Hey Drill listeners, we are talking today to Thumbcasleegers.

She heads up a group in the Netherlands that's working to ban fossil fuel ads.

And I wanted to talk to her because that is an idea that has been floated here as well.

And I was curious to hear if she had the same sort of reception there as people have gotten here.

How the media is reacting to it, all of those kinds of things.

One of the really interesting things that she mentioned was that in the Netherlands,

Shell sponsors a lot of educational and science and culture events.

And that is one of the biggest ways that they advertise especially to young kids.

So they are tackling that part of advertising as well.

So not just media ads but also event sponsorship, which would be a huge deal if people in the US picked up.

Because the oil companies very much do the same thing here.

If you listened to our episode on Louisiana, you would have heard about Shell sponsoring Jazz Fest there.

And BP sponsoring all kinds of museum exhibits and Chevron sponsoring various educational and arts groups.

Oil companies do that kind of thing to establish what they call a social license to operate.

This is an idea that BP first formalized in a couple of papers following the Deepwater Horizon spill.

It's the notion that the most important thing really to fossil fuels ability to stay alive and stay

profitable is a social license. In other words, a license from the public to continue doing what

they're doing, a sense that whatever damage they might be doing is outweighed by the good that they do.

We're going to get into all of that and more on today's episode coming up right after this message

from today's sponsor. I'm Amy Westervalt and this is Drilled.

I'm Amy Westervalt.

I was hoping you could start with having you introduce yourself and talk a bit about this

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