I have written a short e-mail to them, along the same lines as your e-mail. I hope others on the site can take five minutes to do the same.

Calvin logged in as Phil (and to lazy to change usernames)

Dear Editor,

I regularly read New Scientist which i find an invaluable source of information on many topics, particularly climate change. It seems that on an almost weekly basis more information comes to light on the seriousness of climate change. From the rapid melting of the Greenland ice cap to the potential of enormous positive carbon feedbacks due to the die back of Amazonia or the release of methane from the tundra regions.

I am therefore regularly disappointed to see large glossy adverts for vehicles which are far from sustainable and which contribute hugely and pointlessly to a deadly serious problem. Does the magazine have an ethical policy? Presumably you would not, for example, allow advertisements for fir clothing based on endangered animal species. Why then will you take dirty money from companies promoting products which will lead to the extinction of many species? When will climate change be serious enough for NS to look elsewhere for advertising revenues?

It is easy for all of us to wait for government action--action we all hope is going to be ramped up--but in reality, as David Reay states, climate change begins at home. Climate change is the responsibility of us as individuals, those in government and organisation such as new scientist in Business!

Regards,
Calvin Jones

yeah mike (siteone), i totally agree. i always moan about the new scientist classified advertising policy. front cover : interesting headlines about the natural world and the critical systems failures we may face. page two and three : glossy car advertisement spread.

i think that chief scientists in research departments are being targeted by these ads, big men (yes, men !) who think they might need a large car to accentuate their status, and are unable to look beyond their own narrow field of research to notice the impact of fossil fuel-based transport, heating, electricity generation and industry on the world in general. blinkered men, who want a posh family car to transport them from the safe confines of home to the safe empire in their academic ivory towers and not have to waste their precious mental powers on dealing with people by taking the bus, or be in nature by riding a bike.

these adverts hold absolutely no interest for the average reader of the magazines. they are just a cash cow to earn money for new scientist. but, it is ethically tragic.

also, the number of travel ads in the magazine seems to be rising - because we all know that poorly paid research assistants can currently afford cheap flights - and scientists going on high powered conferences need to travel by air. absolutely crass marketing.

new scientist needs to address their advertising platform as a matter of extreme urgence if they want us to take their editorial policy on climate change seriously.

let's analyse a recent edition of new scientist : 18 march 2006 :-

front cover : "GLOBAL WARMING : Lies, damn lies and the hockey stick".
page 2 and 3 : "MEDIOCRITY IS A SIN" advert for an alfa 159 car. in your wet dreams, postgraduate student. you cannot afford one, not in money terms nor in planet terms. this is economic pornography.
page 4 : advert for the new mitsubishi shogun field.
page 5 : editorial "it's all around us" on the evidence for global warming.
page 20 : whales move north as ocean warms.
page 24 : letters about water stress.
page 40 and onwards : "Grudge Match" about the global warming hockey stick.
page 48 : review of gaia theory books "we don't have time to wait for cheap solar energy".
page 52 : ad for airline company bmi.
back cover : ad for mercedes benz e-class car.

i feel physical disgust at the sight of most motor cars, they are ugly, dangerous, polluting lumps of metal and glass. they hold no status or aspirational quality for me. i really dislike seeing photos of cars in magazines and newspapers (and in cinemas, on outdoor boards, everywhere). for me, the sight of a car makes me feel the planet has a bad case of acne - infected sores on her face that really disfigure her.

new scientist : you have an editorial conflict of interest : you cannot support both nature and money systems. stop buying cars. stop selling cars.

New Scientist's response on the matter including a quote from SiteOne letter:

www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025460.300.html

NB. the post seems to be consistently accompanied by an avert for a Lexus RX400h hybrid SUV with strapline "High performance and low CO2 emissions", whatever that means.

I have just sent the following to Dominic Feltham, Publishing Director whose email address is dominic.feltham@rbi.co.uk

Dear Dominic,

I have now read the editorial response to my point of view and found it fell very short of what I expected. It is very convenient to say that advertising and editorial don't interfere with each other. But in the case of climate change, an ethical stance must be made to make a sea change in both governmental, corporate and public thinking alike. I don't think you would expect to see a cancer specialist informing a patient they had a tumour while puffing on a cigarette, so why promote high performance cars in NS whilst telling us how bad its going to get if we don't seriously reduce global CO2 emissions.

Surely you see the logic of this?

Saying that, I do understand that you need to include advertising and I don't expect you to present a magazine with just editorial content. However, I would very much like to see you ban the promotion of air travel and only promote low emission vehicles. I am certain that with a bit of effort you could attract advertising that was not from direct polluters without loosing revenue. It is just a matter of will. And of course you can always place those kinds of ads in Flight International and Motor Transport!

Cars and air travel are icons of pollution. The ever growing number of adverts promoting performance vehicles (Jags, Mercs and Saabs) that appear in NS are going to make your editorial look ever more shallow and hypocritical. To the readership, it doesn't mean a tap if there is a 'Chinese Wall' between editorial and adverting, NS is NS and we expect a higher standard to be kept.

Regards,
Mike

Reed Business Information who publish New Scientist also publish motor and air transport magazines. Have a look at http://www.rbi.co.uk

I suppose there is a positive side to this. At least the advertising people at New Scientist haven't told the editorial staff to stop writing worrying articles about climate change because advertisers are complaining that car sales are down.

We are probably going to need to have either complete a ban on advertising like cigarettes or each package should have a health warning. You could make it pretty large on the outside of a car, especially a 4x4. May sound ridiculous but that's the kind of thing that will drive the message home. No pun intended.