Reuters reports that Norway is banning manufacturers from advertising a car's green credentials. As far Norways's Department of Truth (a.k.a. Consumer Ombudsman) is concerned, "cars cannot do anything good for the environment except less damage than others." By that, state censor Bente Oeverli means that certain cars can be less harmful than others, but they're ALL bad for the planet. But don't try and claim your car is less harmful than the other guys, 'cause that's banned too. "If someone says their car is more 'green' or 'environmentally friendly' than others then they would have to be able to document it in every aspect from production, to emissions, to energy use, to recycling," she said. "In practice that can't be done." Meanwhile, in the UK, Volvo was told not to repeat a claim that the C30 car was "designed with the utmost respect for the environment in mind." Now that we can understand. Respect in mind? Tsk tsk.
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Wow, actual accountability for the claims a corporation makes about their products. What a novel idea!
Wow, even I have a problem with that.
This sounds like a good idea. Make the manuf. explain how ‘green’ they really are besides the powerplant in the car. Everyone has already jumped on this environmentally friendly marketing bandwagon because it sells not because it makes a difference.
i tend to agree. there are no “better” cigarettes either, no matter what the manufacturers say.
As I am half Norwegian, this is a painful story to read. The self-righteousness and hypocrisy of the Norwegian regulators is truly flabbergasting. This is ac ountry that is sitting on about a trillion dollars in a massive cash hoard (called the “oil fund”) skimmed from sales of oil and gas to other countries. They owe their entire standard of living (which is the highest in the world) to the vast reserves of petroleum products in the North Sea. They have profiteered from feeding the world’s appetite for oil and gas and their inflated bank accounts have now inflated their nannying instincts to tell everyday Norwegians laboring under extortionate $8/gallon gas prices, hunting far and wide for gas efficient cars to ease their weekly payment burden to the oil Mafia, that they cannot be informed about cars that are “greener” than others — at least not in advertising. This is staggeringly offensive on every level.
CO2 makes plants green.
If they really believe cars can do nothing good for the environment, then why not ban cars instead of advertising?
While it may go a little too far, I think the intention is good (although we know with what the road to hell is paved). Truth in advertising.
Presumably they do not have a problem with touting fuel economy figures or actual facts about production methods. For example, a company could advertise that by using a new alloy of high strength steel they were able to eliminate x kilos of steel from every car. As long as they didn’t claim it made them “green” I don’t suppose the Norwegian gov. would have a problem with that.
Frankly, I think we run the risk of overusing the word “green” or “environmentally friendly” to the point where it loses any meaning. Kind of a moral relativism as applied to the environment. The Norwegian government is the fundamentalist of the environmental absolutism.
In this case it isn’t such a bad thing. We can’t go forward thinking that any type of automotive transportation is environmentally benign, whether it is IC, hybrid, diesel or electric. They all have impacts, and while some will be markedly less than others it would serve society well to realize these impacts.
Al Gore, your new home awaits in lovely Norway. Enjoy the trip (on your private jet that wastes thousands of gallons of fuel). Perhaps your new comrade in arms Bente can ensure you have a small enough home to limit your “carbon footprint” and ensure you become vegetarian, as animal farming and, ahem, animal exhaust, accounts for a greater portion of greenhouse gases than do Hummers.
I wonder if Bente is a meat eater. Would he say the same about burgers, chicken or the other white meat?
For years I’ve been telling the wife my dream job would be to be an ombudsman.
Now I’m not so sure.
Ashy Larry beat me to it, but if not for the luck of having huge oil reserves, tiny Norway would be a 3rd world country.
If they feel so strongly, clearly Norway should stop producing oil right now — how can they continue with such an evil?
Sweet. Every Prius should have a mural painted on it of the nickel mine in Sudbury their batteries come from.
Better living through coercion……
A little background.
Prius advertising was the reason behind this ruling, which is not a ban but an instruction. Toyota claimed that the Prius was “the world’s most environmentally friendly car” in ads that ran nationally.
It’s the consumer protection authority which has instructed advertisers to adhere to this ruling, following said advertisers inability to document their claim. The government authority presented documentation showing a car’s environmental footprint from manufacture to recycling, leading to the conclusion that “there are no green cars.”
The Forbrukerombudet (consumer protection authority) has no problems with claims that a car has the lowest mileage, greatest fuel efficiency, etc — all easily documentable. But the claim that the Prius was the world’s most environmentally friendly car was considered particularly noxious.
The words environmental, environmentally friendly, green or clean can not be used in car advertising, unless full documentation is provided. The car industry isn’t able to provide such documentation.
Toyota first pulled their Prius ads upon recommendation from the consumer protection authority. Following that, the same authority has now advised car advertisers to avoid claims that can’t be documented. Here are a few samples:
Prius – The world’s most environmentally friendly car.
Opel – Environmentally friendly engines
Peugeot – The powerful and environmentally friendly Hdi turbodiesel engine.
Suzuki – The sales and environment winner
Smart – Try the words most environmentally friendly and fun citycar
Toyota – The world’s cleanest diesel engines
Saab – Environmentally friendly turbo diesel
Mitsubishi – Environmentally friendly turbodiesel with particle filter
Citröen – Environmentally friendly turbo diesel with particle filter
Fiat – Environmentally friendly technology
The consumer protection authority and the Dept. of Transportation will create a system for environmental marking of cars. Car makers that can document their claims, according to an evaluation scale that will be developed, will be able to use their adherence to this scale in their advertising.
Since there is free speech in Norway, contrary to what some above seem to believe, no ads can be banned in advance, therefore there is no ban on such statements. But there is an instruction as to which claims are acceptable, and if a car maker can’t document a claim re. green or environmental impact, then the campaign can be instructed to be withdrawn or corrected.
If good environmental effect is claimed in an ad, it must be incontrovertibly documented that the model in question is better than 2/3 of comparable models on the market.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. And Ash Larry should really have a look at his post again, it’s filled with logical fallacies. Norway has the world’s highest gasoline price, the world’s most expensive cars and the world’s lowest average speed limits — seems the authorities are trying to find a middle road between the need to drive cars and to drive them responsibly.
Some of the rules of advertising, esp. in England, are/seem crazy. But I don’t have a problem (overall) with countries trying to crack down on blatant hyperbole in advertising. There are no green cars…Did anyone have a problem when cigarette companies got forced to stop advertising? What about the “It’s Genny Time” commercials…? These are both actions that the US government took…how is it different that the Norwegian government wants to control what cars call themselves the “most environmentally friendly.” If what Stein is saying above is all accurate, it seems very reasonable.
I know that everyone on here thinks that they are very intelligent and that they are capable of making their own decisions despite the shit that marketing companies feed into your brain ever minute, and that’s great, but there are many people that eat it up. [I am not trying to start a fight here but…] All those people who drive Prii…how many really know the environmental footprint that the Prius has? They bought it because the marketing mavens at Toyota told them that they would be “green” for owning it. (For the record, I would much rather own a Prius than a Hummer.)
Interesting, the Prius’ “green” claims are being slapped down in quite a few European countries now.
Low CO2, nope.
Better MPG, nope.
Less environmental impact, nope.
I kind of wonder what its for then.
I had a chat with a Prius owner at Costco last weekend. I asked his MPG, he said 45 (this is imperial). I said thats low, he said its better than he got with his previous car. What was that I asked, he said a Ford Focus.
Anyway as he struggled to get that pack of 300 toilet rolls into the back of his Prius (45 Mpg) I happily stuck all of mine into the back of my wife’s Diesel estate which does 57 mpg.
My only norwegian joke.
Two norwegians go on a three day drinking binge. After two days of nothing but booze one says to the other “do you fancy some crisps?”
His friend replies “Are we drinking or eating ?”
If they’re this strict on misleading car ads, I wonder how they’d react to all those “male enhancement product” ads that seem to be taking over cable TV late at night!
If what Stein says is true–and I have no reason to doubt it–I’m all for what Norway is doing. Advertising is almost always an effort to appeal to peoples’ emotions rather than their reasoning capabilities, and words like “green” do just that. I would love to see the US do this. I think free speech is for people, NOT corporations.
Years ago I bicycled past that mine in Sudbury, Ontario, that tankdOg refers to. It is a huge scar on the landscape — miles long, where nothing grows. But how much prius batteries contribute, I have no idea.
Stein Leikanger: Sounds pretty reasonable to me. And Ash Larry should really have a look at his post again, it’s filled with logical fallacies. Norway has the world’s highest gasoline price, the world’s most expensive cars and the world’s lowest average speed limits — seems the authorities are trying to find a middle road between the need to drive cars and to drive them responsibly.
Stein, I don’t doubt thay have this goal in mind. In what can only be something Norwegians could do, they are using the luck of their rich natural resources to improve the world, whether through foreign aid (of which they are a massive contributor — of course where that aid winds up is often an interesting story…..), social programs and environmental responsibility. And the word “green” is certainly abused by ad agencies, product companies, etc., and I don’t criticize them for trying to gain control of exaggerated or unsubstantiated advertising claims — hell, here in the US, a competitor is entitled to sue another competitor who makes baseless ads.
But Bente’s comments were a little too revealing of the underlying motive, which is that cars are inherently a bad thing for the environment. I was pointing a rich hypocrisy here. The only reason Norway has developed this nannying attitude is because it has been able to afford to do so thanks to all the oil and gas it sells to consumers and companies to operate those awful, terrible internal combustion engines. Really, thes *best* thing for the environment would be to simply sit on the oil and not sell it, ikke sant?
But that exposes the problem here, which is that cars are an inherent global *good* (whatever their envornmental costs). They increase mobility and productivity, decrease the cost and time of transportation of goods and servcies. All the cars on the road in Norway today probably create more jobs and keep more food on the table than Norway ever could support with it’s mostly agrarian economy pre-1972 (when oil was discovered off the North Sea) — and they certainly have bumped the standard of living from the lowest tier of Western Europe (which is where Norway was before 1972) to the world-leading standard of living Norwegians now enjoy. Which somehow allows them to suffer the confiscatory gas taxes the govenment imposes upon their citizens to fund a trillion dollar oil slush fund.
So there is a tension here, to be sure, between oil profiteering (from which Norway, as the third largest exporter of petroleum products int he world has benefited richly) and environmentalism on a hypertechnical scale.
@Ash Larry
I’ll agree with you on Norway’s tendency to be both a nanny state and hypocritical. It’s difficult to parse the immense activity in the North Sea, and its concurrent environmental impact, with the professions of a green consciousness by the government. And I’m still puzzled by the fact that I can’t buy beer after six in the evening on a Saturday in stores filled with beer.
Still, I think the Reuter’s report is quite clear, and Mr. Farago’s “ALL bad for the planet” comment was not Bente Øverli’s words – her comment was within the context of the environment.
I’m chuckling, as I find myself defending a nation I often criticize. As to whether Norway would have remained a bottom feeder among European nations without the oil, that particular point is a hobby horse of mine. Finland, Sweden and Denmark — all Nordic nations — all enjoy healthy top-of-the-world standards of living without having access to petroleum resources on Norway’s scale. (Denmark does some extraction, but from much smaller reservoirs).
According to social scientists and anthropologists, the Nordic nations enjoy beneficial preconditions that help fuel their wealth and welfare regardless of which main activity they involve themselves in.
Which brings me to a joke. The Nordic nations decided to pool their talents, and let each focus on what it was best at. Which meant that the Finns would design products, the Swedes would manufacture them, and the Danes would sell them – to Norwegians.
No doubt about it; Norway is hypocritical to be so anti-automobile that it even nit-picks innocuous advertisements while it prospers as the Kuwait of Europe. The country is like a heroin pusher who feels good about himself because he’s exercising more. Personally, I’m skeptical of the global warming hysteria, but Norway is a big promoter of the Kyoto treaty and it seems only fair to consider it as well as their customers guilty of increasing levels of so-called greenhouse gases.
Norway is truly blessed, not only with oil, but by those “beneficial preconditions” Mr. Leikanger mentioned that helped build a tranquil society. The only unfortunate result of Norway’s lack of domestic concerns is an increasing tilt to transnational progressivism (e.g., all nations should submit to the UN) and hyperactive oversight of everyday matters (e.g., people can’t be trusted to withstand seductive phrases like “environmentally friendly”). The regulators won’t be satisfied until advertisements look like those leaflets packed in boxes of medicine that warn, in microscopic print and words only a chemistry PhD can understand, about all conceivable side-effects and interactions.
Well; I agree with jerseydevil….Let’s be honest about it: Cars aren’t “green” any which way you put it. Guns are dangerous, smoking will kill you and so on. Claiming anything else is denial. Sorry…