Climate Change in Vogue

Along with campaign groups WeCAN, Plane Stupid and film-makers Franny Armstrong and Lizzie Gillett, my group, Climate Rush, appeared in Vogue this month. We were photographed at the G20 Climate Camp – a protest against putting profit before the planet. We stopped for a brief preen in the mirrored window of a riot police van just before the door slid open to reveal a van full of laughing riot police pouting and flicking their hair. An air of camaraderie with the cops is one thing, but we were even more embarrassed afterwards when bona fide anti-capitalist protesters asked what we were doing posing in front of a big silver light reflector, being told to look more natural by a woman with shiny hair. Surely we hadn’t agreed to be photographed by a magazine which promoted wild consumerism and the jet-set lifestyle? In the end we were so embarrassed that we decided to pull out of the article, and didn’t give an interview.

The photo and a short piece about the Climate Rush was published anyway, and I’m glad it was, and not just because it means I can leave copies lying around the Earthscan office (open at page 146). The article is about women activists and campaigners taking action on climate change, for which Climate Rush was an obvious choice – we’re a women-led group inspired by the Suffragettes. Our protests embrace girlishness: we encourage people to come dressed in period costume, we offer tea to the police and share picnics. We also try to do what the Suffragettes did, launching a persistent, high-profile campaign which means our voice on climate change, like theirs on women’s suffrage, is always audible, whether to the public, to politicians and corporations or in the media. Which is why a Vogue article is a valuable weapon in our artillery. The Suffragettes printed their own newspaper, Votes for Women, which contained fashion advice alongside news from the frontline of the campaign. They invented an iconic style of dress – all-white with green and purple sashes – and produced branded merchandising on a huge scale. These were not frivolities but an integral part of their fight to win the vote. In the fight against climate change, we must be similarly inventive, and similarly willing to embrace all kinds of media, to get our message out to as many people as possible.

There is a wariness in protest movements of being perceived as zeitgeisty, trendy, flash-in-the pan. An article was published in The Sunday Times during G20 titled ‘How Demos Became Cool’, full of tips on how to achieve the latest look (sensible advice it is too: “flea-market finds are in; labels and fancy, expensive footwear are out”). The thing is, we desperately want to make climate change itself a passing trend, which demands a massive push to raise awareness to all parts of society, including the jet-set Vogue-reading demographic. So while climate change is still an issue worth caring about, we’ve just got to appear in Vogue as often as we can.