The four Ps: How to reclaim the narrative on climate action

The sustainability agenda is under attack. Forum for the Future’s Sally Uren and James Payne explore the steps sustainability professionals can take to reinvigorate discussions on climate action.

The UK’s sustainability agenda has faced blows in recent weeks. The BBC reports how a new Reform council has abolished its flood committee, while the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, has told council staff located in EDI and climate roles to find “alternative” careers.

Even the Conservatives, the party that enshrined net-zero into UK law, have pledged to scrap the UK Climate Change Act if elected.

This politicisation of sustainability has already happened in the US and is creeping through not just the UK, but many parts of Europe.

The sustainability movement simply can’t afford to step back and go silent.  But what can we do when the stakes are so high?

We can take back the narrative.

How? By looking at what we can learn from the advocacy and influencing tactics deployed by anti-sustainability movement.  At Forum for the Future, we have bundled this into a four-point plan featuring 4 P’s.

1) PASSION

The anti-sustainability movement deliberately uses emotion.  They target deep-rooted emotions which include fear of loss, threats to identity, concerns about costs of living, and so on. They know emotion beats data when it comes to mobilising people.

The sustainability movement too often responds with spreadsheets and rational appeals. That convinces analysts, but it doesn’t fire up communities. Data doesn’t change hearts and minds.

The good news: the sustainability movement can, and should, embrace passion, conviction, and courage.  We can:

  • Reframe sustainability as a human story, not a scientific one
    • We can use human faces, not charts: workers in clean-tech jobs, verdant and vibrant fields of crops grown using regenerative agricultural practices.
  • Use hope and aspiration, not just fear
    • We can share a positive vision for the future “We can build a society where no child grows up breathing polluted air.”
  • Tap into universal needs
    • Protection: “We can protect our families from floods, fires, and rising bills.”
    • Belonging: “This movement is about community, dignity, and leaving no one behind.”

2) PERSISTENCE

The anti-sustainability movement has spent years laying the infrastructure for the current pushback through funding of think tanks, influencing legislation pipelines, supporting specific media ecosystems and chipping away at cultural narratives. They play the long game: patient, persistent, relentless.

The pro-sustainability movement needs its own long-game strategy: one that is more than reactive firefighting, but about building enduring cultural, institutional, and economic support for our agenda. We can:

  • Build durable institutions, not just campaigns
    • Corporate foundation funding can be used to fund think tanks, research centres, legal infrastructure and media platforms – all of which can focus on the enabling context for sustainability.
  • Invest in the next wave of leaders
    • We can create ESG/DEI curricula in business schools, law schools, and engineering programs, ensuring the next generation of leaders is grounded in the basics of the sustainability agenda.
  • Allocate capital differently
    • We can channel capital into community energy, co-ops, regenerative farming, and inclusive finance models that last,
  • Tell a big, generational story
    • We can tell a story that spans generations: “We will be remembered as the ones who chose courage over fear.”
  • Shape culture
  • Let’s commission films, games, and storytelling that celebrate climate heroes and inclusive workplaces.
  • Let’s shift norms so that opposing sustainability feels outdated and fringe.

3) PRECISION

The anti-ESG lobby has been smart because it hasn’t fought everywhere. It’s picked systemic leverage points (fiduciary duty, “woke capitalism” rhetoric, culture wars on immigration and gender) and pushed hard.

The pro-sustainability movement can — and must — do the same. The following leverage points could equally galvanise broad coalitions, capture public imagination, and create systemic momentum:

  • Fairness & Economic Security
    • Topics: Wage fairness, affordable energy, equitable access to clean air/water.
    • Why it works: Fairness is a deep primal instinct; unfairness angers across the political spectrum.
  • Health & Safety
    • Topics: Asthma from air pollution, heat deaths, food safety, chemical exposure.
    • Why it works: Health is immediate, personal, and universal; far harder to polarise.
  • Community & Local Pride
    • Topics: Local jobs, net-zero neighbourhoods, restoring rivers and green spaces.
    • Why it works: Taps into belonging; local wins build trust faster than global appeals.
  • Jobs & Future Prosperity
    • Topics: Clean-tech jobs, skills retraining, regenerative agriculture, new industries.
    • Why it works: People want hope for their kids and communities. Linking sustainability to good, secure jobs resonates strongly.
  • Security & Independence
    • Topics: Energy independence, supply chain resilience, food security.
    • Why it works: Security is fundamental, reframing sustainability as pro-freedom/nation/family

4) PULLING TOGETHER

One of the anti-sustainability movement’s greatest strengths is its ability to unite strange bedfellows: oil & gas executives, religious conservatives, small business lobbies and far-right politicians. They don’t agree on everything, but they align on one shared purpose: stopping climate and social justice progress.

For the pro-sustainability movement to match that power, it needs to be equally creative in coalition-building — bringing together actors who might not naturally sit at the same table, but who share an overlapping interest in resilience, fairness, or long-term prosperity.  We can:

  • Build broad coalitions
  • Unite business & finance, investors & insurers, unions & worker alliances, community & justice movements, faith & moral leadership, farmers & rural voices, cities & local government, cultural & media allies. Focus on overlap, not perfection.
  • Translate the agenda
    • Talk jobs to unions, resilience to insurers, freedom to faith groups, justice to community organisers.
  • Show tangible wins
    • Coalitions survive if members see results — jobs created, pensions protected, pollution reduced.
  • Make it a movement, not a club
    • Invite mass participation (employees, customers, congregations, students)

Clearly, this is A LOT! But just doing some of this will help reframe the current narrative.

In addition to 4 P’s, I like to suggest one C.  Courage.  To not stand by, stand back and give up.  But to push forward with hope, and the knowledge that the future isn’t written.

Sally Uren is the executive director & chief acceleration officer at Forum for the Future. 

James Payne is the director of Forum for the Future’s purpose of business work.

 

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