Our Movements Objective relies on three vital constituencies: activists, voters, and businesses. It hinges on a shared sense of urgency to speed the clean energy transition.
Movements can give elected leaders political capital for acts of political courage. When an issue really matters to enough people, it galvanizes conversation, debate, and media attention–which can lead to game-changing legislation. To date, the climate crisis has yet to break into the global set of highest-priority concerns: crime, inflation, poverty, and jobs.
While climate has clear connections to many of these top-tier issues (notably the rising cost of energy, food, and insurance), the linkage for the most part has failed to yield much political impact. But there may be grounds for optimism on the movement front. In a 2024 survey, covering 77 countries that represent nearly 90 percent of the global population, four in five respondents said they want their government to strengthen its climate commitments.
In the corporate sphere, nearly half of the world’s largest businesses are committing to reach net zero in their internal operations. Among the public companies in our dataset who disclose, we’ve seen emissions fall by more than 25 percent over a seven-year period–encouraging progress, though there’s still much work to do.