This Capital City Just Banned Advertising for Meat, Fossil Fuels, and…

In the 19th century, European immigrants might write home a letter including something such as the following. “Dear Uncle Maarten, it’s unbelievable: Here in America, I can eat meat every day!” Such a lifestyle was unheard of in the Old World. And now there may be the 21st-century version of this incredulity. It goes something like this:

“Dear Uncle Maarten, it’s unbelievable: Here in America, I see meat advertisements every day!”

This isn’t so far-fetched now that Amsterdam, Holland, has just banned the advertising of all meat products. This comes on the heels, too, of another story about the “War on Meat.” In that case, cited were two “bioethics” professors who suggested spreading ticks whose bite can cause a severe meat allergy. (Yes, really.) Insofar as drug capital Amsterdam goes, however, meat is not the only target. As The Independent reported Monday:

Amsterdam has become the first capital city in the world to ban public advertising for both meat and fossil fuel products.

Adverts for burgers, petrol cars, and airlines have been removed from billboards, tram shelters, and metro stations from 1 May.

The ban, approved by the city council on 22 January following a proposal by the GreenLeft and Party for the Animals parties, covers advertising for air travel, cruises, and petrol-powered cars alongside meat products.

Politicians behind the move say it is about aligning Amsterdam’s public spaces with its own environmental targets — carbon neutrality by 2050 and halving local meat consumption over the same period.

“The climate crisis is very urgent,” said Anneke Veenhoff of the GreenLeft Party. “If you want to be leading in climate policies and you rent out your walls to exactly the opposite, then what are you doing?”

… On meat, the memo describes excessive consumption of animal products as “harmful to the environment and generally undesirable from an animal welfare perspective”. The council draws an explicit parallel with tobacco regulation, calling the ban “comparable to a ban on tobacco advertising: a visible discouragement policy in public spaces.”

Below is a relevant tweet, featuring the two politicians who pushed the ban. The aforementioned Veenhoff is on the left (and on the left).

The Carnivores Respond

The social-media reaction to the meat Machiavellianism was not surprising. Some alluded to the above picture and lamented liberal white women’s prominence in leftist-movement vanguards. What most said isn’t suitable for publication. But at issue is in essence a sentiment Democratic strategist James Carville expressed in a 2024 interview.

Explaining the Democratic Party’s problems, he said that it had “too many preachy females…. ‘Don’t drink beer, don’t watch football, don’t eat hamburgers, this is not good for you,’” was the sermon, he complained. “The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.’”

Other respondents said, essentially, “In your face!” (example below) — with juices running down their chins.

Yet others, such as the following bloke, made a nutritional case for meat consumption.

And a different user (below) pointed out that the Dutch have bigger fish to fry (even though they frown on fish, too) than advertising bans.

But try telling that to greentopian Veenhoff. Apparently a true believer, she justified her prohibition, saying:

If you’re trying to get rid of an addiction, it’s not very handy to see it everywhere.

She has much company, too, as Amsterdam isn’t alone in its greentopian madness. As CBS News informed yesterday:

In 2022, the Dutch city of Haarlem became the first in the world to announce a ban on most meat advertisements in public spaces. It became law two years later, along with a ban on fossil fuel ads.

The Hague, also in The Netherlands, became the first city in the world to enshrine a legally-binding fossil fuel ban in 2025.

… Around the world, more than 50 cities have banned or are moving to ban ads on fossil fuel and meat products, in a push to decrease global carbon consumption.

(Note the last line’s propaganda. Calling CO₂ “carbon” is like calling H₂O “hydrogen.”)

“Forks Over Knives”?

Of course, though, avoiding meat is at least good for you, right? Perhaps not. A European study found that, related Big Think in 2017,

Austrian adults who consume a vegetarian diet are less healthy (in terms of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), have a lower quality of life, and also require more medical treatment.

And what about when that treatment gets prohibitively expensive and life becomes too unbearable? Fret not. The Netherlands has euthanasia on the menu (though not steak as your last meal).

So what does this story mean? Will McDonald’s ads disappear in Amsterdam even faster than the unfruitful native population? Not if they’re clever. They could, for example, advertise “delicious, sesame-seed buns.”

“And who knows?” they could add, “You just may find something even more delicious between them!”

What’s for sure, however, is that the globalist greentopians are dead serious about their anti-prosperity agenda. As CBS News also tells us:

In June 2024, the head of the U.N. Antonio Guterres called for a ban on advertising of oil, gas and coal as climate change continued to ravage the globe.

“In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor,” he said. “We are not only in danger. We are the danger.”

CBS did not specify, however, if the “we” Guterres referenced was man generally or just leftists. But I do know this: Were I an asteroid, I’d aim for Amsterdam.