More than 200 complaints at government's climate change TV ad

The advertising regulator has received more than 200 complaints that the government's latest TV campaign on climate change is misleading.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change launched the £6m campaign, in which the government throws its weight behind the scientific evidence that climate change is man-made and will affect us all, last Friday.

The campaign, by ad agency AMV BBDO, marked a significant change in the government's marketing around its umbrella Act on CO2 initiative. The DECC said it has taken the stronger approach because research has shown that more than half of the UK public think climate change will have no effect on them.

However, over the past week the Advertising Standards Authority has received 202 complaints about the campaign.

Some have argued that there is no scientific evidence of climate change; others claim there is a division of scientific opinion on this issue and therefore the ad should not have attributed global warming to human activity.

Another complaint was that the ad, which features a father telling his daughter a scary bedtime story about climate change, is inappropriate to be seen by children because it is "upsetting and scaremongering".

The ASA is assessing the complaints and will make a decision on whether to launch an investigation in due course.

"The Department of Energy and Climate Change stands by the messages in the television ad, and the creative approach," said the energy and climate change minister, Joan Ruddock. "The ad is directed at adults, but we know that the proposition to 'protect the next generation' is a motivating one. Climate change is not just a problem for generations of people far in the future, it is happening now, it affects us and our children, and we owe it to them to take action now to prevent its worst effects."

The DECC also defended the science standing behind the claims it makes in the TV campaign. "It is consistent with government policy on the issue, which is informed by the latest science and assessments of peer-reviewed, scientific literature made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and other international bodies," she added.

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