Hey, thanks Irisado! Moral support is welcome too. It's a damned shame about Brexit, as you well know. I'd be happy to continue our discussion of it in the other thread although I'm not sure there is much news to discuss.
You're right about the similarity to the anti-tobacco movement. In both cases we have vested interests promoting consumption that is detrimental to public health for their own financial benefit. Regulation of the tobacco industry is an important precedent that might help bring about a ban on fossil fuel advertising. I can only hope that we'll get there sooner rather than later.
You're also right that a lot more needs to be done to tackle our use of fossil fuels. On the face of it it's as easy as just 'keeping it in the ground' as the slogan at street protests goes. It really is a wicked problem though because of how heavily we rely on fossil fuels and their byproducts and how just about all 8 billion of us share at least some responsibility for the present crisis. Realistically, not nearly enough individual people are going to change their consumption pattern to solve this crisis so the onus is on political and business leaders to take action. Individual action to consume sustainably is still good because every little bit helps, of course, but that alone won't be enough. I'm not perfect in my own consumption habits and I wouldn't expect anyone else to be simply because the system we live in makes it so hard to. The climate impact of most consumer products isn't accurately reflected in their price or even their labeling and our mobility system is far too car centric, to name but two examples.
One form of low-effort but hopefully high-impact activism I recently got into is shareholder activism. By buying just one share in an oil company I have joined
Follow This, a collective of activist green shareholders. Follow This is lobbying for major shareholders in oil companies, like pension funds, to vote for its resolutions at shareholders' meetings. These resolutions require the oil companies to set themselves emissions targets in line with
the Paris Climate Accords, i.e. net zero CO2 emissions around 2050. Follow This exercises the voting rights attached to my shares on my behalf. My vote probably won't make a difference by itself, but the more members Follow This has the more likely other shareholders will be to listen to it. Already with just a few thousand members on board, we got 15 to 33% of the votes at several major oil companies this year. Imagine how much more successful we could be if everyone who signed the EU petition (or wished they could) joined!