Artists Are Protesting Corporate Sponsorship Of The UN Climate Talks With Fake Ads All Over Paris

After huge rallies around Australia drawing attention to the need for clean energy and an end to fossil fuels, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change is now underway in Paris. The talks feature around 150 world leaders and 30,000 diplomats and over the next week or so they’ll be declaring new commitments, forging new partnerships, and discussing possible solutions to that niggling problem about our planet eventually becoming a giant ball of lava.

This has gone well so far. President Obama has pledged US commitment regardless of who is successor may be and acknowledged his nation’s faults as polluters. Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has reaffirmed his country is “back [and] here to help” after a conservative government who weren’t exactly eco-friendly. And Malcolm Turnbull is kind of awkwardly lurking on the sidelines: pledging some money, backing out of deals on fossil fuels, and hoping no one links him to that guy who said coal was “good for humanity”.

But some of the most interesting stuff has also taken place outside of the talks, most notably from artists and protesters instead of politicians.

As climate change marches and demonstrations were banned as a precautionary measure following the city’s recent terrorist attacks, around 10,000 environmentalists instead placed their shoes outside the Place de la Republique on Sunday morning. The silent protest and its corresponding message was so striking, Pope Francis and UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon at one point joined them.

A sea of shoes in Place de la Republique in Paris: protests are banned here so you have to imagine them #COP21 pic.twitter.com/AetuepjzAt

— David Shukman (@davidshukmanbbc) November 29, 2015

Now, another type of innovative action has popped up around the city. More than 600 artworks from 80 artists around the world have been installed over ads in public spaces by guerilla art group Brandalism. Critiquing the corporate sponsorship of the event and the environmental responsibilities of big brands more generally, the works draw particular attention to airlines, car manufacturers and chemical companies which are still responsible for a great deal of harmful global emissions.

All artworks have also been placed in JCDcaux ad space: another business partnering with the event.

“By sponsoring the climate talks, major polluters such as Air France and GDF-Suez-Engie can promote themselves as part of the solution, when actually they are part of the problem,” said Joe Elan in a statement on the Brandalism website. “We are taking their spaces back because we want to challenge the role advertising plays in promoting unsustainable consumerism. The advertising industry force feeds our desires for products created from fossil fuels, they are intimately connected to causing climate change.”

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See the full gallery here.