Written by:
Comms Declare founder Belinda Noble with GoodSense founder & MD Kath Dewar – we’re for the climate!
GoodSense Declares – we’re for the climate!
“We declare our work at GoodSense will not support any activities, organisations or individuals that promote:
• the growth of fossil fuels
• the continuation of high greenhouse gas pollution as ‘business as usual’
• deception, distraction or spin around science or climate actions.”
Thanks to Comms Declare, we’re proud GoodSense is the first company in Aotearoa New Zealand to join the 100 organisations in Australia who have declared their work is fossil fuel free. All we do is ethical marketing and sustainability communications to support companies and other organisations who are working really hard to make things better for people and for the rest of nature. So it would be a real contradiction for us to work for any fossil fuel products or brands or high climate-harm services. To do so would undermine the work we do, all day every day, with our other clients. Thanks to Stop Press and Campaign Brief for covering our declaration.
An easy decision to join Comms Declare
When Comms Declare told us they were now inviting people in marketing and communications in Aotearoa it was easy for us to decide to Declare ourselves for the climate.
- We’ve been working with clients driving climate action for fifteen years – and our seven years of science PR & comms work, across five National Science Challenges, has taught us to follow the science.
- Our talented team choose to work with us because we only ever ask them to work on clients that line up with their values and commitment to being part of the solutions.
- We’re a Certified B Corp which commits us to supporting genuine change.
- We understand the urgency. It was 2016 when we signed our first open letter to the New Zealand Government calling for ambitious climate action, and we celebrated the Zero Carbon Act when it became law four years later. Our founder and MD Katherine Dewar joined the Sustainable Business Network right back in 2003 and is currently an elected member of their Board, so we’re deep in working towards zero carbon now.
Because we work with organisations who share our zero carbon goals, across sustainable business, science and systems change, we get these beautiful synergies in our work and between our clients. Everything we do has a congruence which keeps things simple in the complexity of change.
As a team, we only want to use our skills and experience for good. It’s what fires us up and ensures we love our work together, even on the gnarly days.
Action is urgent
The science is clear – we have to rapidly get free from our fossil fuel addictions. For ALL the reasons.
We love the marketing, communications, PR and advertising tools we wield for our clients because they are powerful in our hands. Like any tool they can be used for good, to create positive change faster, or they can be used to slow down change, to maintain the gas-guzzling status quo.
That’s why, in June 2024, UN Secretary General António Guterres called coal, oil and gas corporations the “godfathers of climate chaos” who had distorted the truth and deceived the public for decades. Just as tobacco advertising was banned because of the threat to health, the same should now apply to fossil fuels, he said.
We agree.
And so does the Hague, the third-largest city in the Netherlands, as we covered in LinkedIn. The Hague’s new law will stop all adverting for fossil fuel products and highly climate-heating services such as cruises, petrol cars and gas suppliers on all public and private land in the city from 1 January 2025. The writing is on the wall. Or should that be the billboard?
So if you use an agency, ask them if they’ll join Comms Declare too.
If you are an agency or an outsource marketing team like us, you can Declare yourself for the climate, like we have, online here.
If you share our drive for urgent climate action and want to talk about communications, marketing sustainability, and PR without greenwash, get in touch.
Let’s stop the promotion of pollution together.
