CMP 2024 in brief

We’re proud to share an overview of key integrated activities, in the effort to accelerate effective, coordinated climate action among the majority.

Dear Climate Majority,

2024 was another busy year for the CMP. In the brief report below you can find out what we've been up to, and how your support has been helping to shape climate thought and action. Below the table of contents, you'll find more detail on last year’s activities, partnerships and new exciting additions to the team. We hope you enjoy staying up to date, and please do get involved in the climate majority forum and more!

Research

Campaigns

• Climate Courage Campaign

• Regulate Us. Better

• SAFER (we are hiring!)

Gatherings

• Culture Gathering

• SAFER gathering

In the Incubator

Looking ahead in 2025

• CM Forum

• Publications

• Inner Climate Resilience Alliance

Research

Photo credits by Adam Victor.

Research supported by the Open Society Foundation has formed a central pillar of our work this year. Our small research team has undertaken a deep-dive critique of core, faulty assumptions inhibiting current action, advocacy, policy and diplomacy. We have been developing approaches to effectively question these in the public arena, in order to remove roadblocks to climate engagement and participation among the majority. In turn, this work has informed our campaign strategies and helped us to identify strategic leverage points for mainstream climate action.

1. Challenging the assumption that adaptation is at odds with mitigation in climate action (‘either-or’). Building the case for adaptation as a protective necessity and a vital democratic catalyst to build support for decarbonisation (‘both-and’).

2. Challenging the assumption that the majority population is far from ready for necessary system change and climate intervention. A democratic majority for climate action is inevitably rising and targeted interventions can speed this rise. This majority includes climate-concerned people who don’t feel represented by the climate movement, a youth super majority, a silent majority of business people, and more. A majority also want something to unify around. The climate movement can be a crucial part of that unifying effort, if it can manage to be both bold and depolarising.

3. Challenging the assumption that the full truth about climate breakdown will demotivate people by creating widespread panic and despair; and that the public should therefore be shielded from dire facts. Instead, a climate movement in which people feel part of a collective response and emotionally support one another can turn the most confronting truth into extreme motivation.

4. Moving beyond ‘green growth vs degrowth’ debates. This complex debate has consumed much attention - but is ‘unwinnable’ because of the impossibility of decisively proving (in a politically charged environment) whether technology and resource bottlenecks allow growth or not. If low growth is even a possibility, however, then imagining better futures is both 1) necessary, and 2) likely to shift public opinion towards ecological priorities more effectively than debate over degrowth. (Collaboration with Demos Helsinki).

5. When it comes to reimagining our economy, nobody has more power to grant permission than business people. Of the majorities mentioned above, breaking the silence of the business majority is most crucial to unlocking system change. 81% of UK business leaders agree that government policies are necessary to deliver the decarbonisation they want, and our own research reveals leaders’ willingness to speak up about the need for regulation.

Campaigns

The above research has strengthened theoretical and strategic grounding for three important campaigns:

The Climate Courage campaign

Our research reveals inner work (including psychological support) as a vital, neglected dimension of climate action. Collective inner resilience is vital for climate awareness to motivate widespread action rather than hopelessness. The campaign aims to raise the profile of inner work, beginning with the need for communities of psychological support in climate education. (Research strands C and B). 2024 campaign activities have included:

• Community Building: Success in bringing together climate educators, climate psychologists, engaged students, and climate scientists and beginning to convene a wider group of stakeholders such as school teachers.

• Awareness Raising: Increasing visibility of climate education and emotional resilience matters, particularly through webinars, resource calls, and collaborations with other organizations.

• Resource Library: Creation of an open-access library of climate education materials is ongoing. CCC aims not to promote any single modality of inner work or support, but to raise the profile of multiple competent practitioners and initiatives.

• New campaign staff with funding: we’re thrilled to announce that a funding win has enabled us to engage Josephine Lethbridge as Campaign Manager, and Les Gunbie as Community Coordinator. We’re also delighted that former MP, MEP and Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas has joined CMP as a campaign advisor. Caroline will offer expertise across CCC and SAFER campaigns, whose synergies are a growing focus. Thanks to their enormous enthusiasm and expertise, we hope 2025 will take this campaign to the next level!

• Building the Inner Climate Resilience Alliance – a community of practitioners developing inner work in the climate movement; from climate distress towards mobilisation.
  As a result of conversations within the CCc, the CMP has teamed up with the Climate Psychology Alliance and the Mindfulness Initiative to form the Inner Climate Response Alliance (iCRA). iCRA is working to establish a nationwide network grounded in local grassroots communities; to develop inner work in the climate movement, enabling people to engage more deeply in climate action without emotional overwhelm. We have been working hard to attract funding for this crucial effort. Watch this space.

Regulate Us.Better

This is a campaign focused on raising business voices to speak up for better environmental regulation and incentives. (Research strands B, D and E.) 2024 campaign activities have included:

• Establishing campaign governance and relationships within private, public and third sectors.

• Launching the Climate Courage Action Labs; a space of mutual support for professionals aligned on the need for greater regulation.

• Presenting at Innovation Zero (the largest green tech conference in the UK) on the need for greater regulation to achieve Net Zero targets.

• Surveying 500+ business leaders on their attitudes towards regulation and policies and whether the 1.5°C 'safe threshold' has been breached. Work will be ongoing in 2025 to understand what policymakers require in order to drive meaningful change.

• Supporting business to have the very difficult conversation as to whether their existing business models are fit for the future. In early 2025, we’ll champion this work together with other NGOs and pressure groups during a series of gatherings, marking the start of organised policy and regulation advocacy.

If you are a business leader, employee, or involved in bringing about better regulation, please get in touch.

SAFER - Strategic Adaptation For Emergency Resilience

With this campaign we aim to shift adaptation from the margins to the centre of climate advocacy, policy and action. Based on research strand A, it advocates adaptation as both a protective necessity and a vital catalyst in mobilising support for adequate decarbonisation.

• An in-person gathering brought interested participants together to begin ideation and strengthen core approaches.

• Research strand A (above) generated a detailed scoping report to support adaptation advocacy among campaigners, policymakers and collaborators.

• A successful pre-launch event quickly sold out Kairos in November.

• Preliminary research outputs have already formed the basis of discussions at Chatham House on a serious national preparedness plan.

• Funding is secured and recruitment underway for two members of campaign staff - a Campaign Manager and Admin support assistant. Application details are available here.

• Funding is secured for a forthcoming pilot programme of events, from March 2025-March 2026, bringing groups alienated from climate action into constructive dialogue with environmentalism in the context of adaptation.

• Funding is secured to develop a standard CMp introductory talk, largely based in SAFER campaign logic.

• Media interest is growing around a pivot to adaptation-centred campaign strategy.

• Politicians including some Green and Labour MPs have cited CMP reports to adopt adaptation framing in considering climate approaches.

Gatherings

Accessible Culture Gathering: depolarising around Difficult Questions

An in-person gathering enquired into how the CMP can help build a culture accessible to a UK majority, crossing political, socio-economic, age, gender, religious, ethnic and geographical boundaries. Flashpoint topics that typically divide groups were discussed with varying facilitation methods and fed into ongoing work to publish detailed “FAQs” on difficult topics. The knowledge and facilitation experience gathered will inform this year’s engagement work.

SAFER Gathering

This gathering brought together adaptation experts from the UK, Switzerland and France including Charlotte DuCann, and leading voices on adaptation in literature and beyond such as Stephen Markley. Together we explored the importance of fiction in imagining thrutopias: visions of the future that do not deny the harm that must be negotiated.

(Thrutopianism will form a reporting theme in 2025.)

In the Incubator

The CMP Incubator gathers funding from visionary ‘investors’, to support initiatives for citizen climate action with essential funding, strategic and practical input, and access to a network.

Since 2023, Wild card, MP Watch, General Counsel Sustainability Forum and Community Climate Action have graduated from the Incubator, and continue to do wonderful work.

This year the Incubator has welcomed Postcode Revolution, Teach the Future and Cadence Roundtable. You can find out more about their activities via our website.

Looking forward

Among the many activities taking shape for 2025, here are a few to look out for soon:

CM Forum

The first Climate Majority Forum will take place on March 15th & 16th at Limehouse Town Hall in London. We’d love it if you could join us, and please do share information with anyone who might be interested. Among a wide mix of participants, we’re aiming specifically to include people who don’t already work in the climate sphere, or feel unrepresented by the climate movement.

We sometimes use the metaphor of a labour movement to describe our vision: a collective effort, not entirely centralised, with many coordinated, moving parts across sectors of society. The gathering will emphasise less what the CMP itself is doing, and focus on participants’ own search for their part in this vital mobilisation.

Don’t hesitate to sign up, and bring a friend along! Spots are limited, and subsidised spots are available for those unable to contribute.

Publishing Research Reports

Based on this year’s research areas, a series of reports will be published, beginning in Spring 2025. We hope to influence a wide audience, shifting the dial on outdated assumptions inhibiting a mainstream, effective climate mobilisation.

…We hope you have found this 2024 summary inspiring - a quick sketch of a much larger whole. You can also catch up with the many wonderful activities of our incubatees and collaborators via our website and social media.