How Corporate Marketing Shaped the Climate Crisis

I’ve been investigating the misinformation surrounding climate change and sustainability, and I’ve found that it often originates from the same source as many other falsehoods. The relentless pursuit of massive corporate profits.

Let me tell you a story that will probably make you angry.

You know the term “litter bug,” right? That cutesy insult for people who throw trash out of their car windows? It was invented by an advertising copywriter in the late 1940s, riffing off a popular dance called the Jitterbug. Harmless enough.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

In 1953, Vermont became the first state to pass a law requiring corporations to pay a mandatory tax on disposable beverage containers - basically making companies pay for the cleanup of their own waste. Other states were ready to follow suit. The American Can Company and Owens-Illinois (which became Owens Corning) saw the writing on the wall: they were about to be held accountable for the trash crisis their products were creating.

So they did what any profit-protecting corporation would do. They launched a massive PR campaign.
They resurrected the term “litter bug” and weaponized it. Through an organization called Keep America Beautiful - funded by Pepsi, Coke, Philip Morris, and Anheuser-Busch - they pumped out anti-litter PSAs that reframed environmental destruction as an individual moral failing rather than a corporate responsibility.

Then there was the famous Crying Indian advert.

A Native American man (actually a Sicilian actor from Louisiana named Iron Eyes Cody) paddling through polluted waters, arriving at a trash-strewn shore, with a single tear rolling down his cheek. “People start pollution. People can stop it,” he said. That ad aired over a billion times. It won Clios. It became iconic.

And it was a complete con job.

While those same corporations were running emotional ads shaming individual consumers, they were simultaneously lobbying state and federal governments to kill bills that would have banned single-use packaging. Instead of bottle bans, we got recycling bins. Instead of corporate accountability, we got individual guilt.

Sound familiar? Here’s the kicker.

We now know that about 90% of plastic placed in recycling bins ends up in landfills anyway. We’ve been dutifully separating our plastics for decades, feeling virtuous about doing our part, while the system was designed to fail from the start.

This isn’t just ancient history. This exact playbook is still being used today - just with different products and updated terminology. “Carbon footprint” is the modern descendant of “litter bug.” Both terms shift responsibility from the 100 companies that account for 70% of global emissions to individual consumers trying to make ethical choices at the grocery store.

Over the past month, I’ve been producing a four-part podcast series examining how marketing and advertising shaped our current reality around climate change and sustainability. My guest, John Gorman - an award-winning brand strategist with a psychology degree who’s worked with everyone from Fortune 500 companies to members of Congress - walked me through the entire con.

We covered the recycling myth, the reason every month seems to be “Truck Month” (spoiler: trucks and SUVs are five times more profitable than sedans) and how decades of shame-based marketing have led to the rise of conspiratorial thinking and institutional distrust. We even talked about flat earthers! Not to mock them, but to understand what happens when a society systematically dismisses people while preaching individual empowerment.

But we didn’t just catalogue the damage. In our final episode, John provided a genuine framework for moving forward because the tools that got us into this mess cannot get us out.

If you’ve ever wondered why climate messaging feels so ineffective, why people seem more polarized than ever, or why your own efforts to “do the right thing” feel increasingly futile - this series connects the dots in ways I genuinely didn’t expect.

I hope you’ll tune into at least one of these episodes:

Episode 406: “The Crying Indian: America’s Most Expensive Lie”
Episode 407: “Truck Month Forever: A Most Profitable Con”
Episode 408: “Flat Earth Rising: When Shame Breaks Society”
Episode 409: “Beyond Shame: Persuade Without Destroying Trust”

The series is called “The Shame Game: How Marketing Broke North America.”
Sometimes understanding how we got here is the first step toward figuring out where we need to go.