Neva Löw/Sarah Mewes/Magdalena Polloczek, 08.10.2025: Conflicts over a socially just climate transition

Climate policy measures are often met with feelings of powerlessness and disempowerment, triggering fears and resentment. This blog series asks: What does a socially just climate transition look like? How can we create acceptance for just climate policies?

The climate crisis cannot be ignored. The destruction of the ecological foundations of life is continuing unabated – even though the goal of climate neutrality is a done deal. In 2015, with the Paris Agreement, a large part of the global community set the goal of limiting global warming to well below two degrees, preferably to 1.5 degrees. The window of opportunity to achieve this goal is closing fast and may already be fully closed (Club of Rome & Wuppertal Institute 2024: 11). In 2021, the last German government passed the Climate Protection Act, which aims to make Germany climate-neutral by 2045. Many scientists are of the opinion that things need to move much faster in order to prevent devastating environmental crises and minimise the crossing of possible tipping points in the climate system.

The transition from a fossil fuel economy and way of life to a sustainable one is a contested challenge, because on the one hand it means aligning production methods even more closely with the requirements of resource-conserving and low-emission processes, rethinking work routines and questioning the unbridled access of capital to nature and the environment. On the other hand, the conversion to climate neutrality is itself resource-intensive. It affects international trade relations between the global North and the global South and therefore harbours the risk of deepening existing power relations and inequalities. In this context, Anne Tittor speaks critically of "post-fossil extractivism" (Tittor 2023: 79ff.). In Germany, important key sectors of the economy, such as the energy sector, industry and the transport sector, are currently the strongest drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. CO2 reductions in these three sectors are therefore the biggest lever for climate protection.

However, whether the ecological transformation is successful also depends heavily on the political framework, social power relations and social habits. In addition to reorganising the mode of economic production itself, it is therefore important to rethink and transform social conventions, for example in the areas of mobility and consumption. In order to achieve progress here, we need to invest in social and infrastructural conditions. This can lay the foundations for creating an "economy of well-being" (Club of Rome & Wuppertal Institute 2024: 30), which can be understood as an economy that serves the well-being of as many people as possible, that does not only focus on profits (of large) corporations, that serves the preservation of nature  and considers processes of the near and the distant future. Since there is still a big difference between countries that contribute heavily to the destruction of our natural resources and countries that contribute little but suffer severely from the consequences, the concept of “economy of well-being” integrates a global perspective as well.

In Germany, too, there are deep inequalities between the causes of the climate crisis and the burdens it creates. So far, German climate policy has focused on a green modernisation of the economy without creating social security and, above all, without striving for a more fundamental transformation of social conditions. This also includes addressing negative distribution effects, which are felt to a greater extent by private households in particular. The Federal Environment Agency shows that population groups living in poverty are more frequently and more severely affected by environmental problems and climate change consequences than the economically rich groups. For example, residential areas with a high proportion of low-income households are typically exposed to noise pollution and air pollution particularly frequently, as they may often lack the means to take action or make decisions due to ownership structures, or do not have sufficient financial resources available for adaptation investments. In addition, a lack of (public) infrastructure, for example a lack of good public transport connections, available e-charging stations or green recreational areas and fresh air corridors, carries the risk that such residential areas will be increasingly affected by heatwaves and higher temperatures than other urban areas. There is a clear connection between economic positioning in society and greenhouse gas emissions, as low-income households contribute little to the "deterioration of the environmentally relevant status quo" (Club of Rome & Wuppertal Institute 2024: 51). Fischedick et al. (ibid.) call this "forced sufficiency": A low income forces a lifestyle that does not allow for excessive energy consumption or waste of resources. At the same time, however, there is reason to fear that climate change will exacerbate the burden on these households in particular. Target-group-specific environmental policy measures that address and attempt to compensate such unequal burdens would therefore lead an improvement in the housing and living conditions of poorer sections of the population – and thus contribute to a more inclusive society.

Other conflicts that arise around transformation processes become visible in the world of work. They come to the surface in the company or organisation and become particularly virulent when there is a threat of redundancies, when one's own job is at risk due to climate protection measures or when career development opportunities become more difficult. The latest WSI labour force survey (spring 2025) also shows that low-income employees in particular, as well as employees who express general concerns about social decline, are disproportionately more likely to state that they are worried that climate protection measures will have a negative impact on their job prospects or career (Hövermann 2025).

What remains is often a feeling of powerlessness. Previous climate protection measures have not proactively addressed existing inequalities and have ignored urgently needed changes in society, such as overcoming poverty. The overlap with other (global) crises also makes it difficult to focus attention. This mixed situation does not make it any easier to prioritise climate protection. As the Federal Environment Agency reports every two years in its Climate and environmental awareness study among the population, many people consider climate and the environment to be relevant, but the level has fallen again in recent years. Rather, the results of the survey reveal a backlog of necessary investments in key areas of social infrastructure: The state of the healthcare and education systems are currently the two most important political issues for respondents, and have also become much more important than in previous years. Without a systematic climate social policy, social services of general interest and climate protection are discussed separately and even perceived as opposing each other.

This situation goes hand in hand with increasing political scepticism about the goal of climate neutrality as a whole. In Germany, the AfD (Alternative for Germany), a party that actively denies climate change and wants to abolish the goal of climate neutrality, currently has almost a quarter of the electorate supporting it. It is part of an authoritarian shift to the right that extends far beyond Germany, strengthening nationalist ideas and embodying the promise of a continuation of the fossil fuel way of production and life in an exclusionary way. In addition, right-wing authoritarian rulers are experiencing an upswing worldwide, as we see with Trump in the USA. The day after taking office, he signed the USA's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. Under the motto "drill, baby, drill", he is pursuing the goal of helping the oil and gas industry reach new heights. In this context, Cara New Daggett speaks of an authoritarian form of "petro-masculinity" (New Daggett 2023). Right-wing authoritarian forces mix climate denial with misogyny and racism.

Germany has not yet given up on its goal of climate neutrality by 2045. At the same time, the new government is politically prioritising the strengthening of competitiveness, with climate protection taking a back seat on the agenda. Most recently, Saxony's Minister President Kretschmar publicly called for the postponement of the climate neutrality target to 2050.

All this shows: The implementation of ecological transformation must involve much more than just reducing emissions. An ecological transformation cannot be achieved unless it is also socially inclusive. It must offer the general population the prospect of a good life in security – otherwise it cannot be implemented. The fact that we are where we are today shows that the social side of the climate transition has been neglected in the past. This must change. By understanding the climate crisis also as a social crisis, we focus on structural inequalities. Without measures to mitigate the social impact, there is a risk that inequality in society will continue to increase in various dimensions.

In addition to established stakeholders from civil society, environmental and sustainability research, who have long been shaping this perspective, newly founded think tanks, initiatives and alliances such as Zukunft KlimaSozial (a research institute working for climate-neutral and socially just future) or the Social-Climate Council are decisively headed down this path. And the development of Environmental Labour Studies in academia also testifies to a change of perspective that combines the concerns of social and ecological justice (Barca 2012; Räthzel 2021). Several recent academic works are dedicated to the diversity of worker-environment relationships (see Räthzel 2021; Bell 2020; Schaupp 2024, among others).

Particularly on the road to climate neutrality, there is a constant debate about what it means to implement socially just measures and at the same time tackle the climate crisis effectively. This discourse must be conducted in society, and various solutions must be tried out. Ultimately, successful climate protection requires a social and political effort – and is also a question of negotiating between different interests.

With this blog series, we want to contribute to the visibility of this perspective and approach. We will highlight the various aspects of the socio-ecological transformation, but at the same time we would also like to discuss prospects for action. We will look at various areas of action that are particularly important for a socially just climate transition. Among other things, we will show the extent to which conflicts arise in the implementation of the socio-ecological transformation and how these could be resolved. We will also address the question of how the welfare state can minimise or even secure itself against climate risks, and what socio-political efforts could look like for democratic and social cohesion, which is threatened by rising climate resentment and right-wing populism. We will also outline the status of the social climate transition in various sectors of the economy.

This blog series is a collaboration between the WSI and the Next Economy Lab (NELA). The WSI Annual Conference 2025 entitled "Crises, struggles, solutions: transformation conflicts in socio-ecological change" will also address the topic. At NELA, this series is part of the project "Team Social Climate Change" in which trade union members from IG Metall, IGBCE and ver.di are being trained as transformation promoters in a cross-union training programme. They learn how to help shape the social climate transition locally and in their companies, how to win supporters and actively counter resistance. The project is supported by the Mercator Foundation.

References

Barca, Stefania (2024): Workers of the earth: Labour, ecology and reproduction in the age of climate change. London: Pluto Books.

Bell, Karen (2020): Working Class Environmentalism. An Agenda for a Just and Fair Transition to Sustainability.  Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Club of Rome & Wuppertal Institut (ed.) (2024): Earth for All Deutschland: Aufbruch in eine Zukunft für alle. München: Oekom Verlag.

Hövermann, Andreas (2025): Die Verdopplung des AfD Elektorats, Erkenntnisse aus dem WSI-Erwerbspersonenpanel. WSI Study Nr. 42. Düsseldorf: Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung.

New Daggett, Cara (2023): Petromaskulinität. Fossile Energieträger und autoritäres Begehren. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.

Räthzel, Nora/Stevis, Dimitris/Uzzel, David (Hg.) (2021): The Palgrave handbook of environmental labour studies. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Schaupp, Simon (2024): Stoffwechselpolitik: Arbeit, Natur und die Zukunft des Planeten. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.

Tittor, Anne (2023): Postfossiler Extraktivismus? Die Vervielfältigung sozial-ökologischer Konflikte im Globalen Süden durch Dekarbonisierung, in: PROKLA. Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft 53.210, pp. 77-98.

 

The article in German language: Konflikte um eine sozial gerechte Klimawende