From Moral Motivations to Material Interests: Building a Mass Climate Movement through Transformative Adaptation

Global heating is accelerating, but climate mobilization remains too limited to stop climate breakdown and protect people from its impacts. We draw on the history of social movements, the social science of collective action, and our experience in the climate movement to make concrete suggestions for increasing climate mobilization. While moral motivations are important for some participants, they have proven inadequate; here we urge a focus on people’s immediate material interests, building upon recent proposals to center “transformative adaptation”. Unlike shallower forms of climate adaptation, transformative adaptation involves major changes to social and economic relations. We argue that campaigns for transformative adaptation could grow climate mobilization because they can accomplish five goals at once: deliver direct material benefits, appeal to a politically diverse public, foster democratic and equitable institutions, increase climate resilience, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In so doing, transformative adaptation could also make pro-climate policies and institutions more durable by creating constituencies that will defend them. We suggest how researchers and organizers can build on our proposal.