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Beyond Net Zero: Towards a Climate Politics that Can Defeat the Far Right

by Christopher Shaw

26.03.2026

Christopher Shaw holds Research Associate roles at both the University of Sussex’s School of Global Studies and the Working Class Climate Alliance, and is a leading voice in climate communications in the UK. Below, he argues that the UK’s liberal, technocratic net zero climate politics has reached its limits. By ignoring both the political roots of the climate crisis, and the voices of the working class, net zero has allowed itself to be instrumentalized by the far-right. Drawing on recent political developments, Shaw outlines what a climate politics, rooted in social justice and grassroots democracy, could look like, in the fight not just for heat pumps or electric cars—but a world that feels like home.

The UK’s net zero policy: preserving liberalism versus preserving life

As the centrist waters recede back down the beach of history, climate policies are left stranded and exposed on the shore, flapping about like so many dying fish. Who will fight for net zero now? Not the European Union it seems, which is busy shredding many of its flagship climate policies, whilst the long standing net zero consensus in the UK is now coming apart. Even climate researchers supportive of net zero remain divided over the ability of net zero to deliver emission cuts quickly and fairly. To cap it all, campaigners have seen twenty years of efforts to get people to adopt the low carbon behaviours needed to deliver net zero come to naught. The rapid and ongoing collapse of the net zero policy architecture leaves climate campaigners with two choices. The first is to double down on net zero, turning increasingly to geo-engineering and technological innovation as the primary tools used to fix the climate. This limits the need to involve people or politics. The only choice the public needs to make is whether to install an air source or ground source heat pump. The second option is to recognise that the climate fight is, and always has been, political. Campaigners are choosing the first option, a strategy destined to fail further and faster than ever before. Rather than trying to lift climate policy out of the democratic sphere, we need narratives that present climate change as a product of the same politics that have delivered austerity, inequality and war. Fixing climate change means fixing the political conditions that are generating these crises. If this is not a fight the existing liberal climate movement wants to take on, we will need a new climate movement, one that does not prioritise the preservation of liberalism over the preservation of life.

The myth of the good liberal citizen

"Support for net zero has also come to stand as a marker of whether or not you are a good liberal citizen."

There is more anger, resentment and fear abroad today than liberal politics can assimilate – liberal politics and the current public mood are as oil and water. Liberal climate policy remains wedded to the hope that the evidence-based application of intellect and reason will dissipate both greenhouse gases and public anger. Through calculation and rational deliberation we can fashion a painless technocratic and reformist path to the net zero land beyond history. Liberals look to an eternal tomorrow of ‘self-regulating citizens conducting resource-efficient and sustainable lives’, enjoying outdoor yoga, cycling to the repair cafe. The mainstream climate movement is blind to the true function of net zero; it is an idea created by the allies of capital as an instrument of control, handed over to the middle class liberal climate movement to then sell to the working class as their only hope of a decent life. Support for net zero has also come to stand as a marker of whether or not you are a good liberal citizen. It doesn’t matter if you enabled the bombing of 2 million Gazans or got rich from an exploitative finance system. If you are on board with net zero then you are part of the liberal climate family. As a consequence, your voice is more deserving of attention and obedience than a poor person of poor means who is critical of net zero. If you want to identify as a progressive then you have to support net zero. If you don’t support net zero you are a fascist.

Towards a climate politics that can defeat the far right

"The UK Green Party recently overturned a huge Labour majority without once mentioning climate change in their leaflets"

There is much excellent theoretical and practical work to draw on when thinking about what sort of climate politics can defeat the far right. Efforts to articulate and promote a Green New Deal offer vital insights for how to combine climate policy with an anti-austerity, anti-imperialist agenda. Community engagement projects across Europe have identified important knowledge about barriers and opportunities for combining climate action with social justice campaigns. These ideas will remain on the margins all the while climate organizations continue drawing from the same privileged strata of society, or insist any subaltern actors must adopt middle class values and norms before being allowed into the circle. The political shift we are seeing as parties of the left and far right gain momentum is an opportunity for the climate movement to jump to the left and engage in the battle for humanity’s future.

The UK Green Party recently overturned a huge Labour majority without once mentioning climate change in their leaflets, focusing instead on poverty and the destruction of public services. This reflects a deep public rift with the liberal climate agenda. It points toward the path we need to take — further and faster, in the opposite direction to that mapped out by net zero narratives: away from global and towards the local, away from work and towards play, prioritise the human over the machine, democracy over technocracy, the substantive over the abstract, equality over difference, the social over the individual. It is only from these foundations that we can undermine the allure of far-right politics, whilst building a climate strategy from the bottom up.

For a world that feels like home

"Such technologies may be a part of living in a carbon-constrained world, but the first task is to recreate the social world, to make a world people feel at home in, feel rooted in, have control over."

The failure of the liberal climate movement is in part a failure to understand human nature. Liberalism, and the climate policies it has birthed, wrongly assume there is a space above and beyond the human heart. We cannot escape our own subjectivity. Right-wing politicians would rather see the world destroyed than compromise their political beliefs. This is also true for liberalism. This is also true for climate campaigners. This is also true for you and me. I joined the climate fight because it seemed to me the best reason for the ecosocialist future I already wanted. I am not going to fight for a decarbonised capitalist future of ground source heat pumps, a modernised electricity grid, or more EV charging points, even if I thought such things would preserve a liveable future for my children. Such technologies may be a part of living in a carbon-constrained world, but the first task is to recreate the social world, to make a world people feel at home in, feel rooted in, have control over. There seems nothing so thrilling as this prospect. Whilst liberalism makes a fetish of free will and individual autonomy, the vast majority can see that the decisions about our future have already been made for us by experts and leaders. Net zero promised to let the targets be humanity’s guide and leave the politics behind. But actually what we need is maximum politics in climate policy, a genuine grassroots democracy, a mechanism for embracing and channeling public anger towards a world that feels like home, not an innovation hub.

Building an anti-fascist Climate Agenda

by Andreas Novy

15.01.2026

Can growth-critical progressives, ecomodernists, and anti-fascist liberals and conservatives find common ground to halt authoritarianism and address the climate crisis? This first piece of 2026 reflects a new area of focus for this blog—the link between neoliberalism, fascism, and the failure of climate politics. Andreas Novy, President of the International Karl Polanyi Society, explains why both “green” and “de-” growth agendas have so far proved unsuccessful in meeting climate targets, and why they are insufficient to defend democracies against fascism. To secure a liveable future, he advocates for moving beyond the climate policy silo to build broad alliances with movements that reject both fascism and neoliberal austerity, before outlining four cornerstones of a new, anti-fascist climate politics.

"Under an austerity regime, public funds will never be sufficient to finance the activities necessary to achieve climate targets.”

Current far-right reactionary movements not only share fascism’s anti-egalitarian aspirations, but the same will to merge economic and state power. Controlling the media and the courts, weakening civil society and the opposition, changing electoral rules, even the use of paramilitary violence—these are among the means by which they seek to stay in power. For this reason, we must exclude far-right parties from governing at all costs.

This is, however, insufficient to prevent the return of radical forms of authoritarianism, eugenics, and state violence. Neither decarbonization nor the defense of liberal democracy will be successful if delinked from socioeconomic reforms that not only overcome neoliberalism, but also transform basic pillars of capitalist domination, especially unconditional property rights.

Neither green growth nor degrowth can combat fascism alone

Today’s reactionaries use culture war rhetoric to camouflage their class war intentions. The Thiels, Musks, Mileis, Kickls and Weidels of this world are not populists but elitists who, self-consciously, increasingly defend their backward-oriented supremacist ideologies in public. To counter their strategy, neither mainstream ecomodernist “green growth” strategies, nor “degrowth” movements offer convincing alternatives. The former are naïve with respect to the political-economic preconditions of deep socio-ecological transformations. The latter underestimate the need for unconventional alliances to resist a civilizational backlash that aims at building hierarchical societies to guarantee a good life only for a select few. Such broad alliances are necessary, however, as the far right indiscriminately attack both sides, denouncing them as urban educated, often academic “elites”.

The ecomodernist mainstream has long tried to convince enlightened business to adhere to a green agenda based on science and facts by “bribing” them with de-risking policies: green investment should be good for the environment and for profits. Still today, many believe that both economic and political liberalism are necessary for tackling the climate crisis in pluralist societies. Markets and private corporations together with democracy, human rights, and science offer, so the belief, the necessary preconditions to implement profound ecological changes, including—in line with Fridays for Future—the ability to “listen to science”. What this overlooks, however, is that economic liberal parties—such as Austria’s NEOS or Germany’s FDP—share with the far-right—such as FPÖ and AfD—a defense of market solutions and private property, and an aversion to redistribution. This point barely enters into contemporary debates, and yet, it has severe implications for current economic policies which prioritize competition and growth over achieving climate targets. This is justified—in line with economic liberalism—by austerity and geopolitical competition. And it is grounded in a common supremacist belief that, as per Friedrich Hayek, some must lead and others must follow.

Degrowth research, unlike ecomodernism, is critical of economic liberalism. Nevertheless, it reinforces a narrative that is inimical for alliance-building. If one wants to focus on human flourishing and planetary health, calling alternatives “de-” or “post-growth” risks trapping them in the same imaginary. Neuro-linguist George Lakoff illustrated in his book “Don’t Think of an Elephant“ what Michel Foucault demonstrated with respect to sexuality—showing how “free sexuality” and “demonize sexuality” remain prisoner of the same discourse (or put another way, the more one tries to shift the narrative “beyond growth”, the more the focus stays on growth). To avoid marginalization and build support for new objectives of wellbeing, and better approaches for coordination and planning, the climate movement needs a new language, new discourses and new framings that can move us from words to deeds.

Four cornerstones of anti-fascist climate politics

"Anti-fascist climate politics abandons the climate policy silo entirely, including futile debates on growth. And it shares the discursive field of anti-fascist politics which centers pluralism and socioeconomic security in times of turmoil."

Right now, climate policies follow a minimalist agenda, centered on the narrow concern of climate neutrality. Substitute this with a target of climate-friendly living however—linking mitigation and adaptation with ecological and social objectives—and such a ‘more-than-climate’ politics widens the horizon to include issues of fairness and social justice. This is an important starting point for creating anti-fascist politics. But anti-fascist climate politics would be more than this.

Anti-fascist climate politics abandons the climate policy silo entirely, including futile debates on growth. And it shares the discursive field of anti-fascist politics which centers pluralism and socioeconomic security in times of turmoil. This broad discursive field has four cornerstones:

First, it seeks to attract progressives, conservatives, and liberals who oppose the far-right. In times of climate crises and geopolitical tensions, the common denominator could be a “transformation by design” approach. This would attempt to alter the current mode of living and producing while maintaining the best of its values and institutions; individual freedoms and human rights being the dearest achievement of Western civilization. Due to the determination of reactionaries for systemic change, transformation is, therefore, a precondition not only for emancipatory transformations but also for preserving certain democratic and egalitarian traditions. This would challenge conservatives to choose between a liberal democratic order and authoritarians who share certain reactionary values. And it would force liberals to choose between an open, democratic, and pluralist society—or the unconditional defense of economic and property rights.

Second, the key anti-fascist learning from the Great Depression of the 1930s was that a living wage and reduced costs of living must be key policy objectives. One can witness the relevance of this lesson today in the success of Mamdani affordable living campaign in New York, and Lula’s minimum wage and welfare policies in Brazil. Neoliberalism has created widespread insecurity and makes striving for a good and stable life an existential challenge. While low-income households struggle to meet basic needs, middle-income households often face relative deprivation, derived from rising cost of living and an eroding margin of comfort. As the latter are decisive swing voters, policies must not limit themselves to guarantee minimum provisioning, but link this to building public and social infrastructures that also reduce living costs for the middle classes. It needs “bread” and “roses” – for all.

"Public planning and better coordination of business, science, civil society, and the state can improve the wellbeing of lower and middle classes by shifting from individual consumption to collective forms of provisioning."

Third, such a political shift is only possible with a radical de-concentration of economic power. If billionaires use political donations and can obtain digital platforms to buy the control of state apparatus, the public domain becomes their fiefdom and liberal democratic institutions vanish—a phenomenon we can currently observe in the US. Therefore, progressive taxation, wealth redistribution, and rigid anti-trust regulations—especially for digital platforms and intellectual property rights—are preconditions for science-based public debate and democratic decision-making. As long as commercial and social media remain under the control of billionaires who profit from the climate crisis, climate research is powerless, and sound arguments will never win against billionaire-financed fake news.

Fourth, goods and services can become more affordable and sustainable if needs are satisfied less via commodities and more via infrastructures, such as by urban planning and buildings that maximize resource efficiency. Public planning and better coordination of business, science, civil society, and the state can improve the wellbeing of lower and middle classes by shifting from individual consumption to collective forms of provisioning—such as public transport, community care, social security and state pensions. This requires monetary and fiscal reforms—such as around budget rules, credit guidance and progressive taxation—to increase public funds, redirect investment and stop the transfer of riches to millionaires and billionaires.

Rejecting neoliberal austerity can unite climate and anti-fascist agendas

At this decisive moment, combatting austerity could be a starting point for creating unconventional alliances, as cuts in public spending affect both the lower and middle classes. This could become a key agenda for socioeconomic improvements. But there is much to gain for climate politics as well: under an austerity regime, public funds will never be sufficient to finance the activities necessary to achieve climate targets. And it might be the best way forward to avoid a reactionary systemic rupture that pushes Western civilization back into a 19th century-style society that maximizes the freedom of the privileged few with the correct genes.

For all these reasons, the rebellion against the prevailing liberal economic paradigm should be at the core of a common agenda of climate politics and anti-fascist politics.

References

Isabella Weber: Anti-Fascist Economic Policy (German-Language) in Jacobin, November 2024: https://jacobin.de/artikel/isabella-weber-preiskontrollen-inflation-trump-biden-antifaschistische-wirtschaftspolitik

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