The planet needs our help.

Science has shone a light on the issues we face as a species and how to tackle them in order to keep our planet habitable. It is vital for these messages and information to be made as widely accessible as possible. Visibility is key and we have the platforms to do it. We just need to make it a legal requirement to get the science based messages out. 

Every day we are bombarded with advertising for every product under the sun on the websites we visit, television we watch, magazines we read, social media we scroll through and the list goes on. Algorithms track us to learn our likes and interests in order to tailor make advertising content to tempt us further.

This is all part of the business as usual cycle that will fail to deliver our commitments to reaching net zero, reducing the impact on our planet's biodiversity, access to food and fresh water etc. The ability to exploit us has no boundaries and I believe there is an opportunity to reduce this impact and spread positive knowledge to help bring about the changes we all need to make in order to ensure we leave a healthy planet for our children and grandchildren to enjoy.

Advertising works. That's why they do it. That's why you have every video you choose to watch online interrupted by multiple adverts. They have a duty of care to use their platforms to act as the heartbeat of positive change.

Let's bring in legislation to make it mandatory in the UK for 25% of all advertising, across all platforms to include science based messaging on the environmental challenges we collectively face and guidance on how to bring about necessary change. 

If enough of us put our name to this, we could not only be seeing adverts based on recent amazon searches, items we looked at on ebay or products algorithms have decided we might like based on our search engine history, but also positive messaging reminding us of the actions we can take to heal our planet. The potential reach could be planet saving...