Climate activists and celebrities team up for #CodeRedActNow anti-fossil fuel campaign

Climate activists and celebrities have taken to social media this week to encourage people to sign an anti-fossil fuel treaty. 

Playing on the urgent tone of Covid, they’ve named their campaign #CodeRedActNow. 

Mikaela Loach, climate activist and the brainchild behind the project, said “a tiny idea had already reached over half a million people in a few hours.”

The activists are trying to get people to engage in the climate crisis by sharing information from the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.  By recruiting well-known supporters such as Aisling Bea, Bonnie Wright, Jack Harries, Gemma Styles and Maggie Baird, the activists aim to raise awareness of the climate crisis and encourage people to take action.

Activist Tolmeia Gregory said: “We break the issue down into digestible pieces of content and then team up with celebrities or people with big platforms to reach out of our echo chamber.”  

Loach said: “We are trying to prioritise platforms that don’t talk about the climate.”

The campaigners are also sending out 60 second videos on Instagram to raise awareness of the report, with the aim of engaging a new audience.

They are calling for people to sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which aims to de-escalate the continuation of coal, oil and gas. The latest IPCC report shows coal, oil and gas are responsible for 86% of all carbon emissions In the past decade.

The campaign is also being shared by the likes of Ecosia, Feminist, Future Earth, Greenpeace UK and Intersectional Environmentalist.  

The aim is to include the treaty in the Paris Agreement, which aims to avoid climate change by limiting global warming.  

“The Paris Agreement failed to really incorporate the phasing out of fossil fuels, production and traction,” said Zahra Biabani, one of the organisers of the campaign.   

Fossil fuels are said to supply around 80 per cent of the world’s energy, and are used to produce plastic, steel and a wide range of other products.

Loach said: “There’s a lot of big words and big proclamations of being ‘green leaders’ or ‘leaders in climate justice’…But that’s not seen in practical action. A lot of the work that we’re doing just exists to put pressure on [governments] to do what they said they were going to do.”  

Loach told The Big Issue why positive action is so important, saying: “The options aren’t between staying as we are now or taking climate action. The options are destruction or climate action.”