Dr. Pete Lunn:

On the ads, I have wrestled with getting my head around climate change. I have degrees in neuroscience, psychology and economics . I am now trying to understand engineering, geoscience and climate science. There is no way an advertising regulator can do all that to check the credentials of what is put in an advert as to whether it is good or bad for climate change. Given that it cannot be done, I strongly advocate a regulatory simplification. A good example of this is what the finance industry did when it was clear that major damage was being caused by people buying poor credit products. What did we do? We regulated the concept of annual percentage rate, APR. We said there was a standardised measure that had to be reported in all marketing and communication. Do we have that for climate impact? We do not. Could we move in that direction to simplify matters? Potentially. That goes beyond my expertise, but, from a behavioural point of view, I am sure there is no chance the regulator can understand what it needs to understand to get rid of greenwashing. It is too difficult, so we have to try to standardise and simplify. There is much behavioural evidence to suggest that is effective in getting advertising to better reflect the true value of the product. That is a direction we could consider going in.