There is so much said in the climate communications sector about the supposed power of stories and storytelling. We are regularly told that we just need to 'sell' a hopeful vision of a 'greener' more socially just society and that that society is within our grasp (if only we’d all just ‘do our bit’ for 'net zero').

You're reading a guest post by Morgan Hope Phillips

The trouble with these stories is that they (a) promise only 'jam tomorrow' for the working and lower-middle classes - who see very little immediate upside to the climate policies being implemented; and (b) ask for only minor tech-enabled lifestyle tweaks from the upper and upper-middle classes - who get some jam today, but must also still be sold the promise jam tomorrow⁽¹⁾.

The promise of jam tomorrow has rarely ever worked at scale, and minor lifestyle tweaks being enough is clearly bullsh*t. That ship sailed a long time ago.

So what should we do instead?

What Christopher Shaw proposes is a temporary (perhaps semi-permanent) leaning into a different kind of politics and government. It is a call for a politics that acknowledges both hyper-individualism and inequality as core problems. Chris makes the case for ‘a temporary return to more communal principles to navigate these dangerous times’. This amounts to a reigning in of one of the Liberal left’s key ideals: individualism.

Chris’ argument is grounded in the growing realisation that a key Liberal idea - climate change can be successfully tackled through the free choices individuals make - is evidentially a bogus one. He therefore calls on Liberals to cede some ground - i.e. it is time they backed calls for policies that favour the greater good to be prioritised, even if they challenge the idea that individualism is sacrosanct.

He’s talking about ’delivering tangible benefits now’ and delivering them, specifically, to working class communities at the expense of the upper-middle and upper classes. Bluntly, this means curtailing, for example, the freedom to drive polluting vehicles through inner city neighbourhoods, the freedom to get whatever you want, whenever you want it (because someone is forced to work at 11pm on a Sunday night to deliver it to you), the freedom to fly in and and out of a very noisy airport three or four times a year, the freedom to… I could go on.

There used to be strong (but quiet) resistance to such freedom-curtailing suggestions in the environmental movement, but this is gradually waning. An increasing number of environmentalists are coming round to the idea that individualism and inequality do indeed need to be tackled. When environmentalists start thinking this way, it shifts the focal point of their work in quite fundamental ways. They focus less on the upper-middle and upper classes and the promotion to them - through slick aspirational comms - of win-win 'green' tech solutions and behaviour changes, and more on tackling poverty and on bringing people together to imagine and take collective action. It is a different way to 'do' environmentalism, Hikaru Komatsu and colleagues call it a ’cultural approach’. I talked about it earlier this year as part of a ‘movement for interdependence’.

This quote, from Chris' article, captures what climate communication becomes when environmentalism pivots to the cultural, to tackling inequality and individualism - it is communication through deeds more than words:

Climate communication is about rebuilding together the social infrastructure (unions, youth clubs, a care economy, decent public spaces) while reducing economic inequality, and doing these things in the name of security, the natural environment, and dignity. All this must be delivered in a manner that reduces emissions, but emission reduction is not the primary message. Respect is the central message.

This is 'jam TODAY', it makes life better now and, by bringing (and bonding) people together, it gives the climate movement something it sorely lacks: communities of people who know and trust each other enough to act - together and en masse - to create societal level change.

Will this catch on?

There is a widespread longing, I suspect, for approaches that rebuild social infrastructure because, as Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov pointed out this week, people are sick of the ’social atrophy’ that they see all around them. By ‘people’ I don’t only mean people in working class communities (where social atrophy exists but is potentially less acute than elsewhere in society), I mean the middle and upper class communities too. I think they feel this more keenly. They lament the disconnection they experience, and are - like Kasper - deeply frustrated by the apparent truth that “everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager”.

Kasper is right that there are too few villagers, but he is maybe being a bit harsh when he says that people don’t want to be a villager. There is a big difference between wanting to be a villager and being able to actually be one. I don’t think we will get very far if we stand around blaming each other (and ourselves) for not being the villager. The fact that we’re not all out in our communities running youth clubs and community cafes is not entirely our own fault, we (in the West) live in a culture that both inhibits and devalues this sort of behaviour. It also distracts us - relentlessly - from it.

In his forthcoming Reith lecture series, historian Rutger Bregman will highlight how we are victims of very powerful forces that have - in the space of not much more than a decade - utterly transformed the way we relate to one another. There has been a profound shift, we are losing our villager selves; a major - big tech-driven - cultural shift has happened. And it isn’t done yet, AI could still push us ever further into hyper-individualism and away from bigger-than-self values and actions.

Resist and fight back - culturally

Perhaps then, to be an environmentalist today is to (a) take on big tech in every way we can think of, to temper it as Bregman argues, while also (b) being that villager, that rebuilder of social infrastructure, and supporting and enabling others (of all classes) to be villagers too.

These two efforts go hand in hand. Neither are easy, not in our current individualised conditions, but both are important and could gain momentum fast.

On being a villager, here’s what Kasper advises:

If we want the village back, we have to relearn how to be villagers:

- Train yourself to be social again.
- Say yes more.
- Join the group.
- Meet the neighbour.
- Be part of something messy and real.

We can rebuild the third places we lost — one intentional interaction at a time.

To paraphrase, reverse (and butcher) that famous Buckminster Fuller quote, we need to ‘(re)make the old [villages/communities], to make the new [the apps and algorithms] obsolete’. Make no mistake, this is about overcoming hyper-individualism and will require us to actively support the transfer of wealth from rich to poor, to tackle inequality head on, NOW.

Environmentalists need to recognise that the rebuilding of social infrastructure, of social capital, of the village, is the most urgent task we face. It is the foundation upon which genuine progress on climate mitigation and adaptation will be built. It is an effort that requires funding and there are plenty of things to fund; systems are broken and need to be fixed: investments need to be made in physical infrastructure, but also in social infrastructure. We need homes for youth clubs, community cafe’s, libraries, sports clubs, rehearsal rooms, allotments, playgrounds, parks. And we need skilled, committed, and properly compensated teams of people who can dedicate their time to maintaining these ‘third spaces’ and to organising, running, and managing the activities that happen within them. Environmental funders need to be funding this work, some are, but more need to.

There is nothing that those who wish to divide and conquer fear more than entangled, organised, and happy communities. Why? Because when that is who we are, we need the apps less, the shiny goods and holidays less, and the empty promises of Fascists less. More importantly though, when we feel connected and a ‘we’ more than an ‘I’, we are more ready to be part of things that are messy and real; things like social movements. We are more ready to citizen, less inclined to consume, and less willing to accept the designation of subject⁽²⁾. Social media, like consumerism, is built on sand; we think we need it, but it’s not food, it’s not friendship, it’s not security, it’s not nature, it is easy to drop when something more rewarding comes along. It could all collapse very very fast.

But to reign in big tech, we are going to need hoards of active citizens and a seismic social movement. Rutger Bregman warns Silicon Valley that this is coming because people are angry: ‘the movement to ban phones in schools is just the beginning.‘ I hope he’s right, I hope that there is still just enough social capital in our towns and cities to organise such a movement. There will be if we build it and strengthen it⁽³⁾.

In conclusion

Actions speak louder than words, they tell a story about what we value. I’m not saying we should ditch storytelling, we just need to recognise it’s limitations - don’t believe the hype. When stories through words not deeds they have less power and less appeal - especially when they speak only of jam tomorrow. Christopher Shaw put it powerfully in the article cited above: ‘what does an Amazon driver stand to gain from a just transition to net zero? The same tedium and precarity as ever, but in an electric vehicle, rather than a diesel one.’ It is the tedium and precarity that needs addressing first, do that and you communicate to that driver - through your deeds - that they matter NOW, that their family matters NOW, that their community matters NOW.

How do you do it? By fighting, with them, the forces of big tech that they can sense are destroying what it is to be human, and by rebuilding, with them, the social capital and infrastructure where they live. And we can do this with all social classes, they are all experiencing the social atrophy of this moment and all need to feel attended to today. Get it right and we will open up the potential for the scale of cultural, social and economic transformation that is needed in this age of polycrisis.

Jam today. Jam tomorrow.

Footnotes

(1) The upper-middle and upper classes do get some of the benefit of the climate policies immediately - health, lifestyle, status, and financial benefits gained via EVs, solar panels, heat pumps, loft insulation, induction hobs, organic food, continental train travel, etc, etc - they can afford them. The lower-middle and working classes are less likely to feel these benefits, which of course adds to the class divide and resentments over who does and doesn’t benefit from the green transition. Ironically, this divide is very noticeable in the still largely hierarchical environmental sector - senior colleagues flaunt eco lifestyles that their junior colleagues can only aspire to. Worth noting here too that while the upper-middle and upper classes happily go along with climate actions that directly benefit them, opposition to vital large-scale infrastructure projects, e.g. solar farms, onshore and offshore wind farms, flood defences, rewilding projects, and so on.

(2) See the work of Jon Alexander for more on this. Echoing Baratunde Thurston he asks us to reimagine ‘citizen’ as a verb - it is something we do as well as something we are.

(3) What comes first, the social infrastructure or the social movement? I’ve implied in the above that to reign in big tech we need to rebuild social infrastructure first. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, and besides we do not have the luxury of time - big tech is advancing incredibly fast. I think it is a case of doing both simultaneously and in mutually reinforcing ways. We need to focus shoring up social capital where it does exist and (re)building it where it doesn’t. Why not do this, for example, by campaigning in and with communities who are fighting against the imposition of a new data centre in their locality? That’s a cause that could bring people together and therefore build bonds and skills that can later be put to use in other ways.

Many thanks to Morgan Hope Phillips for allowing me to republish this piece first published on his blog.