Badvertising (polluting Our Minds And Fuelling Climate Chaos)

By (author) Simms Andrew; By (author) Murray Leo
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Uncovers the devastating psychological, social and environmental costs of advertising

Description

Advertising is selling us a dream, a lifestyle. It promises us fulfilment and tells us where to buy it – in international flights, beef from (what was once) the Amazon, and a vast array of goods we consume like there is no tomorrow. And if advertising succeeds in keeping us on our current trajectory – there may not be a tomorrow.

In Badvertising, Andrew Simms and Leo Murray raise the alarm on an industry that is making us both unhealthy and unhappy, and that is driving the planet to the precipice of environmental collapse in the process.

The book asks what is the psychological impact of being barraged by literally thousands of advertisements a day? How does the commercialisation of our public spaces weaken our sense of belonging? What are the pitfalls of regulation? How are car manufacturers, airlines and oil companies lobbying to weaken climate action? And most crucially of all, what can we do to stop it?

Table of contents

Preface
Introduction: Advertising and the Insidious Rise of Brain Pollution
1. Badvertising, Priming, Propaganda and Surveillance Advertising
2. How Advertising Increases Consumption
3. How We Banned Tobacco Advertising
4. Sports Advertising and Sponsorship: The Great Pollution Own Goal
5. How Big Car Persuaded Us to Buy Big Cars
6. How Airlines Took Us For a Ride
7. Why Self-Regulation Isn’t Working
8. A World Without Advertising
Acknowledgements

Biographical note
Andrew Simms is the author of many books including The New Economics, Ecological Debt, Tescopoly and Cancel the Apocalypse. Most recently he co-authored Economics: A Crash Course, a beginner''s guide to the subject from a heterodox perspective, with David Boyle. He co-founded the New Weather Institute and coordinates the Rapid Transition Alliance. He is a research associate at the Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex, a fellow of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) where he was also policy director for many years and established its Climate Change, Energy and Interdependence Programme, and has been a frequent contributor to the Guardian and BBC. He is also the assistant director of Scientists for Global Responsibility. He co-founded the Green New Deal group in 2007, the climate campaign onehundredmonths.org that ran until 2017, and devised Earth Overshoot Day. Leo Murray co-founded Plane Stupid, where he played a central role in strategic planning and communication for three years from 2006. He also designed and co-founded the climate change campaigning organisation Possible in 2009, where he is currently director of innovation. Murray is the brains behind the Frequent Flyer Levy, and strategy lead for the Rapid Transition Taskforce. He was previously a part-time political advisor on the transition to a sustainable economy to Labour''s Shadow Minister for Sustainable Economics, Clive Lewis MP.