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SUSTAINABILITY In this issue, we look at the ways that creatives and designers are helping to shape a more sustainable world. This might be through becoming a B Corp, or redesigning our cities so they are less polluted. We look at the arts organisations that are trying to create more sustainable events, and examine the urgent need for tech brands to take more responsibility with their products. First up, though, we hear a clarion call for the creative industries to engage fully with the climate crisis and use their many skills to help solve it Shutterstock 60
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WHAT WE NEED IS WHAT WE DO: A CALL FOR A RADICAL REIMAGINING OF LIFE TO COMBAT THE CLIMATE CRISIS Tackling the climate crisis will take imagination and grit, attributes that creatives and designers have in abundance. Which is why, say Pentagram and Do The Green Thing’s Ashley Johnson, Katee Hui and Naresh Ramchandani, they should be central to leading the change the world needs. But first, they also need to acknowledge how they may have contributed to the problem As we step and misstep through a global pandemic and return to some version of life as it was, we must remember that we were facing a climate emergency, and still are. If you recall, we had ten years to dramatically reduce global emissions to hold most of the world to a Parisratified 1.5°C of global warming and avoid unthinkable damage to human life and the lives of millions of other species on the planet. We now have nine and a half. In some senses, those lockdown months weren’t wasted. Before the pandemic, it was hard to imagine the compassion we would find, the sense of community we would develop, the endeavour we would show, and the radical investment we would make to deal with an international crisis. Equally, it was hard to imagine the quiet cities, clean air and plummeting carbon measures the pandemic would unexpectedly gift us. Now, as we begin to reboot the global economy, we mustn’t reach towards life as it was but reimagine life as it has to be: set resolutely for a climate-positive future. And that means summoning our collective creativity and determination to reimagine much that lies within three spheres of influence we all have access to – our personal lives, the societies we are a part of, and the structural systems we operate in and uphold every day. Let’s look at these spheres one by one. In order to avert climate catastrophe and establish a kinder, more sustainable relationship between humans and planet Earth, each of us must radically reimagine our own personal relationship with it. It’s important to acknowledge that some humans are vastly more responsible for the climate crisis than others. And we’ll never be able to fully solve that crisis with solutions like the size of lightbulbs and plastic straws. But such an existential problem does require more agency from b 61

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SUSTAINABILITY

In this issue, we look at the ways that creatives and designers are helping to shape a more sustainable world. This might be through becoming a B Corp, or redesigning our cities so they are less polluted. We look at the arts organisations that are trying to create more sustainable events, and examine the urgent need for tech brands to take more responsibility with their products. First up, though, we hear a clarion call for the creative industries to engage fully with the climate crisis and use their many skills to help solve it

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