24th June 2026
How can climate campaigners effectively respond to the growing wave of resistance to environmental policies, while building genuine alliances with the working class?
Opponents of climate policies often claim these measures are prohibitively expensive and an imposition by ‘woke’ members of the liberal elite, who are wholly out of touch with the working class’s everyday struggles and precarious livelihoods. At the same time, the far right is expanding its influence within communities and mainstream politics, increasingly portraying climate change as exaggerated or even entirely fabricated.
Countering this illiberal rise is made harder by the exclusion of working class communities from environmental decision-making processes. Not only do working class people often feel disconnected from climate messaging, they also feel feel disconnected from the very messengers themselves. Countering this requires handing working class communities real power over the decisions that shape their lives, and the platform to speak for themselves.
This toolkit is a step towards that. Produced by the Working Class Climate Alliance, its 10 practical tools will help people improve their policy making and communication strategies, and increase working class support for climate policies. They do this by encouraging genuinely democratic decision-making and building relationships with working class communities as part of the process.
This toolkit has been funded by the European Union through the Green Economy Coalition and Stichting International Institute for Environment and Development Europe (IIED Europe).