Tim Root says the breadth of climate campaigns needs to be widened and slogans geared to children
Rising temperatures are causing severe Earth system reactions, threatening to tip us into runaway heating. Frequent wildfires emit much carbon and reduce the number of trees absorbing carbon. Vicious spirals like this make reducing emissions urgent. However, most governments are permitting additional emissions, e.g. increasing aviation, ignoring the increasing frequency of extreme weather disasters. The death and destruction underline that campaigners should urgently re-evaluate their strategy. Three-quarters of climate scientists surveyed estimated that unless we increase emissions cuts, we face a cataclysmic 2.7°C temperature rise.
So let’s look at appeals for campaign collaboration and research pointing to the need for a campaign alliance representing most of the political spectrum. One well-researched report, informed by climate insiders’ views, called for campaigns to work together across “economic, political and cultural differences”. Similarly, Caroline Lucas, Britain’s first Green member of parliament, said environmental NGOs should “work together in a more deeply collaborative way”.
Trump and the far right are attacking climate policy. Some mainstream conservatives, including Friedrich Merz, have copied this hostility to climate action. We must urgently reverse the decline in climate campaign activity and impact. Greenpeace International’s most recent annual report was unable to mention any campaign victories in cutting existing greenhouse gas emissions. Former British Friends of the Earth director Jonathon Porritt recently criticised most “mainstream environmental organisations”, stating that they habitually “double down on decades of demonstrably ineffective tactics”.
Most people want strong climate action
New research suggests that we could harness huge support for climate campaigns if we can show people that, contrary to their perceptions, most other people share their wish for stronger climate action. A poll of 125 nations found that 89 per cent of people want their government to do more to tackle climate. The 2023 World Risk poll found that 72 per cent say climate change is a ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ serious threat to people in their country in the next 20 years.
Globally, one and a third times more people rate themselves as being right of centre than those who rate themselves left of centre. In the 2024 European parliament elections, right-of-centre parties won 1.6 times more seats than left of centre parties. Our movement could become much weaker if the trend towards climate being perceived as chiefly a left wing issue continues. The Climate Majority Project point out that the radical climate “movement’s tone, culture and appeal, appeal mainly to the “far left” – a small segment of the population”. Climate campaigns must 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.
Unity is strength
The Oxford University Decisive Decade report stated that achieving net-zero “will require an exponential increase in engagement and collaboration from businesses, civil society organisations, governments, and individual citizens around the globe”. After comprehensive research on many social movements, Erica Chenoweth drew the conclusion that “the larger and more diverse the campaign’s base of participants, the more likely it is to succeed”. We can learn from the exceptional success of the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign alliance, which brought together several hundred organisations. One insider said it showed that “unusual coalitions deliver change”, partly as they cannot “be dismissed as just ‘the usual suspects’”. Other research finds that “broad coalitions have been recognised as particularly important given their advantage in mobilising larger numbers of people”. Governments become more receptive, “as they recognise that they are not just dealing with routine opposition, but something broader and potentially more threatening’”.
Research has found that most people believe that political parties should work together and compromise. Therefore, a campaign alliance fronted by people from different political parties would be likely to gain public confidence. It would show that climate is such an important issue that people from different political perspectives had decided that they need to work together. However the climate campaign alliances which I have researched comprise almost entirely environmental or left of centre organisations, but hardly any right of centre, or mainstream religious organisations.
A more mainstream image would protect our movement’s reputation from a perceived association with the tactics of groups such as Just Stop Oil, and Letzte Generation, which are regarded positively by only a sixth of their compatriots.
Youth climate activists could boost the success of a broad alliance. Research on X use showed that youth activists have “a remarkable discursive, moral power that allowed them to initiate normative change in collaboration” with others. In December 2024, I undertook a small survey in a demographically diverse range of locations in London, asking people to rate the effectiveness of a few climate campaign slogans. 59 per cent rated Save our Kids’ Climate very effective, and a further 25 per cent rated it somewhat effective. It was the slogan considered most effective by quite a large margin. Climate Justice was rated very effective by only 10 per cent, and somewhat effective by 30 per cent. Analysis of climate hashtags found that #climatemergency was used in 27 per cent of hashtagged posts, and #climatejustice in only 7 per cent. Other research analysing reactions to climate messages found that “We owe our children a better future, but if we don’t act, they will pay the price” was overwhelmingly the favourite.
Achieving a coalition of organisations representing people with different political outlooks may appear extremely difficult. However, very difficult goals have been achieved on many previous occasions, for example, same sex marriage, and international negotiations to protect the ozone layer. Research shows that groups which discuss the priorities they share and cannot achieve separately, known as superordinate goals, make better progress. There are a number of models for facilitating constructive collaboration among disparate groups and individuals.
Organising expert Hahrie Han advised that “the most successful movements are simultaneously bold and pragmatic”. To build a successful campaign alliance, we need to harness the factors that unite participants rather than divide them. The alliance’s message needs to be simple: that the climate disaster threatens all humanity. Getting sufficient support would be less likely if other goals, however important, were highlighted, as some potentially valuable partner groups would not join the alliance; many potential supporters would not relate to some of the goals; their inclusion would dilute the key message and its impact; their addition would make the campaign’s objective appear even more difficult and hence unrealistic, in many people’s eyes.
Member organisations of the alliance would of course, be able to campaign separately on other issues.
Martin Luther King said, in the pre-feminist era, “We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.”
Climate campaigners need to work together, or suffer tragic failure.