More precisely, Edinburgh just joined multiple other cities in banning the advertisement of an assortment of companies and products related to high consumption of fossil fuels. This does include SUVs.
all advertising by airports and airlines which might
reasonably be deemed to promote
more flying
There are no low carbon options
for commercial air travel available
currently or for the foreseeable
future, so air travel per se should
be treated as high carbon.
Fossil fuel companies:
all firms and
associated sub brands or lobbying
organisations that extract, refine,
produce, supply, distribute, or sell any
fossil fuels
This includes, regardless of the
companies’ potential sustainability commitments advertising or
sponsorship:
• showing fossil fuel products,
energy from coal or hydrogen
• showing petrol stations, and any
ads promoting the price of
petrol/diesel
Cars:
exclude all advertising and
promotions for petrol, diesel and hybrid
vehicles and Plug-In Hybrid Electric
Vehicles (PHEV)
Advertising for Battery Electric
Vehicles (BEV) and hydrogen
fuelled vehicles are still permitted
if these are not Sport Utility
Vehicles (SUVs). PHEVs have
been shown not to yield
meaningful emissions savings
over conventional vehicles.
Cruise holidays:
Cruise ships emit more carbon per
passenger kilometre than flying.
They also generate black carbon
and produce a lot of waste which
is often discharged into the sea.
Their engines run 24/7, often even
at port which has damaging
impacts on air quality.
Most rides are under 50 miles, which means emission-free rides on most occasions. They don't hound chargers and need smaller batteries. Win-win if you ask me.
Issues with PHEV in my experience that people CBA to charge their car when the battery depletes and will treat their cars as if they are ICE only. And in that case they just weigh more, put more pressure on the road and the battery takes up quite the bit of cargo space.
Getting 50 extra miles in your garage or a 15 minute pitstop is a lot easier than charging an EV to full. Each 50 mile charge is about 2 gallon saved, and people like to save $10 every few days if possible.
PHEVs are lighter than full EVs, and incentivize the manufacturer to build a smaller car. (EVs are longer because the batteries take up lots of horizontal space). If Mazda's experiments pay off, then a wankel [1] engine PHEV will be space efficient and sustainable. Now not everyone needs to tow, but EVs are horrible at towing. A PHEV is an ideal long-term alternative to petrol for heavy-hauling use cases.
I firmly believe fully emissions-free vehicles will be the future. But the powergrid & charging infrastructure for 100% EV are at least 10-20 years away. Until then, PHEVs should be encouraged as a stopgap, especially for countries without easy ways to generate renewable energy.
I calculated how much our savings would be if we buy a PHEV instead of a new ICE (or a very efficient mild hybrid like the civic or a corolla) and we wouldnt get even after 5 years, because buying a PHEV costs that much more.
Of course this is based on our car usage patterns so its really subjective.
I agree with you on the powergrid and charging infrastructure. A counterpoint i rarely see is if everyone would switch to EVs or PHEVs in 5 years, the electrical infra would collapse. And the electricity price world skyrocket and it would not be this cheap as it is now. So we should keep that in mind when we calculate the savings.
> A counterpoint i rarely see is if everyone would switch to EVs or PHEVs in 5 years, the electrical infra would collapse.
Electricity grids are massively overbuilt and underutilized because they need to deal with a big spike of power usage in the early evenings. So if grids became strained by EVs, it would be relatively easy to fix this: just encourage or mandate time of day tariffs.
The price signal would encourage people to charge outside of peak times. The improved utilization of the grid may even reduce distribution costs per kWh.
Over the last 30 years, South Africa's generation capacity has crumbled from 37GW to 28GW. So yes, sure, electrifying anything there is not going to work. But I'd say that's a completely different category of problems.
PHEVs have the potential to lower emissions, but humans are lazy based on the data. Ergo, you have to engineer around the human (support BEVs, do not support PHEVs through policy).
I don't think these studies are saying what you think they are. The incentives are clear for a PHEV that you can plug in yourself in your home. its cheaper and not hard to do.
This is a very strong prior, and with a little digging you can find out that these cars are being bought by tax credits, and then used by people who do not have access to chargers. Either because it is a rental or because it is a company car. If it is a company car, the reimbursement process for gas is easier, and why would I go through the hassle if I'm not the one saving money?
The case for PHEVs is very strong, it is a much more economical use of lithium battery capacity, is cheaper to operate, produces less CO2, and can be operated like an ICE vehicle in a pinch.
They strategically dominate EVs. Its absurd to suggest otherwise
If you have data demonstrating strong EV use of PHEVs (vs defaulting to ICE most of the time), provide it, but it is absurd to propose these suboptimal vehicles will be maximized for low emissions use based on human behavior.
It doesn’t matter how strong the case is for PHEVs if the data doesn’t conclusively demonstrate they’re being used appropriately to minimize emissions. That’s just hope, and hope is not a strategy. Frankly, PHEV tax credits should be something like revenue you have to recognize over time, only provided when proven they’re being used in the manner desired (versus at time of purchase, after which you might not ever even plug the vehicle in).
In my opinion, if we're banning ads for certain types of cars, we should ban ads for all cars. Tires, brakes, roads, manufacturing related pollution, etc are substantial for all. It just seems like feel-good legislation when we ignore the obvious.
Personal cars are not going away anytime soon. All of the problems you mention are much less important than dealing with CO₂ and so more good is accomplished by allowing advertising to influence those who are going to buy cars to buy those that are lower when it comes to CO₂.
I think you're missing that those things involve CO2 as well. While CO2 is important, it's level of importance as ranked against other concerns is largely based on one's opinion.
If I remember right, then tire-wear [1] is the primary contributor to particulate emissions and a signifcant portion of vehicular pollution comes from the existence of the vehicle itself. (manufacturing, road maintenence)
I rented a PHEV in France (Paris area) recently. Electricity is more expensive than gas, and even though I wanted to pay extra in most towns there was no charging stations. So I mostly drove it on gas.
Through regenerative braking, so you get the benfits of a Hybrid. You can charge your PHEV at home during the week, and avoid the inconvienences of an EV when on a road trip.
They burn fossil fuels forever. EVs get greener as the grid approaches 100% low carbon energy, which will happen based on all available trajectory data.
If cell manufacturing is the supply constraint, continue to scale up.
> PHEVs have been shown not to yield meaningful emissions savings over conventional vehicles.
Can you say or link to more about this? My family borrowed a PHEV Prius Prime for about six weeks. Our fuel economy over that time was ~210mpg, nearly an order of magnitude better than the sedan it temporarily replaced.
That's because your family actually bothered to plug it in. A lot of people who drive PHEVs only do so for the tax credits, etc., and always just run them on gas.
But non PHEVs still have higher fuel economy than conventional ICE cars? Hybrid cars are more fuel efficient not only through the fact you can plug them in. They also get efficiency gains through regenerative braking and more efficient engine cycles[1], none of which requires plugging in to work.
what are you talking about? If you are after the tax credit, you're probably after the cost savings of plugging your vehicle in. This doesnt make sense as a hypothesis.
It's a thing, though perhaps a UK specific thing. Perverse incentives in the tax system mean it's cheaper to own a company PHEV than the equivalent but there is little to no allowance for charging it at home.
> PHEVs have been shown not to yield meaningful emissions savings over conventional vehicles.
???
Even just being a regular hybrid should offer meaningful emissions savings over standard ICE cars, due to the increased fuel efficiency, let alone a plug-in.
I'd be very curious to see the data/calculations on this, because it certainly sounds like bullshit.
My parents new hybrid rav4 gets 35mpg, which is approximately what my 7 seat ford galaxy minivan gets with a 2l diesel. That’s also approximately what my civic wagon got in the mid 90’s.
Wise move. The "car obesity epidemic" in the last ~20 years scares me as a pedestrian. It feels less safe to walk the streets. The average car I see in the streets got noticeably bigger, taking a lot of space. To see drivers navigating narrower streets today is like watching a tetris game, with vehicles barely fitting side-by-side, requiring curb climbing and/or a lot of skill. Rearview mirrors and tire caps get damaged very often. In the arms race for driving the largest car, everybody loses.
A lot of that size increase was, somewhat ironically, due to safety standards. Body thickness seems to be much higher today than 30-40 years ago in my experience. Cars look big from the outside but feel cramped inside these days.
That's not what I'm saying at all and is a strawman.
Compare the exterior size, interior size, and weight of an 80s corolla and one today. You'll find the door panels are much thicker, the car weighs about 20% more, the exterior dimensions have grown slightly, and it feels more cramped inside.
Eg, it's not that we don't see small cars anymore. It's that small cars have gotten larger, heavier, and feel less spacious.
They’re not dangerous. There’s about 1 fatality for every 100 million miles driven, if I recall. That’s REALLY low and it is getting lower as safety features like automatic braking become ubiquitous.
Also, note that "per how many miles driven" is a deflection used by pro-car-dominance folks.
Part of the problem in the US is precisely that the transportation system compels people to drive so much, and looking at fatalities per distance traveled obscures that danger.
I didn't have time to check when I wrote this comment, but looking now, the US rate looks like it's usually more than double that of major developed peers, and in some cases more than 3x as high.
Living in a somewhat rural area, I have no choice but to own a car. And since I have a family, I want to drive the safest, most practical car possible that can handle frequent needs like transporting children, pets, luggage, etc all at the same time. A "large" SUV checks all the boxes.
If I lived in an urban area, I think it would be difficult and annoying to own a larger vehicle. Traffic, parking, narrow lanes, bikes, peds, etc would all make it pretty inconvenient. Many cities are charging vehicles to enter (like NYC). Maybe they could charge considerably more for larger vehicles or make it very low cost for small, compact cars?
it depends on how you're defining "safe" and it's hard to get comparisons in 2024 since SUVs have almost completely wiped out station wagons in a product in the US.
Generally speaking though, there are a couple ways in which SUVs are less safe in certain conditions:
* SUVs are more dangerous to other road users because of how tall they are. If you are a pedestrian, cyclist, or sitting in a lower car, then the main part of an SUV is aimed higher at your torso or head. This also creates a self-fulfilling cycle where the only way to be safe against an SUV is to be in an SUV yourself.
Well, station wagons and minivans still exist—-we now just call them “crossover” SUVs.
And I’ve looked at those options: the storage, seating and safety is just not the same as a large SUV.
If you are using the word “safety” to mean safety for peds and bicyclists, I would likely agree with you that smaller cars are better for that. There are many blind spots on larger SUVs.
> If you are using the word “safety” to mean safety for peds and bicyclists, I would likely agree with you that smaller cars are better for that.
For car drivers probably too, because today there is an "arms race" dynamic playing:
while self.car < other.car:
feel(unsafe)
new_car = buy(car if car >= other.car)
self.car = new_car
feel(safe)
smash(pedestrian)
smash(cyclist)
smash(other.car)
Meanwhile everyone owning other.car is doing the same, so we are caught in a infinite loop and everyone ends worse and worse. A de-escalation is necessary.
For safety not only are they better for peds and bicyclists but also for other cars.
Part of the reason why people are dogpiling into SUVs is that they destroy other cars in collisions, and so to remain safe in a road that is filling up with SUVs you must also be in one.
No, it’s not a wise move to prevent people from talking about things. That’s one of the most unwise things possible, actually.
I don’t buy this hyperbole that people feel “unsafe” in the streets. I walk the streets with SUVs around me all the time and never feel unsafe. The chance of you having an injury is very low, and it would be illogical to worry about this possibility. If you really care about such low probability events, you might as well just live in a bubble all the time.
It's sad that SUV's proliferated, especially after the relatively climate and environment-aware decades of the 80's and 90's but I've realised that only governments can enact sensible environmental laws.
Like for instance how China banned single serving plastic usage.
Sales for true "SUVs" (ie. cars that are built on top of a truck platform) have stayed relatively stable, and most of the "SUVs" you see are actually crossovers[1]. This might seem like a pointless distinction, but crossovers are closer to cars than SUVs, and aren't as bad for the environment as you think. The best selling crossover is the Toyota RAV4[2], which gets 30 mpg. The best selling sedan (Toyota Camry) gets 32 mpg, or 6.7% more.
Agreed. My 1972 MGB got 28mpg. I realize cars have improved in many ways since then (crash safety, NOx emissions, comfort) but I feel like in 50 years we stopped caring about efficiency as much.
Many of the MPG winds of the 90s and 00s were eaten back up by mandated safety standards. A 2020 focus weighs 10-20% more than a 2000 MY one, for example.
My 1998 SC2 Weighed ~2400 pounds and got MPG in the low 30s (35+ on the highway).
> NOx emissions
Managing that often impacts fuel economy. Ask VW group =)
Apple to oranges much? If we want to ban all pure ICE vehicles then let's discuss that, but if most "SUV" sales today get comparable MPG to other pure ICE vehicles then it's misleading for people to keep citing the stat that SUV sales are rising with the understanding that this means that average MPG is declining.
The posters point was that crossovers are not true SUV’s, they are built on a sedan frame not a truck frame. It is pretty great when compared to the 20mpg average of a Tacoma truck.
Hybrids are great, but it is sidestepping the point that the poster was trying to make.
I think the proliferation of SUVs in America is almost completely due to environmental laws. There are different fuel efficiency standards for cars and for trucks. Since the standards for trucks are so much looser, someone had the bright idea to build a car body on a truck frame. That way they only had to meet the truck standards.
Later laws were changed to recognize SUV as a separate class, but the standards are still just a gradual improvement over truck standards, and not near where car requirements are.
In substantial parts of the US, the geography and climate recommend an AWD with high ground clearance. Most modern SUVs are not built on truck frames and have fuel efficiency similar to sedans. Decades ago this market was originally met either by modifying a 4WD truck to make it passenger friendly (e.g. "true SUV" like the Ford Bronco) or a handful of low-cost Japanese cars, notably Subaru. There was a vast market gap between these two options.
Most modern SUVs don't resemble either but instead split the difference. They are essentially sedans modified to support AWD and high ground clearance. The 2WD versions are essentially a minivan without the sliding doors. A "true" SUV has 4WD and a frame built more like a truck but these are relatively rare in the SUV market.
There are still no electric cars that address the old Subaru market, so in the US we will be stuck with SUVs for quite some time.
I'm having a hard time understanding why consumers went for SUVs in this interpretation. Did they just really want to pollute more? Do regular cars have too high a gas mileage for their liking? It certainly wasn't that the SUV was able to become the cheaper option!
Skirting emissions laws only works as a complete explanation if it can account for consumer behavior.
My sense from talking to people who own them is that they chose them because they could function as a truck or as a minivan depending on what they need to do at the time, without having to own both. That's a much less exciting explanation than yours, but it does account for both consumer behavior and manufacturer behavior. Emissions laws may very well have increased manufacturer margins on these vehicles, but they're filling a real need in people's lives.
I just bought a 2024 Toyota Sequoia. It’s a “real SUV” and uses the same engine as the Toyota Tundra.
For us, we wanted a vehicle that could tow a Camper Trailer, and one that could hold my daughter’s wheelchair easily, as well as her friends. A minivan would have fulfilled the wheelchair requirement, but it’s my wife’s dream vehicle, and I really want my youngest daughter to get the same camping trip experiences despite having special needs (like water and a sterile environment to wash up and catheter her, so a camper is a necessity if we want to “camp”).
Something like the Cybertruck wasn’t even a consideration, because it can haul maybe 90 miles for a camper trailer, based on what I’ve seen in testing.
Why is that so unbelievable? There is a well documented correlation between fuel prices and the type of car consumers buy, while of course the needs stay the same - if anything, todays consumers have less use for a large car than ever.
So what are we to conclude? Yes, the majority of US car buyers will literally buy the biggest gas guzzling pollution spewer they can afford. Call it revealed preferences, although it's hardly obscured - hell, a large number of people vote on the premise that gas must be $5 forever.
> Yes, the majority of US car buyers will literally buy the biggest gas guzzling pollution spewer they can afford.
This would be a sufficient explanation if and only if SUVs were cheaper than trucks. They're not, so the rising popularity of SUVs cannot be because skirting emissions regulations allowed selling a cheaper gas guzzler.
(This is aside from the fact that is referenced by another comment further up [0] that most modern SUVs aren't actually significantly less fuel efficient than traditional vehicles.)
People bought them because the advertising promoted them. They were advertised them because it let the manufacturers meet a lower emissions standard and pay a lower cost to manufacture the vehicle. It's not a conspiracy, it's not individual choice, it's just economics and marketing.
I'm ready and willing to believe that marketing is part of the story, but I'm far from willing to believe that it's the whole story. This other commenter explains a lot of the benefits that people find from SUVs far better than I could myself:
While the loophole isn't going away completely, the tougher rules may cause some manufacturers to rethink trends and add more small cars to their lineups.
However, it's more likely that the opposite will happen. Americans love SUVs and trucks; even pandemic pricing didn't convince many shoppers to switch to a smaller car. Instead, we've seen manufacturers building even larger electric vehicles
Sedans/minivans are held to more stringent fuel efficiency standards, particularly after the Obama-era EPA regulations. [1] This has promoted the sale of larger vehicles/trucks.
> Like for instance how China banned single serving plastic usage.
Even that probably isn't sensible. Banning single-use plastic leads to a shift to single-use paper, single-use wood, or single-use metal - all of which are even worse for the environment. The problem isn't the "plastic" part, the problem is the "single-use" part.
Bad for the environment has multiple facets to it.
For example, we already know that plastics form a lot of the trash in the ocean; but now we also know that these plastics shed microplastics pervasively as well.
Paper is environmentally expensive to produce and recycle. If it's worse than plastic is surely debatable but it's definitely not significantly better.
Rather than bans, all these materials with environmental externalities should be taxed at an appropriate rate. Then the market can find the optimal material for each use case.
This presumes that the process which establishes taxation levels is completely independent of the current profitability and power of those companies involved in their present creation.
The history of negative-externalities-generating industries --- lead, asbestos, tobacco, alcohol, CFCs, amongst others --- suggests that this may not be the case.
All the straws here in China are made from PLA… the polymer. Not sure how well that breaks down though, but hey, at least you get a free plastic bag with insulation with it!
Actually, that's not the case, and wasn't even the argument made in Garrett Hardin's original essay on the topic, which suggested instead privatisation as a frequently-effective mechanism.
Those who are opposed to that approach on the basis of criticisms of enclosures acts and the end of traditional commons have many arguments on their side, but the general effectiveness of privatisation in that particular case is not amongst them.
(Hardin is also pointedly arguing about a far larger problem, including of commons which are less readily closed such as ocean fisheries, and of the total global human population of Earth, in which privatisation might not hold, or for which other approaches, some of which are strongly criticised today, might be applied.)
The one dynamic which solving a tragedy of the commons requires is that it not be possible to privatise gains whilst socialising costs, which drives the entire logic of the tragedy. How that is arrived at still leaves multiple options.
This is not sensible and has a negligible impact on the environment - it almost always is worse, actually.
Kinda like how single use plastic bags are better for the environment than a single reusable cotton bag purely because reusable bags would need to be used for a decade to break even with 10,000 single use plastic bags, which almost never happens.
Would love to hear some more about your realization. Any thoughts on what it is about either governments or sensible environmental laws that makes this the case?
edit: After rereading I realized I misinterpreted your post. I read "enact" to mean "enact and enforce" but in a sense you are correct that only governments can enact legislation. I see now you made no claims about ability to design enforceable policy.
I dunno. A Toyota RAV4 hybrid gets 41/38 city/highway mpg, but a Prius gets 57/56. That's 46% more efficient. Gas is just so cheap in the USA it barely matters.
> Like for instance how China banned single serving plastic usage.
It is not that clear cut in that case.
> In fact, life-cycle assessments on items such as single-use plastic bags have shown that there is a discrepancy between actual re-use rates of alternative bags and the re-use rate to break even on environmental grounds. Paper bags need to be re-used four times, LDPE bags five times, non-woven PP bags 14 times and cotton bags 173 times. Their actual re-use rates are about half that, making them less sustainable than single-use plastic bags, which may also be used by consumers as bin liners.
1. It's an opinion piece, not evidence-based and peer-reviewed research.
2. It's written by a lobbyist who's parent organization gets funding in part from neo-reactionaries, including the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
3. The same author argues elsewhere for Europe and the U.S. to "put all their climate ambitions in the back burner, refine more oil and cooperate to deliver it quickly and effectively"; cf. https://web.archive.org/web/20220908091610/https://la-chroni....
4. The opinion piece cites another opinion piece written by the same author for Newsmax, a non-credible far-right media company.
5. It also cites "Five Misperceptions Surrounding the Environmental Impacts of Single-Use Plastic," published in _Environmental Science and Technology_, an impactful peer-reviewed scientific journal, but the article is not without its detractors and must be read critically as well; cf. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c07842.
6. The opinion piece redundantly cites a web page written by the author of "Five Misperceptions...". Said web page makes the same arguments as the ES&T article.
7. The opinion piece quotes a number of unrelated facts and figures.
Article doesn't say anything about banning advertisements for SUVs. It only talks about banning advertisements for gas-powered vehicles. Kind of a strange bait and switch title.
It is pretty limited. It only affects ads on sites controlled by the city itself. So ads on private property are allowed, and of course it has not effect on ads in any sort of publication, broadcast etc.
Edinburgh is such a walkable city, I had a fantastic half a decade living there
(without a car, apart from the rental one when moving there). This sounds like
the right move to maintain the pedestrian-friendliness and to keep the air cleaner.
However, the houses there are often old/historic, with very inefficient heating systems (some even use electricity to heat up a bunch of bricks, which then emits the heat to keep warm) - shocking! Also, windows are not normally with double or triple glass, and sometimes it is not permissible to change these because many buildings are protected.
Those brick heaters are smart because they use electricity at off-peak times to heat the house for the whole day. What about it strikes you as less efficient than any other direct electric heating?
They're pretty dreadful in that they leak heat while charging up during the night, using (still-expensive) off-peak electricity, when you don't really need the heat, then run out of stored heat quickly during the day, failing to do their job. Maybe in a heavily insulated building they would work better - just my personal experience before ripping them out to install gas central heating.
They don't work particularly well. You're roasting in the night when they heat up, nice and toasty at breakfast, but by the time you're back from work in the evening you're sat in the cold.
- Conversion of input energy to thermal energy. Fuel-based or electric resistance heating are both less efficient than heat pumps. The later can deliver several times the heat energy as is used to move it from elsewhere (outside air, the ground).
- Any emissive losses. The electric + brick heat systems seem to be similar to a masonry stove or similar design. If the bricks are on an interior wall, any heat leakage should be into the living space. If on an exterior wall, it's quite possible that much of the heat is radiated to the exterior. Even where placement is central, a wall may leak heat vertically and through the ceiling to the outside.
- Cost of fuels. The electric + brick design would seem to rely on cheaper off-peak electric rates. A more efficient system which more closely follows other electric loads (and hence, uses more high-cost electricity) could cost more whilst utilising fewer kWh of actual electrical energy, for example. Similarly, heat pumps with fallback to electric resistance heat might see similar high-cost patterns during extremely cold weather.
> How can a heating system be inefficient? Does it generate too much waste heat?
Yeah, they do:
1) Heat that's present when people aren't is unnecessary heat.
2) Heat that leaks out of the building is wasted heat.
So isolate the building better...? Yes, of course... But you can never isolate 100%. And heat that's present while people aren't -- see 1) above -- is heat that can (and, to some extent, will!) leak out before ever warming anyone.
I wish the politicians who enacted this ban were themselves forbidden from using or benefiting from any of the products or services that they banned advertising for.
Also it’s not like they’re banning existing SUVs or SUV sales altogether, just looking to reduce visibility a bit. They and anyone who knows they really need an SUV can still go buy one.
So instead of letting people choose through supply and demand the conveniences and trade offs they want, you want to force your will onto them through authoritarian censorship and bans?
Especially in the case of the heavy carbon emitters, yes this is ultimately one of many necessary steps to avert climate disaster. No person is having their right to free speech infringed and the bans actually serve the common good. It's a pretty reasonable compromise.
The only "victim" here is SUV vendors (and to a lesser extent, billboard owners), which I'm perfectly fine with. People can still buy SUVs if they want to.
Automakers spend anywhere from $20-$30 BILLION annually on advertising, largely on TV and internet. Good luck to Edinburgh trying to shut off that firehose.
They already have a tax built into them, which is on gas. Just because you disagree with others wanting certain convenient doesn’t mean that you should be permitted to put them in literal danger by committing terrorism, which is what you’re advocating for.
That tax is hugely not enough for how bad they are for society. It's not about convenience, it's about them literally killing people (through impacts and outsized tire microplasic contribution) and destroying our infrastructure at a rate much greater than small cars and (road wear is proportional to the FOURTH POWER of axle weight). Obviously people should just bike and use public transit, but we can start by taxing heavy/tall cars appropriately for their enormous negative impact.
If you want to speak for your company, then you speak for your company. You have freedom of speech. Same goes for Joe.
If a company is just "people acting together/cooperating", then there is no company -- it's not a person, nor even a thing; it's just something people do. ("Acting together" and "cooperating" are both verbs.)
This "free speech for companies" malarkey is what "companies" (= (usually rich) people) hide behind when "the company" does bad shit. Granting "companies" legal personhood is one of the bigger reasons the USA are as fucked up as they are.
From the proposed amendment that this WaPo story cites (https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/documents/s70730/9.1%20Po...), this is what kind of ads are banned, along with the comments regarding these things:
Airlines and airports:
all advertising by airports and airlines which might reasonably be deemed to promote more flying
There are no low carbon options for commercial air travel available currently or for the foreseeable future, so air travel per se should be treated as high carbon.
Fossil fuel companies:
all firms and associated sub brands or lobbying organisations that extract, refine, produce, supply, distribute, or sell any fossil fuels
This includes, regardless of the companies’ potential sustainability commitments advertising or sponsorship:
• showing fossil fuel products, energy from coal or hydrogen
• showing petrol stations, and any ads promoting the price of petrol/diesel
Cars:
exclude all advertising and promotions for petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles and Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV)
Advertising for Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) and hydrogen fuelled vehicles are still permitted if these are not Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs). PHEVs have been shown not to yield meaningful emissions savings over conventional vehicles.
Cruise holidays:
Cruise ships emit more carbon per passenger kilometre than flying. They also generate black carbon and produce a lot of waste which is often discharged into the sea. Their engines run 24/7, often even at port which has damaging impacts on air quality.