Public opinion on climate change rarely shifts all at once. More often, it changes gradually, almost invisibly, until one day the old assumptions suddenly feel absurd. The boundaries of what counts as “normal” move quietly, and only in hindsight do people realize how dramatically public attitudes have changed.

The history of tobacco advertising offers a useful comparison. Many people remember cigarette commercials disappearing from television in the 1970s, but far fewer remember when tobacco billboards finally vanished decades later. Yet seeing a giant roadside Marlboro advertisement today would look to most people like a relic from another era. Climate politics may well be entering a similar phase, where behaviors once marketed as aspirational are increasingly treated as socially and environmentally irresponsible.

That changing perception is at the center of Amsterdam’s decision to become the first world capital to ban advertisements for fossil fuels and meat on publicly owned billboards. Beginning this month, the city removed public ads promoting airlines, diesel vehicles, and fast food containing meat. The restrictions extend beyond beef to include all animal protein, including chicken and fish.

Amsterdam is not the first Dutch city to take this approach. Haarlem introduced a ban on meat advertising in 2022, followed later by The Hague, which expanded restrictions to fossil fuels. Amsterdam officials framed the move as part of the city’s net-zero-by-2050 strategy, including plans to reduce meat consumption by half over the coming decades.

Supporters of the policy argue that the objective is not simply to ban advertisements, but to reshape cultural messaging. For decades, luxury travel, SUVs, and expensive steaks were marketed as symbols of success and aspiration. Campaigners now want high-emissions lifestyles to lose that cultural prestige. The first step, in their view, is making carbon-intensive consumption stop looking glamorous.

Another important aspect of the campaign is the effort to connect meat consumption with environmental destruction in the public imagination. While many people already associate flying with climate pollution — thanks in part to movements like Sweden’s “Flight Shame” campaign — dietary choices are still commonly viewed through the lens of personal health or animal welfare rather than emissions. Amsterdam’s campaign attempts to bridge that gap and frame meat consumption as a climate issue as well.

City officials also argued that publicly owned advertising space should not promote behaviors that directly undermine municipal environmental goals. If a city is spending public money trying to reduce emissions and improve health outcomes, they argue, it makes little sense to profit from advertising encouraging the opposite.

The ban immediately drew opposition from the travel industry and conservative commentators, many of whom framed the restrictions as an attack on free expression. A lawsuit challenging The Hague’s earlier advertising restrictions ultimately failed, with a Dutch judge ruling that municipalities were not obligated to avoid public health measures simply to protect the business interests of travel providers.

What makes the Dutch activists’ response particularly notable is the way they reframed the debate around freedom itself. Rather than emphasizing government control, advocates argued that constant corporate advertising narrows individual choice by relentlessly shaping public behavior. In that framing, limiting corporate influence becomes a way of expanding freedom rather than restricting it.

The controversy also reflects a larger European debate over public support for the meat industry. In 2020, the European Union funded a public relations campaign called “Become a Beefatarian,” which promoted beef as environmentally sustainable. Greenpeace later reported that the EU spent more than €250 million promoting meat and dairy products between 2016 and 2020. Critics argued that taxpayer money was being used to sanitize the environmental costs of industrial livestock production.

What makes Amsterdam’s decision especially significant is that it may simply reflect where public opinion is already heading. A 2022 EU-backed study found that nearly half of Europeans reported eating less meat than they once did, with many saying they had substantially reduced consumption in recent years. What initially appears radical may actually be policymakers catching up to changing consumer behavior.

Another major shift in climate perception is unfolding in the American West, where desperation over water shortages is reshaping attitudes toward geoengineering.

Cloud-seeding startup Rainmaker recently claimed it had generated more than 142 million gallons of water in the form of snow using drones that disperse silver iodide into clouds. Scientists remain skeptical about the scale of the company’s claims, and even optimistic estimates pale beside the massive water shortages facing the region. Still, the project represents a remarkable change in how governments are approaching controversial climate interventions.

Rainmaker’s technology is part of a broader family of geoengineering efforts aimed at deliberately manipulating the atmosphere. These include solar radiation management, cloud brightening, and direct air capture systems designed to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Such technologies have historically provoked strong public resistance, but worsening climate impacts are beginning to shift political calculations.

Despite the media attention surrounding Rainmaker and its young CEO Augustus Doricko, the company’s actual results remain uncertain. In Utah’s Bear River Basin, the company estimated it generated 50,000 acre-feet of water through modeling, while directly observed precipitation measured only 437 acre-feet.

Those numbers remain tiny compared to the scale of Utah’s water crisis. The Great Salt Lake, which has been shrinking dramatically and exposing toxic dust containing carcinogens, requires hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water annually just to stabilize.

Yet perhaps the most striking detail is not the technology itself, but the political response to it. Utah’s annual cloud-seeding budget has increased from roughly $350,000 five years ago to $7 million today. That represents a substantial investment in a technology that remains scientifically uncertain and politically divisive.

The public suspicion surrounding geoengineering has deep historical roots. American weather-control experiments date back to the 1940s, including Project Cirrus, a military effort to weaken hurricanes through cloud seeding. When one experimental storm unexpectedly changed course and caused severe damage, public fears intensified, especially after officials initially denied the project existed. Those fears never fully disappeared.

Today, several U.S. states, including Tennessee and Florida, have moved to ban various forms of geoengineering altogether. But Utah’s willingness to dramatically expand funding suggests that climate pressures are beginning to outweigh political hesitation. As drought intensifies, governments may become increasingly willing to experiment with technologies they once considered too controversial.

The broader question is whether public expectations of government are changing alongside the climate itself. Increasingly, citizens may expect governments not only to respond to disasters after they happen, but to intervene proactively in preventing them — even through atmospheric engineering once considered politically untouchable.

If political attitudes change slowly, markets can make those changes feel irreversible.

Such is the case with the electric vehicle market in the United Kingdom, where EVs are now retaining their value better than internal combustion vehicles for the first time. New EVs lost only a small percentage of their value over the past year, while petrol vehicles depreciated much more sharply.

Several factors explain the shift. Pandemic-era supply chain disruptions boosted demand for used vehicles generally, while government rebates for EV purchases helped strengthen demand in the UK specifically. Rising fuel costs also made gasoline-powered vehicles less attractive economically.

But the trend extends far beyond Britain. EV sales are surging globally, from China to Vietnam to the United States. Even automakers like Toyota, once skeptical that the world could fully transition to electric vehicles, have seen dramatic growth in EV sales.

At the same time, the economic case for renewable energy is becoming harder to dismiss. The International Renewable Energy Agency recently concluded renewable energy paired with battery storage can now compete with fossil fuels for dependable “firm” baseload power in areas of the world where wind and solar are most plentiful, even when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing.

The significance of that finding is difficult to overstate. For years, critics argued that renewables could never reliably replace coal or natural gas because of intermittency. Yet according to IRENA’s analysis, combinations of solar, wind, and battery storage are now outperforming fossil fuels economically in regions ranging from China to Saudi Arabia.

Together, these developments suggest that electric vehicles and renewable energy are no longer perceived primarily as risky or idealistic technologies. Consumers and investors increasingly see them as economically practical, and in many cases preferable. The politics may still lag behind, but the market signals are becoming difficult to ignore.