Climate action messaging

Below are some general messaging guidelines and suggestions around different areas, in case it’s helpful for any of your local campaigning work.

Talking about the problem

We're facing a climate emergency. What we do in the next few years will determine the future of our world. We still have time to act, and we know what the solutions look like. We just have to work together to build them.

Yet our leaders are letting us down – from filling the skies with more planes to funding oil and gas projects abroad. The solutions to the climate crisis are out there, but they don't look like this.

Talking about the solutions

We want to see communities where children can play outside and breathe in clean air, warm homes that don’t cost the Earth to heat, access to nature for everyone wherever they live, better food that’s good for us and greener jobs for everyone.

That’s why we’re lobbying councils to urgently adopt Climate Action Plans that'll rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions and build greener and fairer communities.

The plans include measures to:

• Improve decision making
• Raise money
• Combat fuel poverty
• Increase active travel (and drive down emissions in the transport sector)
• Grow the renewable energy sector
• Minimise waste
• Influence others.

We're also calling on the UK government to deliver a green and fair recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why people should get involved

We have the power to save our futures if we act together. The most effective thing we can do at the moment is be agents for change together locally, nationally and internationally.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

Not only is it within our grasp to create the world we want to see – it's our right. Already, people across the country and across the world have recognised the climate emergency and are taking action – on the streets, where they work, in their homes and in their communities. They're already building the future we want to see – will you join them?

There's no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.

How we'll change things together

Climate breakdown is a global problem with local solutions. Communities around the UK are taking the lead where our government isn’t – from school children going on strike, to building our own clean, affordable community energy systems, to passing climate-based council motions, and to generally creating greener, fairer communities where people and nature can thrive.

The most powerful thing we can do to solve the climate emergency is to join in, working together locally to make change happen. By transforming the local, we'll not only start building the better future we need, but together local action groups will also form a movement so powerful that our leaders will be forced to act. In this way, local action groups will play an essential role in achieving the big system change we need to see to stop climate breakdown.

Local action groups

We want to help channel the current surge of action and energy around climate change into real, tangible solutions. Local action groups are working in communities right across the UK to build climate-friendly communities and create pressure for the big system changes we urgently need.

Local action groups bring people together from all parts of society, united by their desire to stop climate change. These groups develop plans for their communities to tackle climate change. These plans can involve working with a mix of councils, local businesses and wider community groups to encourage local decision makers to agree plans for fairer, greener communities.

Local action groups are also actively building climate solutions in their own communities, from planting trees and encouraging cleaner transport and better homes, to fighting fossil fuel extraction and dirty air – they work on whatever feels right for them and their community at the time.

Local action groups can access support from Friends of the Earth including resources, tools and training to support their local campaigns, as well as having opportunities to participate in big moments of national unity and power, where we amplify our local wins and join forces across the country to force through big, urgent system change.

Short summary for online spaces

Local action groups across the UK are building practical climate solutions and creating fairer, greener communities. Together, this local action network is driving a national climate plan for the big changes we urgently need.

How to take part

This is a chance for you to promote your own local action group to people and share the ways to get involved:

• Do you have a meeting they can join? How do they register/find out about this?

• Do you have a petition to sign or a list they can sign up to?

• Do you have a Facebook group?

• Where can they find you?

People can join the broader local action movement by:

• Attending or hosting an event

• Joining a webinar

• Registering a new group.