Experts call for climate and health labels on gas pumps

Leading authorities in climate, health, communication and policymaking call for climate and health labels on points of sale of fossil fuels. Signatories include lead authors for the IPCC, advisors to the WHO and Californian lawmakers who paved the way for the electric car revolution. Read their statement here.

We need climate and health labels on gas pumps

The use of fossil fuels must be rapidly reduced to help clean our air and protect the health of future generations, as is outlined in the Paris Agreement on climate change. A wide variety of measures are needed to achieve this goal.

We call for labels on points of sale of fossil fuels that inform customers about the climate and health effects of burning these fuels. It is a low-cost, scalable intervention that connects the long-term hazards to the act of choosing a fuel. Such labels are an important tool in raising awareness about invisible fossil fuel harms, encouraging clean energy alternatives, and to normalize some of the behavioral changes associated with a cleaner transportation system.

Similarly, health information labels on tobacco packages successfully raised awareness about the harms of smoking. However, while there are at least 211 countries or jurisdictions that mandate health warnings on cigarette packages, the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the only jurisdiction that requires climate and health warnings on gas pumps. Sweden is the only country that mandates eco-labels on fuel dispensers, with a color-coded climate impact rating showing fossil fuels at the highest risk level (red).

Fossil fuel interests oppose climate and health labels on fuel dispensers just as the tobacco industry opposed health labels on tobacco packages. The future of the eco-labels on Swedish fuel dispensers is uncertain after a recent lobbying effort to get rid of them.

More and more countries are mandating ever more visible, explicit, and larger messages on cigarette packages. Their contribution to overall tobacco control is not a matter for debate. By the same token climate and health labels on fuel dispensers should be proliferated and improved, not removed. Their increasing adoption has a similar potential to contribute to greater public awareness of the risks of fossil fuels.

James Brooks, Chairperson, Think Beyond the Pump

Kristie L. Ebi, Professor of Global Health, Center for Health and the Global Environment, University of Washington

Bertil Forsberg, Professor of Environmental Medicine, Section of Sustainable Health, Umeå University

Mike Gabbard, Senator, Hawaiʻi State Legislature

Mike Gill, former Regional Director of Public Health, South East England

Andy Haines, Professor of Environmental Change and Public Health, Centre for Climate Change and Planetary Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Jesper Johansson, President, Gröna Mobilister (The Swedish Association of Green Mobilists)

Hye-Ryeon Lee, Professor and Chair, School of Communication and Information, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

Edward Maibach, Distinguished Professor and Founding Director, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University

Ezra Markowitz, Professor of Environmental Decision-Making, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Francisca Martinez, Deputy Chief of Staff, USC Schwarzenegger Institute

Patricia Nolan, City Councilor, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Hans Orru, Professor of Environmental Health, Center for Sustainable Development, University of Tartu

Fran Pavley, Senator (ret.), Environmental Policy Director, USC Schwarzenegger Institute

Drew Shindell, Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Earth Science, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University

Gregg Sparkman, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College

Stylianos Syropoulos, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, Boston College

Lorraine Whitmarsh, Professor and Director, Centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations, University of Bath

Even though compulsory climate labels on gas pumps are present in just a couple of jurisdictions worldwide, attempts have been made to introduce them in numerous places, including San Francisco, Seattle and North Vancouver. These attempts were thwarted or hijacked by fossil fuel interests.

There are ongoing efforts to introduce climate and health labels on gas pumps across Hawai’i. A bill sponsored by Senator Gabbard, one of the signatories of the above call, was passed by the State Senate in 2023, but has been blocked by a House Committee two consecutive years.

Nationwide eco-labels on Swedish fuel dispensers were introduced in 2021. Drivkraft Sverige, the trade organization for the large Swedish fuel companies, has argued that they should be removed in their current explicit form. This viewpoint was picked up by the Swedish Energy Agency in a recent evaluation, even though their own survey suggests that the labels have considerable effect and have large public support. The potential effect is great if the labels are improved. In particular, they need to be more visible.

Governor Schwarzenegger recorded a video greeting celebrating the Swedish labelling initiative in 2019. At a roundtable in Vienna that year, he said:

– Sweden has put a foot in the doorway.

We should use that foothold to open the door wide, not letting it close again.

Read more

The results of the evaluation of the eco-labels in spring 2024 by the Swedish Energy Agency are summarized in the article The case for sustainability labels on fuel dispensers.