Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Get 8 issues for only £9.99 - delivered to your door
SUBSCRIBE
Opinion

Class matters if we want to tackle climate change

If we're going to succeed in addressing our many environmental issues we need to tackle the problem of social inequality at the same time, says Karen Bell

Greener Together want to make their area healthier both environmentally and socially. Image credit: Supplied

Greener Together want to make their area healthier both environmentally and socially. Image credit: Supplied

Earth Day should also be considered People Day since environmental and social justice go hand in hand. To successfully address the ecological crises, we also need to be tackling inequality, poverty and mental distress.

In particular, the solutions should not further burden working-class people. Yet, as my research shows, environmental policies, services, improvement programmes and transition processes – locally, nationally and internationally – have often forgotten about working-class people and low-income groups, sometimes making their lives more difficult.

Support The Big Issue and our vendors by signing up for a subscription.

These solutions include ‘lifestyle environmentalism’ – encouragement to buy expensive green products and consume organic food; carbon taxes – expecting people to pay more for their use of energy, transport and goods; renewables funded by costs added to consumer energy bills; ‘green jobs’ that are not available to working-class people and recycling schemes that involve burning waste in working-class neighbourhoods.

Environmental policy should not increase income or health inequalities but should make life better for everyone. As we have seen with the gilets jaunes or ‘yellow vest’ protests in France, sparked by a planned rise in ‘green taxes’ on petrol and diesel, struggling people do not respond well to additional pressures. As the protesters argued: we can’t worry about the end of world when we are worrying about the end of the month.

In general, too much focus on individual behaviour can create hostility towards environmentalism while allowing companies and governments to continue to engage in their own proportionately far more harmful practices. The greatest polluters are big corporations and state-funded military operations. Focusing on individual behaviour and sanctions may be counterproductive.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Article continues below

Current vacancies...

Search jobs

Environmental programmes that tackle class inequity and sustainability issues together are the way forward. For example, a pilot project which was launched in London just this month, Greener Together, aims to address environmental inequality linked to social and racial injustice.

Working-class people need to be involved in developing socially just environmental policy, as the French government did following the yellow vest protests, setting up a Citizens’ Climate Convention specifically to search for solutions based on social equity 
nd fairness. If everyone is to have their needs met within the limitations of the planet, we will need a significant redistribution of wealth and much greater income equality.

Working-class organisations, through trade unions, already mobilise for greater equality. Global studies show that unionisation has a significant equalising effect on national income distribution. Since the environment cannot sustain everyone enjoying private luxury, we also need to press for more shared public goods.

Working-class communities have a proud history of, often unrecognised, environmentalism.

For example, free-at-the-point-of-use swimming pools, parks, playgrounds, sports centres, galleries, allotments, tools libraries, and public transport. Covid-19 has taught us all that we cannot live well if others do not.

Despite many environmental policies and debates being, at times, harmful to working-class people, we should not fall into the trap of believing that working-class people are not environmental activists.

Working-class communities have a proud history of, often unrecognised, environmentalism. Through the trade union health and safety movement and local community activism, there are numerous environmental issues that have been exposed and addressed through working-class activism. For example, in the UK, the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) led a campaign against the use of lead in the manufacture of pottery, leading to its eventual banning. The lead used in the glaze was causing blindness, convulsions and death among the mostly female workforce.

On Earth Day 2021, we should learn from this rich history of working-class environmentalism and build our campaigns around both social and environmental justice. Environmental policy must both address the ecological disaster and tackle our social problems if the transition to sustainability is going to be supported and embraced by the majority.

Karen Bell is senior lecturer in environmental management at the University of the West of England

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

Never miss an issue

Take advantage of our special subscription offer. Subscribe from just £9.99 and never miss an issue.

Recommended for you

View all
Just Stop Oil may be reviled – but their tactics reshaped the climate movement
Just Stop Oil
Sam Nadel

Just Stop Oil may be reviled – but their tactics reshaped the climate movement

This theatre company uses Jellycat toys to break barriers for children across the UK
The Noisy Dinosaur production from Toucan Theatre. Image of two cast members with jellycats
James Baldwin

This theatre company uses Jellycat toys to break barriers for children across the UK

More and more poor children are missing school since Covid. Here's how to get them back in class
Martin Hodge

More and more poor children are missing school since Covid. Here's how to get them back in class

Social opportunity should take the place of social security 
John Bird

Social opportunity should take the place of social security 

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know
4.

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know

Support our vendors with a subscription

For each subscription to the magazine, we’ll provide a vendor with a reusable water bottle, making it easier for them to access cold water on hot days.