disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous and other communities of color first and worst. 

Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to block climate action. And PR and ad agencies are profiting handsomely by helping them do it. 

As environmental and climate justice organizations, we’ve experienced over and over the subtle and overt ways that the fossil fuel industry uses public relations and advertising to block important action on climate change. They spread climate denial. They set up fake front groups. They amplify lies about how climate action will hurt the economy. They greenwash oil, gas and coal companies in an attempt to dodge government pollution safeguards and block meaningful change.  

These PR and advertising campaigns drown out the voices of concerned citizens across our country and around the world, while silencing communities on the frontlines of this crisis. They are antithetical to the purpose and mission of our organizations.  

It’s time for PR and Ad agencies to come clean and end their work with the fossil fuel industry.  

Together, we can stand on the right side of history, and be a part of the solutions our climate and communities urgently need.

Signatories: