Badvertising: Polluting Our Minds and Fuelling Climate Chaos

’Funny and readable, [it] will make us all see the world in a very different way’ - Dr Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People

’Brilliant ... if you thought your brain was being gently warmed by the advertising industry, read this book and you’ll realise it’s being fried’ - Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2

Advertising is selling us a dream, a lifestyle. It promises us fulfillment and tells us where to buy it - from international flights to a vast array of goods we consume like there is no tomorrow. The truth is, if advertising succeeds in keeping us on our current trajectory, there may not be a tomorrow.

In Badvertising, Andrew Simms and Leo Murray raise the alarm about an industry that is making us both unhealthy and unhappy and that is driving the planet to the precipice of environmental collapse in the process.

What is the psychological impact of being barraged by thousands of prompts to buy things every day? How does the commercialization of our public spaces weaken our sense of belonging? How are car manufacturers, airlines, and oil companies lobbying to weaken climate action? Examining the devastating impact of advertising on our minds and the planet, Badvertising also crucially explores what we can do to change things for the better.

Andrew Simms is the author of several books, including Tescopoly, Cancel the Apocalypse, and Economics: A Crash Course. Leo Murray co-founded climate action charity Possible, where he is currently Director of Innovation.

Andrew Simms is the author of many books including The New Economics, Ecological Debt, Tescopoly and Cancel the Apocalypse and Economics: A Crash Course. He co-founded the New Weather Institute and coordinates the Rapid Transition Alliance. He is a research associate at the Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex, a fellow of the New Economics Foundation (NEF), and is a frequent contributor to the Guardian and BBC. He co-founded the Green New Deal group in 2007, the climate campaign onehundredmonths.org that ran until 2017, and devised Earth Overshoot Day.

Leo Murray co-founded Plane Stupid, where he played a central role in strategic planning and communication for three years from 2006. He also designed and co-founded the climate change campaigning organisation Possible in 2009, where he is currently director of innovation. Murray is the brains behind the Frequent Flyer Levy, and strategy lead for the Rapid Transition Taskforce. He was previously a part-time political advisor on the transition to a sustainable economy to Labour’s Shadow Minister for Sustainable Economics, Clive Lewis MP.