Is depolarisation, as some would say, seriously misguided as an organising goal? When levels of climate concern have frozen in highly polarised societies, we submit instead that it is crucial.
Should UK climate campaigners respectfully engage with all 80 per cent of the population who worry about their community’s safety in the face of climate breakdown? Even without insisting that they also gather under the banner of anti-capitalism? We would say yes.
Coming together around a common threat may be the most depolarising experience that communities can have. When a sense of authentic connection with neighbours overrides the division of political ideologies, we can see better how business-as-usual is failing us all. We favour approaches that welcome all political perspectives and make space for people to adopt new, life-friendly perspectives.
With that we’ve arrived at vital points of tension between the Climate Majority Project (CMP) and professor Adam Aron of the University of California (whom we agree with on many things). These also reflect wider differences between US and UK organisers. We respectfully dispute Professor Aron’s summary of the report and campaign that CMP launched in July 2025, and to make this reflection engaging, we’ll offer a pithy summary of what we are saying before exploring the points of substantive tension.
The message of SAFER: Strategic Adaptation for Emergency Resilience
We’re in the adaptation era because it is becoming clear to billions that our political and economic system cannot stop itself from creating climate chaos. Because climate action could not force significant change, we must adapt to the levels of climate breakdown that are already locked in while helping those less equipped to do the same. Fortunately, if adaptation is executed well it can stimulate new levels of engagement with climate chaos and the questioning of our societies’ organisation. Such developments would help avoid levels of overheating that will otherwise overwhelm our adaptive capacities.
Whether adaptation is done well or shallowly or, for that matter, cynically is a question that hangs in the balance. There is little question that interest in adaptation will grow. We are past the 1.5ºC ‘safe limit’ for heating, which means new levels of catastrophic weather are likely to be coming. Whether we like it or not, adaptation will become more of an issue in the next few years.
We do have a choice about whether climate adaptation or decarbonisation/mitigation are widely seen as opposites. The majority who haven’t been deeply involved in the climate movement aren’t sure what these jargon terms mean – and this can be a good thing! They aren’t mis-educated enough to know that, supposedly, they are competing alternatives. Rather, when adaptation is pursued holistically and strategically, they are complements.
Adaptation rhetoric often plays into the hands of fossil fuel industries. This is because it passively accepts the idea that in principle it is possible to merely adapt to climate change. Quashing adaptation talk instead of leading it is a strategic mistake. Adapting to the chaos which is inevitable while decarbonising to stop more of it is the only approach that makes any sense. In the UK, the potential breakdown of warming Atlantic currents cannot be offset through mere adaptation. This point can and must be made now. In the long term the inadequacy of an adaptation-instead-of- decarbonisation approach will become obvious through experience. How soon adaptation is seen as a companion to – and, indeed, a catalyst of – decarbonisation depends on whether people who understand this link quickly and vigourously lead adaptation organising. Influencing this critical matter is the point of our recent report and a near-term goal of the SAFER campaign.
Adaptation will become popular because while nobody can drop their own emissions enough to change their future, everybody can adapt in a way that changes their future. That is, adaptation at the local level doesn’t suffer the same deeply daunting need to coordinate the globe that decarbonisation does. As the need for adaptation action becomes obvious, its normalisation will be established more easily than decarbonisation action has. Thus, how adaptation is seen matters greatly.
People are not refraining from taking climate action because of complacency, an assumption that Aron ascribes to us, or because they actually believe the UK government’s net zero claims; generally they don’t. The majority don’t believe in their ability to make change on the vast global level on which decarbonisation must largely be executed. They also feel more alone than they are.
The vast problem of global action quickly becomes abstract, like CO2. Local action to stop fires, floods and food shortages is doable, concrete, and of rapidly increasing interest. The CMP launched by appealing to the silent majority in 2023, and widespread adaptation action may be what makes climate-concerned people truly feel they are not alone. Nothing makes collective concerns real like watching people like you put time and effort into a response. Gather with neighbours who help you hold and actualise these concerns and watch the neighbourhood adapt.
Finally, adaptation motivates people to understand local threats, but the knowledge thereby gained shows the need for global action. Honest efforts to assess flood defence show that rising tides are too much to defend against. Assessments of food security will show that the UK will struggle to feed itself in the worst cases of climate-induced global famine. Racking our brains to concoct a local response to a breakdown of the North Atlantic currents should quickly lead to the conclusion that simply avoiding this breakdown is crucial. Avoidance of all these worst cases necessitates decarbonisation.
There are things we can do to make the future safer – though not safe. (See here for an introductory guide.)
Is it assured that adaptation action will turn to decarbonisation? Of course not; that is why adaptation must be engaged as a corollary to decarbonisation right now. Both are needed to co-create and to mainstream strategic adaptation. The coming wave of mass adaptation is our last best chance, we argue, to catalyse decarbonisation on the scale needed to avoid, or merely soften, global calamity. Even if it’s a long shot, we must necessarily make the most of it.
With that in mind, the SAFER report announced a campaign with three key aims: first, to change thinking around adaptation at all levels with a coordinated communication effort across the environmental sector, second, at the same time we aim to promote and amplify the great adaptation work that is being done across the UK. Partly because adaptation is seen in some quarters as giving up or not radical enough, it is not visible enough; and finally, we are petitioning the government for a meaningful, robustly funded, adaptation plan that would adequately support brave and bold local efforts. We have no ambition to centrally direct diverse local efforts as Aron seems to suggest, but such a campaign could bring them into greater coherence.
We do agree with Aron, however, that the campaign must grow broader and more diverse and are working towards that. We have been running, for example, a series of working-class environmentalist dialogues in private and that will soon go public.
We contest Aron’s statement that we simply assume that adaptation will turn to decarbonisation at the local and national levels. Rather, we argue that climate campaigners can make it so and should definitely try. Left uncontested, the concept of adaptation may well turn into a climate delayers’ weapon of choice. (Richard Tice of Reform UK is working hard here.) Readers can refer to the report and judge for themselves whether our rationale is unfounded or not.
Aron’s greatest disagreement with us is our embrace of depolarisation as an organising ethos. He seems to equate this with being too ‘gentle’ to name our system’s flaws. He holds that even if adaptation is embraced it will need to turn into ‘militant, even revolutionary’ activity if it is to drive decarbonisation. This is because decarbonisation requires degrowth. Therefore, he argues, we should emulate movements like the dynamic French civil disobedience group Soulèvement de la Terre (Earth Uprisings), which organises while ‘retaining a commitment to anti-imperialism and anti-fascism’, and he finds it odd that our report doesn’t contain the word capitalism. He suggests that we learn from the effort he helps lead that aims to replace private utilities with public solar in San Diego – a worthwhile and encouraging undertaking. He further links to its webpage, which itself, rather puzzlingly, neglects to mention capitalism or socialism or to transparently state its aims as changing social relations, which Aron calls for in his article. Rather, its bolded punchline says ‘SDGE charges the highest electric rates in California’, and it promises San Diego residents an ‘affordable future’.
That aside, Professor Aron’s critiques bring up serious issues and distinctions. Aron sees our approach as ‘seriously misguided’ and thinks we are forgoing ‘serious political struggle’. This is because we differ on a few crucial points, it seems. To us, depolarisation is not depoliticisation; civility and respect can co-exist with deep moral and political disagreement. Serious political struggle, meanwhile, can be and often is about advancing processes rather than precise programmes of action or overarching ideologies. Those focused on outcomes have historically been aided by those who create engaging processes.
Relationship psychologist John Gottman best summarised a depolarising ethos: ‘It’s not whether you fight, but how you fight.’ Gottman found that the single best measure of a relationship’s health was the level of disdain with which partners spoke to each other. It is no surprise if democratic processes in which depolarisation is not taken seriously break down. We agree with the many voices who believe that the US has recently demonstrated this. It remains necessary to talk openly about flaws in our system without demonising those who are deeply, sometimes accidentally, involved in perpetuating them.
When appropriate climate responses challenge lifestyles and profit motives, the backlash can be minimised if moral beliefs are asserted while moral superiority is not, whether explicitly or implicitly. As Lilliana Mason and many others have argued, assertions of moral superiority drive counterproductive polarisation. Thinking that somebody is wrong that Donald Trump is a good choice for president, and seeing them as deplorable, are not the same thing. Climate campaigners must learn from this episode when interacting with those who don’t share our ambitions for global climate action. As the recently departed, and much missed, Joanna Macy taught, the work of reconnection is crucial right now and this includes other people as well as nature. Depolarisation is about remaining connected with our neighbours despite differences in worldviews.
Research into polarisation and climate attitudes suggests that in the most polarised environments, like the US, public opinion on climate has largely stalled — and even extreme weather events have had diminishing impact on beliefs[1]. When any belief becomes embedded in an ideological clash, a war of worldviews, facts lose their persuasive power. The film Don’t Look Up! lampooned the rigidity climate attitudes in the polarised US, but other less polarised countries could not see themselves reflected in it[2]. The fact that the film added to the polarising dynamic it satirised was often noted by international critics. In less polarised countries, climate concern has risen since 2016 while in the US it has stalled. Many in the UK wish to avoid similar dynamics, and that is why organising around shared values and concerns is increasingly popular.
Democratic values are widely shared, and processes that reflect them are deeply resonant and legitimate to the UK population. These processes are also the source of positive change in our social history. That is why the citizen’s assemblies called for by Extinction Rebellion (XR) were so attractive, especially to people previously unengaged in climate action. Instead of asking Britons to trust it, XR asked them to trust themselves and their values. XR looked to open democratic process to determine the form of a climate response.
Many British campaigners have adopted related strategies of promoting democratic norms and processes for climate response (See here for a list and New Citizenship project for related thinking). This faith in process is reflected in local adaptation efforts such as Retrofit Balsall Heath and Greener Henley, which were showcased at the SAFER launch. They engage any community member who is willing to join, and they find that amounts to people engaging more deeply with climate realities.
The striking success of XR’s first year in the UK demonstrated these principles. Its unusual goals of acting ‘beyond party politics’ and ‘beyond ideology’; were aimed at creating a process that brought the UK together by a shared desire to avoid extinction. Though some found the wording of these intentions naive, probably more found them attractive[3]. XR drove new levels of climate concern in the UK.
Ultimately, XR’s commitment to direct action and engagement in ultra-polarising actions like Canning Town meant it remained too limited in its appeal to achieve those ends. The task now is to create a process that is co-created by the mainstream and catalyzes its evolution. We humbly suggest that strategies such as those we advocate have a better chance of achieving that objective than an approach that demands participants sign up to anti-capitalism at its outset.
In this sense, our strategy is complementary to that of radical groups’: though XR and related efforts were wildly successful in raising awareness of climate reality in the UK, their limitations are starkly evident. As these movements now recognise, truly mass-scale radical/revolutionary direct action is not a short-term possibility. Mass-scale adaptation–action is a possibility.
Depolarisation and a focus on process are natural companions. Adaptation planning is a process that inherently requires broad democratic consideration of the emotionally confronting failures of business as usual. We think it should learn from peace and conflict resolution processes, which are often explicitly held in a depolarising manner when they succeed. Good community meetings are usually chaired by somebody who knows how to take the temperature down. This is very different than sweeping important issues under the table; it is realising that issues cannot be dealt with if too few people are gathered around the table.
Adaptation is a chance to gather almost everybody around the table. The hard facts can be laid out on that table for all to see and, around it, the possibility of a future can be negotiated. Please let’s invite everybody who is operating in good faith to sit at it.
[1] See the CMP’s upcoming report Mobilising Majorities for detailed analysis. Also see Smith, E. K., & Mayer, A. (2018). Anomalous Anglophones? Contours of climate change and environmental beliefs in English-speaking countries. Environmental Sociology, 4(1), 1-14.
[2] Mede, Niels G. (July 4, 2022). “Science communication in the face of skepticism, populism, and ignorance: what ‘Don’t Look Up’ tells us about science denial — and what it doesn’t”. Journal of Science Communication. 21 (5): C05. doi:10.22323/2.21050305. ISSN1824-2049.
[3] Critics have pointed out, rightly, that the precise phrasing of ‘beyond politics’, which was sometimes used by XR, risks confusion. Of course, everything is political. Our seldom-questioned social structures were political choices, but in mainstream discussions the phrases ‘beyond politics’ and ‘too big for politics’ mean something like ‘too important of an issue, for too many people, to play (petty) politics with’. This is exactly the kind of issue climate should be.
Teaser image credit: Display for Greener Henley’s Big Green Festival via Greener Henleys’ Facebook page.