The Zero Carbon Campaign at COP26

Written By Izzy Goldstein

We made our mark on the summit with panel discussions, workshops with youth activists, a Glasgow-based mural, an artist and illustrator-led digital campaign, and a truly one of a kind carbon pricing card game.

The team in action across events 

Hannah Dillon, Head of Campaign, spoke at One Young World’s event ‘A life without carbon, can we get there?’ in the EXTREME Hangout at COP26, appearing alongside a number of panellists, including journalist Lucy Siegle and Dr Rebecca Heaton, Head of Sustainability at OVO Energy.

Watch the full event via YouTube:

Our carbon-eating mural

Words are pretty…

…But action creates change. ✊

We worked with Glaswegian artist Craig Black and Lawless Studio to launch a carbon-eating mural at COP26 to demand action from our world leaders.

The summit saw world leaders make a series of pledges around their intent to step in and save the planet. But, as we feared, these words fell far short of what was required to keep the goal of 1.5 degrees alive. In the words of Greta Thunberg they were pretty “bla bla bla”.

We launched the mural to draw attention to this empty rhetoric and demand tangible action from our world leaders - most notably when it comes to the need to #PriceOutPollution.

And the best thing about our mural? It quite literally cleans the air using a special paint that absorbs CO2.

Our carbon-eating mural, produced by Craig Black and Lawless Studio

Our workshop

We also ran a two hour workshop for climate activists at the EXTREME Hangout on the second day of COP26. In the workshop, we analysed the pledges that world leaders have made and co-created our own solutions for keeping global temperature rises beneath 1.5 degrees.

As well as capturing messages for world leaders in response to their ‘pretty words’, we worked with activist @taltakingpics to create a living wall of solutions that was displayed in the hangout for the rest of the conference, as a reminder that words are pretty (bla bla bla) but it is action that creates change.

Our digital campaign

We supplemented this Glasgow-based activity with a digital-first campaign created in collaboration with six artists - including Anthony Burrill.

The artists produced illustrations of the ‘beautiful promises’ made by world leaders at COP26, to help reinforce the need for them to match their big talk with big policies.

The designs were published on Youth and Public Empowerment Day and were shared by a number of activists and influencers.  

At the end of the summit, we sent framed versions of the prints to the leaders who made these promises in order to remind them of what they said, and their responsibility to deliver.

Our card game 

We had a feeling that talking about carbon pricing might be a little daunting for some COP26 delegates (*cough* Boris Johnson *cough*)...

So we made our very own card game to help world leaders break the ice and plunge into the chilly waters of climate negotiation small talk!

The deck includes 20 technical conversation starters (and their translations) to help world leaders #PriceOutPollution. If you’d like to bag yourself a set, you can do so by downloading the digital versions of the cards below, along with the print ready-artwork.

Izzy Goldstein
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