Rethinking Advertising as a Mitigative Model for Environmental Sustainability

Multiple studies find the production and consumption of goods and services central in producing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that cause global warming. Advertising, which continues to expand globally, creates demand to encourage the consumption of these goods and services, and thus contributes to the environmental crisis. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified a knowledge gap for new policy-driven models that can reduce GHG emissions by creating incentives to improve manufacturing production processes in addition to reducing product demand. This paper is a response to the IPCC's findings and introduces a mitigative model for advertising. It outlines a new structure that considers environmental sustainability as a potential mitigative strategy to create incentives to lower GHG emissions.