Public Workshop: Building campaigns to beat big oil: Lessons from tobacco control.    

Misinformation campaigns are eroding support for climate action. What can be done, how do we drive transformations when powerful bad faith actors are blocking progress?

Monday 10^th November    6-7.30pm.  

Room G15 Fulton Building, University of Sussex, Falmer, B1.  (twig.guides.given, 10 minutes walk from Falmer rail station, bus routes 25, 25X, 23, 28/29, 5B, 3X, parking available on campus for a fee, campus map at https://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/campus/map.)  

We recognise that systems change is required urgently to address the climate and biodiversity crises —but how do we drive transformations across scales when powerful bad faith actors are blocking and indeed winding back progress? This interactive workshop draws lessons from the decades-long battle against Big Tobacco, exploring what climate and nature campaigners can learn from that fight. Together, we’ll examine how insights into sustainable communications, contested campaigning, and strategic message development can spark and sustain deep, lasting shifts in social systems. The session will harness our collective experience to ideas for campaigns and messages capable of taking on Big Oil and all their proxy actors!

The workshop will be given by Professor Iain Black of the University of Strathclyde. Professor Black is Professor of Sustainable Consumption, University of Strathclyde Business School. His main expertise and interest is in sustainable consumption and climate change. His research focuses on why people choose not to consume, deconsumerisation, responses to scarcity and why we say will act sustainably but don’t. Recent publications include “Learning from tobacco control : understanding and challenging negative feedback loops”  Global Tipping Points (2025),  “Triggering positive tipping points”  Black & Zorell  SCORAI (2024). He is a reviewer of The Global Tipping Points Report 2025 (Lenton et al, 2025) and contributed to the Scottish Government's Climate Change Engagement Strategy.

Tickets are free but limited number, available at https://tinyurl.com/5n8z7c99

By: Martin Todd
Last updated: Monday, 3 November 2025