A Concept Note

Polluters pay artists and reduce their emissions

Artists create innovative advocacy tactics

The Pact builds momentum, gives voice to a new collective, and ensures committed outcomes

Pollution is your work of art.

What world are you making?

The Carbon Onset Pact is a matching project that builds truly global connections between artists and polluters who care about climate change. The project links people around the world who collectively pledge artistic activism and real pollution reductions backed by accountability, personal responsibility and financial commitment.

Unlike personal carbon offsets – in which consumers effectively pay other people to reduce their emissions so they can continue polluting without the guilt – with the Carbon Onset, polluters commit to making real reductions in their own polluting activities, while simultaneously financing artists in climate impacted countries who want support to develop artistic activism for proactive climate awareness and policy intervention.

Through a simple web-platform, artists in climate-impacted countries propose climate activist projects, which are then funded by polluters who have made real practical commitments to reduce their climate impacts. The Carbon Onset platform ensures art projects are completed as planned, pollution reduction is real and accounted for, and – most importantly builds a global pact for committed climate action.

Jerome Whitington, May 2014 Copyright Creative Commons BY/NC