Mad Men
3 years, 4 months, 15 days, 4 hours
7 March 2026
Is this the world’s first city-wide pro-vegetarian law?
‘Mad Men fuelling the madness’, said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. It sounds like a quote appropriate for the events of the last few weeks in the Middle East, but it was actually in 2024 in his speech on World Environment Day, taking aim at the advertising industry and calling on countries to ban advertisements promoting highly carbon-emitting products.
It seems that policy makers are listening. According to Earth.org more than 50 cities globally, mostly in Europe, have since either restricted fossil fuel advertisements or are on course to do so. The first was The Hague, in the Netherlands, in 2024.
But in January this year Amsterdam went a step further and became the first city in the world to ban not just fossil fuel adverts but meat adverts too, arguing that as well as being a carbon intensive industry, excessive meat eating was bad for human health and unethical. Is this the world’s first city-wide pro-vegetarian law?
It comes into effect on 1 May 2026, applies to all advertising in public spaces in the city, and covers a range of products including flights, cruises, petrol and diesel vehicles, gas heating and meat. There is a narrow carve-out for advertising by local businesses in front of their own premises. For those interested the city has published a detailed reasoning statement (in Dutch). Highlights translated into English are helpfully available here: World Without Fossil Ads.
Another woke assault on individual freedoms? I don’t think so. We accept restrictions on advertising of products that harm us as individuals, like smoking, so it follows that products that harm us collectively ought to be restricted too. And if we are to be serious about tackling carbon emissions we have to start to break the web of vested self-interests that allows carbon intensive industries to stall progress by buying promotion of their products from advertising agencies that also put money before morals. My sense is that once again the Netherlands is doing something that in a few years’ time will be commonplace worldwide.