What Trump’s victory reveals about the climate and sustainability movement’s failures
Trump’s victory is a setback for the climate and sustainability movement, exposing critical failures, including its disconnect from people’s priorities and its inability to challenge the status quo in compelling ways. This article explores these shortcomings and calls for a new approach: building a broad coalition of the disgruntled through relatable narratives, bold solutions, and tangible benefits that address people’s real pain points.
After the US elections, the climate and sustainability discourse seems dominated by questions like, “what Trump’s victory means for climate change” and how “clean energy, sustainable investors brace for second Trump presidency.”
These are undoubtedly important questions, but I would argue they are not the most crucial ones.
Trump’s victory represents not just a defeat for Kamala Harris but also for the climate and sustainability agenda she and the Democrats championed. We can endlessly debate the potential consequences of this loss on climate action and critical sustainability challenges. However, dwelling on these known (and unknown) unknowns is not only speculative but also misses a fundamental point: the core challenge isn’t about adjusting strategies, but about confronting a deeper reality. To put it bluntly, the climate and sustainability movement is offering something most people aren’t interested in buying.
What is that “something”? Whether it’s framed as a sustainability-driven vision, 1.5°C lifestyle, a climate strategy, environmental progress, or a roadmap for a better, more resilient life, the harsh truth is we’ve failed in effectively selling it.
It may sound harsh, but let’s face it. Trump’s victory is one of a growing number of political, societal, economic, and behavioral defeats and setbacks for the climate and sustainability agenda. Yes, we can point to a long list of small achievements and incremental progress around the world, but the bottom line is that the pace of change is far slower than what’s needed, and the problems we need to address are growing faster than the solutions applied. This is why the 1.5°C threshold is likely to be out of reach and the premise of operating within the planetary boundaries becomes less and less attainable. We have a system that needs to change, and not only have we failed to do so thus far, but the appetite for such systemic changes seems to be remarkably low across the globe.
There is something deeper in Trump’s victory that is both troubling and highly relevant for the climate and sustainability movement (for brevity, let’s call it the climate movement). It is the notion that Harris and the Democrats failed to connect with people’s most painful pain points (mainly, but not only, economic ones) and to overcome a strong anti-incumbent sentiment — a trend that is not unique to the U.S. Put simply, the elections showed us that many people are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs and the direction the country is heading, and they are skeptical about the solutions the Democratic establishment offers. Trump, on the other hand, managed, as author Thomas Frank, pointed out, “to put together a remarkable coalition of the disgruntled, successfully reaching out “to everyone with a beef,” and make them believe he’s the right person to fix it, “regardless of which “It” you had in mind.”
Similarly, the climate movement appears to be failing exactly where Harris and the Democrats did. First, it hasn’t managed to connect with people’s key pain points, both in terms of making climate change a top priority and linking it to other issues people care about, such as the economy and personal finances. For example, few people draw connections between climate change and inflation or can tell how a specific climate action improves their financial situation in the short-term. Second, the climate movement has failed to harness populist sentiment. Instead, it remains closely associated with the establishment rather than with those challenging it, even though at its core, it challenges nearly every fundamental aspect of the current economic system. This trend has been strengthened in recent years with anti-ESG, anti-climate regulation and anti-sustainability narratives, which frame the climate movement as one steering society in the wrong direction. In other words, the climate movement is now framed as an unappealing remedy provided by elites with little relevance to most people’s lives and pain points, a perception not too far from how Harris was viewed by many voters.
Therefore, I want to suggest that the climate movement is in a similar crossroads as the Democratic party, where it needs to figure out how to redefine itself in a way that is both appealing and effective, enabling the creation of strong and broad coalitions around a far more relatable value proposition. The difference is that unlike the Democrats, which at least seem to understand the urgent need in a deep and probably painful soul-searching exercise, the climate movement does not seem too eager to explore what it can learn from these elections.
Partially driven by inertia, partly due to lack of new dominant forces that will offer an alternative approach, we have a climate movement that struggles to move away from frameworks and playbooks that are valid on paper, but fail to move the needle sufficiently, including ESG, COPs, SDGs, circular-ish innovation, the Paris Agreement, net-zero strategies, the business case for sustainability, science-based targets, and of course sustainability reporting (pick your favorite reporting framework!). Just like the Harris campaign, all of this climate and sustainability infrastructure has been put in place with a lot of effort and thought by incredible people, but just like the campaign the bottom line is that it is not a winning platform — and we need one that wins.
We need to construct a new approach for the climate movement, one that is less technical and more personal, less occupied with efficiencies and more with people’s experiences, less preoccupied with producing long reports and more focused on designing new narratives to help change people’s mindsets, and finally, less afraid to ask tough questions and offer bold solutions that seek to benefit people here and now.
Trump’s victory is not only a challenge but also an opportunity for the climate movement. It’s an opportunity to admit an ongoing failure of this movement to meet people where they are and build a strong coalition of the disgruntled, just like Trump just did. We haven’t managed to do it so far and these elections are the clearest and latest indication of it. There are moments when things just don’t work out and require you to go back to the whiteboard and rethink your course of action. This should be one of these moments.
Perhaps, instead of having another COP that goes nowhere, we could organize a different gathering of climate and sustainability forces — not one led by the UN, but by creative young and old forces working to craft a new populist agenda and tools for forging a much-needed strategy to propel the climate movement forward. While there’s no guarantee we can succeed in making change happen, we must try — and that starts by listening to what voters are telling us, rather than those who insist on continuing down a path that takes us further from victory.
Raz Godelnik is an Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design — The New School. He is the author of Rethinking Corporate Sustainability in the Era of Climate Crisis. You can follow me on LinkedIn.
