Amsterdam Bans Fossil Fuel and Meat Ads Citywide

Amsterdam is removing burger billboards and car ads from its picturesque streets, and the reason might surprise you.

The Dutch capital just became the first in the world to ban advertisements for meat, fossil fuels, gas heating, flights, cruises, and combustion engine vehicles. The city council decided that promoting high-carbon products contradicted Amsterdam's goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

"The moment you really take your own climate policy seriously, then you should at least restrict the availability of all those promotional materials," said Reint Jan Renes, a behavioral psychologist who researches sustainability in cities. He walks past countless ads during his daily Amsterdam commute that promote exactly what the city is trying to reduce.

The ban tackles a real problem. Researchers at Greenpeace Netherlands estimated that car and airline ads in the EU during 2019 alone could be responsible for up to 122 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. That's more than Belgium emits in an entire year.

Amsterdam isn't alone in this movement. Stockholm will implement similar restrictions this summer, and over 50 cities worldwide including Sydney, The Hague, and Florence have joined in. France became the first country to restrict fossil fuel advertising nationwide in 2022, with Spain potentially next in line.

The Ripple Effect

The policy borrows from a proven playbook. When governments banned tobacco advertising in the 20th century after understanding its health harms, smoking rates dropped dramatically. Studies found these bans led to 20% lower odds of current smoking and 37% reduced risk of people starting to smoke.

Experts acknowledge the changes won't happen overnight. "It's taken decades for these types of consumption norms to emerge," said Jan Willem Bolderdijk, a professor of sustainability and marketing at the University of Amsterdam. But that's exactly the point.

Advertising creates what economist John Kenneth Galbraith called the "dependence effect" in the 1950s. Companies spend billions making us feel we need bigger cars, more flights, and carbon-intensive lifestyles to be happy. Over time, those messages become our normal.

Cities like Amsterdam are showing others that change is possible. "What these pioneering cities do is make other cities reflect, 'Hey, you know what? How we organized our city is not necessarily how it has to be,'" Bolderdijk explained.

The ban won't transform behavior immediately, but it starts chipping away at the advertising-created norms that have shaped our carbon-intensive habits over decades. Sometimes the most powerful action is simply stopping the promotion of what we're trying to change.