The Republic of Everyone has joined a list of 98 (and growing) creatives, communications agencies and media experts from around the world in declaring a “climate emergency”.
Inspired by a call out from Extinction Rebellion, the signatories agree “creativity has consequences” and that the “industry cannot be neutral”.
“As communicators,” the Climate Emergency and Creative Conflicts letter reads, “we have the power to inspire change, or to keep serving destruction”.
The letter goes on to pledge signatories to practical measures, beyond a surface value commitment to using their power of persuasion and storytelling for good.
“Remember,” it highlights, “we’re good communicators and might be able to wiggle out of this.”
The pledge therefore requires that agencies commit to disclosing their “climate conflicts” by the end of 2019. This includes revealing the percentage of turnover categorised by industry as to expose income created via “fossil fuel companies and other high carbon clients”.
This disclosure is posited as the first step to moving away from support for unsustainable industries by abstaining from fossil fuel briefs. The ultimate goal is to “divest creative talent from destruction”.
The pledge can also be taken by individual creatives who are called to “simply not work on fossil fuel client briefs, no matter which agency [they] are with”. So far there are 140 individual signatories.
To read the letter in full, see all signatories and potentially sign up yourself, head to the Creative Climate Disclosure website.
The Creative Climate Disclosure letter was spearheaded by creative agency Futerra as a response to an address from the Extinction Rebellion in May 2019 reminding the marketing industry that they were not exempt.
