Environment and the Double-Edged Axe An Environmental Impact Analysis of Advertising and Marketing

The free market economy has given way to ruthless competition, resulting in the diversion of significant costs towards indirect fixed expenses. In this article, Ankur Srivastava evaluates the impact of marketing on the economy and the environment. He endeavours to discover how the current economic set-up can evolve to avoid the wastage of resources on non-value-adding activities without compromising the ideals of healthy competition.

- Ankur Srivastava

The recent nomination of Sultan al-Jaber as president of the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP28) has created a lot of brouhaha from various stakeholders on the grounds that al-Jaber is CEO of an oil major— The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company or ADNOC. Many have also retorted on this as being similar to a cigarette company head presiding over a conference on cancer prevention.

A narrative appears to have ossified whereby few select industries are labelled as 'pollution-causing' industries while others are 'eco-friendly' or 'green'.

However, many of the critics end up missing the larger picture-that industries related to hydrocarbons, mining, metallurgy, etc., are only the feeder industries for other 'greener' industries. So, why single out an oil industry executive and not others?

Which Industry is Greener?

There is no doubt that anthropogenic activities (including all kinds of industry) are among the prime culprits in polluting the environment and rising levels of pollution during the economic leap of recent centuries is an indisputable evidence. Irrespective of the industry, all kinds of economic activities end up polluting the environment in some way or the other, few most evident being—by destroying biodiversity while reclaiming lands from sea or forests, by using a range of chemicals which ultimately are discharged into sea or atmosphere, or by requiring energy in various forms which will ultimately be discarded into the environment as heat.