It seems there are a good few people really keen on getting rid of the internal-combustion engine, and many of them appear to live in Europe. Stockholm recently unveiled plans to ban ICE cars from certain parts of its urban area, and now the Dutch city of The Hague has decided to ban the advertising of any vehicles powered by fossil sauce. The city council has been talking about this step for the last two years, and has now voted it through. The ban comes into effect on January 1, 2025.

From that date onward, carmakers can still advertise their brands in general, but no vehicles using ICEs can be shown or talked about. Adverts for electric vehicles are exempt from the ban. The measure was introduced into the political process by an environmental initiative called Reclame Fossielvrij (or Fossil-Free Advertising), and the organization is now hoping that it will have a snowball effect in the country and further afield.

Even before the ban in The Hague, other European cities have already been thinking about similar measures, with the Dutch cities of Amsterdam, Zwolle, and Tilburg also considering such bans. The Austrian city of Graz is going even further, and is debating to not only prohibit the advertising of ICE vehicles but also ban adverts that promote services related to fossil fuels.

What makes The Hague’s move different is the fact that it was done completely under local government regulations. This could indeed set a precedent and empower other cities to do their own thing, rather than wait for national parliaments to introduce nationwide bans and then implement them.

Banning things might seem restrictive, and many people will even say this is another example of nanny-state overreach, but fact is that air pollution has a massive impact on human well-being, and ICE vehicles contribute a lot to it.

The air quality index in Metro Manila, for example, regularly reaches “very unhealthy” levels according to DENR-EMB air-monitoring stations. Research by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air has found that air pollution was responsible for 66,230 deaths in the Philippines in 2019, of which 64,920 deaths were estimated to be adults and 1,310 children.

Not all pollution comes from vehicles, of course, but any step that helps toward making the air we breathe cleaner should be welcomed. So, who’s going to phone Malacañang and suggest this for the Philippines?