A just climate future for Jim and beyond

Professor Lucie Middlemiss and Professor Carolyn Snell write about the importance of just climate futures as part of the launch of their collaborative new book.

At first glance, the Net Zero agenda appears disconnected from the realities of everyday life. Installing heat pumps and solar panels, buying electric cars, planting more trees and eating vegan food can seem irrelevant to those of us struggling to bring in enough money to make ends meet. Even mainstream political narratives tend to avoid promoting Net Zero policies. Both the Conservative and Labour 2024 manifestos promised that they wouldn’t ‘rip out’ people’s boilers to replace them with heat pumps, and the Reform manifesto actively campaigned against Net Zero. However, swerving the Net Zero agenda really isn’t an option.

Why Net Zero must work for everyday lives

We are in a climate crisis, the effects of which are becoming increasingly visible across the world. Action has never been so urgent. For countries like the UK, this means reducing carbon emissions, with the suite of actions available to us referred to collectively as ‘Net Zero’. Our lives are already being shaped by Net Zero, and its impact will only become more noticeable.

As environmental social scientists, we believe that a Net Zero policy is vital to tackling climate change. However, we are concerned that this agenda is being pursued in a piecemeal, overly technical way that does not recognise the realities of people’s daily lives, especially those living on low incomes or in low-income communities. Here, it is useful to hear Jim’s story, which represents the experiences of people we met during our research. His full story is described in our forthcoming book Just Climate Futures.

‘Jim’ is a single 45-year-old living in West Yorkshire in a high-rise flat managed by a housing association. He works as a car mechanic in Leeds. The public transport in his area is poor and he relies on his car to get to work, to socialise and to take shopping to his elderly mother in York, 20 miles away. The local library and supermarket closed down recently, and there are few opportunities to socialise in the area. Jim’s life is likely to change in multiple ways as a result of Net Zero policies. He will be particularly affected by the banning of new petrol and diesel vehicles and the increased use of electric vehicles, both in his job and in the way he gets around. He will also have limited control over changes to his home, given that he is a renter.

We ask that policy makers collaborate to build progressive, place-based visions for a just climate future to ensure that people and communities benefit from the transformative potential of policy changes.

We argue that without sufficient care in policy making and recognition of where Jim lives and what he does in his daily life, there is a real risk that the combination of Net Zero policies will make Jim worse off and more socially isolated. For example, at their worst, policy changes could mean that Jim’s skills become redundant if he is not trained to work with EVs. He is unlikely to be able to afford an EV himself in the near future, and if he remains dependent on his petrol car, it will become increasingly expensive to run, maintain and fuel. Ultimately, these additional costs will reduce his disposable income, potentially also reducing his mobility and access to friends, family, leisure, shopping, and employment and training opportunities.

We can see just from Jim’s story that the Net Zero transition will lead to substantial changes to everyday lives. Building Net Zero on top of existing social, economic and environmental inequalities is more likely to exacerbate than address these. But Net Zero policy offers an opportunity for progressive and indeed transformative policy making to tackle inequality, providing it truly sets out to reach a just climate future.

Designing a just climate future for communities like Jim’s

We call for a number of actions at the local and national policy levels to enable a more egalitarian approach. We ask that policymakers collaborate to build progressive, place-based visions for a just climate future to ensure that people and communities benefit from the transformative potential of policy changes. Policy makers need to map how Net Zero changes will affect their communities, taking into consideration how specific people and places will be affected more than others. This also means embedding strategic principles into policy making and implementation that are grounded in current realities and that are positive and transformative in scope.

What does this look like to Jim? In his case, it means being able to update his skills in an affordable way, being supported to update his vehicle and home, and a revival of local goods, services and opportunities to provide him with what he needs within walking distance. Jim’s skills will be enhanced by accessible, affordable retraining to allow him to work in the EV industry. Financial support will mean that he can afford an EV himself (if he needs one), with the running costs of this much cheaper.

Critically, to ensure their success, Net Zero policies must enable Jim to access the things that he needs and values in his daily life: access to friends, family, leisure, shopping and employment and training opportunities. If we make Net Zero work, harnessing it to make a better life for Jim, we have some hope of ensuring it can be sustained as a political agenda. The alternative of runaway climate change would cause greater risks still.