UK Ad Watchdog Scolds HSBC for Greenwashing

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has banned two HSBC advertisements for misleading the public about its efforts to tackle climate change, marking the first time the regulator has taken action against a bank for greenwashing.

Seen at bus stops in London and Bristol in the weeks leading up to COP 26 in Glasgow, the two ads presented HSBC as a force for climate good, while making no reference to the company’s ongoing commitment to underwriting fossil fuel projects, reports the BBC.

Emblazoned with the image of ocean waves crashing on a shore, the first advert proclaimed: “Climate change doesn’t do borders. Neither do rising sea levels. That’s why HSBC is aiming to provide up to $1 trillion in financing and investment globally to help our clients transition to net zero.”

The second ad, bedecked with images of tree growth rings, declared that HSBC is “helping to plant 2 million trees which will lock in 1.25 million tonnes of carbon over their lifetime.” Addressing public complaints about the two ads, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that HSBC “omitted material information” about its significant financial support for fossil fuel projects.

Customers “would not expect that HSBC, in making unqualified claims about its environmentally beneficial work, would also be simultaneously involved in the financing of businesses which made significant contributions to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions,” the ruling stated.

Which is exactly what the multinational bank has been doing, writes BBC, citing February revelations that HSBC, together with 23 other big bank members of the self-proclaimed “green” Net Zero Banking Alliance, had provided US$33 billion for new oil and gas projects since joining the Alliance last November.

In Canada, University of Toronto philosophy professor Peter Dietsch and Leah Temper, director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment’s Fossil Fuels Are Making Us Sick campaign, are urging the federal government to follow France in banning fossil fuel advertising.

In a recent post for Policy Options, Dietsch and Temper tackle three of the most common objections to a fossil ad ban: that it infringes the right to free speech, it will imperil the economy, and it is a “paternalistic” effort to limit consumer choice.

“Contrary to the common misunderstanding that rights are absolute—see for instance the distortion of the notion of freedom in the ongoing discussion of COVID-19 restrictions—it is in fact in the very nature of rights that they always come with obligations,” Dietsch and Temper write, in the response to the first objection. “Notably, they entail a duty to respect the rights of others.”

Citing the Canadian Supreme Court’s 1995 ruling against Big Tobacco as precedent, the authors write that in a battle that pits “the right of corporations to advertise against the right of current and future generations to a livable environment,” the needs of the latter are “more fundamental and thus trump the former.”

As for the argument that a fossil advertising ban would imperil Canada’s economy when it is still significantly dependent upon oil and gas, the two authors say a ban on ads doesn’t stop people from using fossil fuels. “All it does is limit their promotion as the preferred means to satisfy our wants. This would represent one small step towards a more appropriate balance between benefits and costs.”

And they say it’s a myth that a “freely choosing consumer” should never be constrained by “paternalistic” public policy. “As even freedom-loving libertarians have accepted—and popularized—in recent years under that public policy label of ‘nudging’, paternalistic policies are justified when they are both non-coercive and without alternative.”