Tim Root on the energy implications of Trump’s war on Iran and why climate activists need to up their game
The Iran war energy price rise highlights the need to switch away from fossil fuels without delay, and is boosting investment in renewables and huge batteries to store energy. China is planning to “electrify everything”. Countries should emulate Spain, which has doubled its output of solar and wind energy since 2019. As a result, its electricity has gone from being very expensive to one of the cheapest in Europe. Investing in renewables saves us money not only in the short-term but also by reducing climate devastation. Extreme weather disasters have become five times more frequent over the past 50 years. Their frequency in 2024 was twice that of the annual average from 2003 to 2020. From 1995 to 2024, they caused more than 832,000 deaths and direct economic losses of nearly $4.5 trillion. Unless the world cuts emissions urgently to slow the temperature rise, these disasters will continue becoming more frequent. Continued temperature rise would also lead to more migration, with consequent likely social conflict.
Governments’ plans to cut emissions are inadequate. They should be increased to take account of the huge additional emissions caused by factors including wildfires, wars, the vast indiscriminate expansion of AI, and air-conditioning. Below are some cost-effective and fair options for additional emissions cuts. A high proportion of people are worried about climate breakdown and want action to be taken. However, these concerns have become less acute in recent years, largely due to the cost of living and other crises, and climate scepticism promoted by the far-right. A poll this March found that the “environment” was rated only the eighth most serious issue facing the U.K. Below, I discuss two key strategies to make climate campaigns more effective: a) including young people as part of the leadership; b) prominent advocates from most of the political spectrum.
Campaigns have not managed well enough to explain that investing in climate protection will save us huge costs (and immense death and destruction) later. While 42% of Britons endorsed this point in an October 2025 poll, too few people understand how urgent this is due to tipping points, i.e. the Earth’s reactions to rising temperature which seriously accelerate climate breakdown. A 2023 study concluded that “awareness of climate tipping points among the British public is low”.
Unfortunately, alongside this relatively small decline in public concern, studies show that British MPs actually underestimate people’s concern about climate. While 70% of people supported a “new solar energy park” being built in their area, MPs believed that only 11% would support it, and that 42% would oppose. MPs had a very similar misjudgement of people’s likely responses to a question about an onshore wind farm in the local area. These underestimates arise largely because MPs trust their direct interactions with constituents as being their best guide to public opinion, disregarding the fact that people who are motivated to complain to their MP are not representative. In November last year, the National Emergency Briefing held a meeting in Westminster in which leading climate scientists described the need for urgent action. All MPs were invited. Over four months later, only 7% of MPs have endorsed the call for a film made by the briefing team to be shown at prime time on the main TV channels. Amazingly, most MPs prioritise short-term political concerns over the survival of humanity! After Labour lost the Gorton and Denton by-election so spectacularly to the Green Party, we might have expected the Prime Minister to recognise that Labour would continue to lose many votes unless it improved on the environmental agenda. However, his response, in his letter to MPs, was merely to misrepresent the Greens and vow to continue with his existing plans.
Climate campaigns declining
Climate campaigners need to undertake a careful analysis of their strategy and tactics. The Climate Coalition has over 100 member organisations, including Greenpeace, National Trust, and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, with over 20 million supporters. In 2019, it held a lobby of MPs attended by over 12,000 people. However, its “mass lobby” in July 2025 attracted only about 5,000 people. In the period around every Valentine’s Day, the Climate Coalition holds Show the Love, a campaign aiming to show politicians what people “love – and what they want to protect”. This year, 500 people sent green heart postcards to a politician. By contrast, a petition calling for “migrant hotels” to be closed and their occupants deported got 257,442 signatures up to October 2025. This shows that we urgently need to work out how to arouse more concern about climate breakdown.
Campaigns need to become much more effective and ambitious. Leading up to Britain’s 2024 election, Greenpeace undertook Project Climate Vote. This involved activists (including myself) knocking on doors, asking people if they would undertake to vote with the climate in mind, and to tell party canvassers this. The plan aimed to show candidates that climate is an important issue for many people. The project missed its one million target, but its tally of 223,000 people opting to be “climate voters” was a significant achievement. However, this constituted only about 0.4% of the electorate. The outcome probably had little impact on candidates, who knew that this minority of voters with an imprecise wish would make little difference to the election result. Campaigns are most likely to succeed when they publicise a clear expectation upon candidates to deliver specific policies, so candidates know that their party’s failure to deliver would cause widespread anger.
Campaign demands need to be chosen strategically, following analysis of various factors, including the campaign’s strengths and weaknesses, and those of its targets and opponents. The campaign’s ability to mobilise support is a critical factor. Recent research suggests that we could harness huge support if we can show people that, contrary to their perceptions, most other people share their wish for stronger climate action. Recruitment could be enhanced quite a lot if young people played a prominent role in climate campaign leadership, thus encouraging other young people to join. One example of youth having a strong impact occurred in the USA in 2018, when a Congressional sit-in by the Sunrise movement convinced senior Democrats to push for much stronger climate action. People understand that young people’s future could be wrecked by climate breakdown, and therefore their views on the topic carry a strong moral power. However, as with all potential activists, moving young people from concern to activism requires some confidence that activism could succeed. This problem was evident in a recent study of school students.
Prominent cross-party climate advocates
Considerable evidence shows that certain top politicians have a strong influence on citizens’ political attitudes. Research among people aged 18-34 found that they would be more likely to take part in politics if they heard a positive statement by a politician about youth participation, partly because this boosted their trust in the political process. I have written before about the extensive research showing that social movement campaigns need mass and diverse participation in order to succeed. It would be a great advance if climate campaigns could encourage people such as Gordon Brown, Theresa May, and Nicola Sturgeon to motivate young people and others to play a prominent role. Each of them hasemphasised the existential nature of the climate emergency. Globally, one and a third times more people rate themselves as being right of centre than those who rate themselves left of centre. It is vital to attract mass support across the political spectrum. This is possible; a 2023 international survey found that people who identify as being on the right are only 13 per cent less supportive of climate action than those who identify as left of centre.
Most people believe that political parties should work together. If three former politicians from different parties united as climate advocates, this would boost campaigns considerably, showing that the climate emergency is so critical that it overrides ideological differences and party loyalties. Such co-operation is eminently possible. One positive sign is the fulsome way in which Rory Stewart praised Caroline Lucas’s work on the climate emergency. Big advances in climate policy were won by consensus across the political spectrum in Germany, Sweden, and the U.K., where only 5 MPs voted against the Climate Change Act in 2008. The well-known activist Luisa Neubauer recently spoke of work building alliances across the political spectrum in Germany.
Climate campaigns also need to learn from research showing that 85% of people generally trust doctors to tell the truth, 82% trust teachers, and 81% scientists. Having some of these professionals as prominent spokespeople alongside ex-politicians and young people would be a big advantage. By contrast, only 6% trust social media influencers.
Research shows that a critical condition for a social movement to succeed is unity. Because perspectives vary, different parts of a movement often adopt different tactics. Combining on an agreed goal is far more likely to succeed, partly because there will be many more supporters working towards the same goal. A unified movement will command more confidence and thus attract many more supporters than a divided one. This is illustrated by the remarkable success of Make Poverty History, which brought together over 500 organisations. It is vital that key figures in the climate movement compromise in order to agree on shared goals. Otherwise, we face continued failure, which will evoke pessimism among those who could have been fellow activists. We need climate movement leaders to show a similar ability to that of Adolfo Suarez, whose consensus-building style reconciled “apparently irreconcilable” political differences (p. 158), thus helping consolidate democracy in post-Franco Spain. This averted the strong possibility of a military coup. Suarez even persuaded the national assembly previously appointed by Franco to vote for its own abolition!
As various experts on activism have emphasised, it is important that campaign demands are striking and convey clearly the importance of the issue (p.115). Three demands which should be considered are the Frequent Flyer Levy, better public transport, and fair energy pricing. These should be matched with demands to reduce taxes on below-average earners, perhaps expressed as Tax Work Less, Tax Pollution More! This takes account of international research findings that people generally support climate policies which are perceived as fair.
Frequent Flyer Levy
About 15% of the population take 70% of all flights. The levy could be charged on a second return flight within ten months, and at a progressively higher rate for each subsequent flight within a year. It could result in an estimated 21% drop in aviation emissions. An August 2025 poll found that 52% of Britons support the levy, while 25% were opposed. 44% of Conservative supporters were in favour. A 2022 study found that the levy could raise £7.92 bn annually, which, adjusting for inflation since then, would be approximately £9bn. A campaign should highlight that this income could be used to make public transport more affordable and insulate poor people’s homes, thus cutting emissions and fuel poverty. As it would raise revenue, the government ought to be receptive to the proposal. The campaign’s slogans might include
Frequent Flying, Climate Dying
Frequent Flying, Planet Dying.
Better public transport
The number of British workers who commute by car or van is 1.5 times higher than those who use public transport, walk, or cycle. This poll found that more affordable public transport was the highest rated option for improving commuting. The average worker spends about £50 per week on commuting. A public transport campaign would harness the sense of unfairness felt by many people who, in doing the right thing by working, are penalised due to their need to commute. The government’s June 2025 Spending Review allocated £24 billion for roads, and only £13.7 billion on new/improved rail, buses, and decarbonising transport. Some parts of the business world would probably back the campaign, as it would encourage many people not to drive, and thus cut road congestion, which is very costly.
Fair energy pricing
This campaign would have a strong message that no one should be forced to choose between eating and heating. People are outraged to know that the health of the elderly or other poor people is harmed by fuel poverty. This outrage enabled the Energy for All Petition to get 662,000 signatures. Research shows that families in the highest income decile use, on average, well over twice the amount of electricity and gas as families in the lowest decile. In a three-tier scheme of payment for home energy (not commercial), the first tier would cover sufficient energy for essential use, subsidised so it was affordable for all. The 2nd tier, covering the quantity above the minimal amount up to a moderate amount, would be less subsidised. The third tier would be priced at a non-subsidised level to help fund a programme to retrofit and decarbonise at maximum possible speed. Chronically ill or disabled people who needed more than the usual amount of energy would need benefits to cover the extra cost, if this was not covered by their existing benefits. This scheme would ensure that nobody suffered fuel poverty, while people above the poverty line would have a strong incentive to use energy economically. The payment scheme would be formulated to replace the existing levies charged on all bills, and thus nullify the propaganda about green levies making energy more expensive for ordinary people. The government should also act on its 2024 commitment to “look at measures to de-link the price of renewables from gas”, as this link artificially makes renewable electricity more expensive than it would otherwise be. Greenpeace have proposed a detailed mechanism for this, which would achieve huge savings for households and businesses.
Climate campaigns must bite the bullet and unite. By doing so, we could at last make some significant victories, providing a springboard for further advances!