Far from being separate or additional then, climate and our cost-of-living concerns are absolutely wrapped up in each other. Which is why so many “green policies” are so well-placed to tackle both issues concurrently. Retrofitting houses with e.g. low-carbon heating, solar panels and energy efficiency can improve the quality of buildings to bring down both emissions and bills. It can also reduce reliance on fossil fuels; improve health outcomes and create more comfortable, resilient homes. Clean, affordable public transport running in the interest of users can better connect people and places to job opportunities, nature and each other.

Beyond this, transitioning to a low-carbon society presents massive new opportunities for investment, industry and can generate huge amounts of new revenue for local and national economies — all of which can in turn help fund the social and public services, housebuilding, nature restoration etc that we so desperately need. All of this can come with jobs too if we’re willing to put the right training and pathways in place: the Climate Change Committee estimates anywhere between 135,000 and 725,000 roles from being more ambitious here. We’ve not done nearly enough to deliver any of this this yet, but even Conservative MP’s like Chris Skidmore recognise net zero as the holistic social and economic opportunity that it ultimately is.

We can’t think about green policies vs real issues as a net zero-sum game. It simply isn’t the case. The multiple overlapping crises we face in the UK and around the world have proven this time and time again — and many of the solutions we need are very much one and the same.

It’s worth reading the rest of Fraser Stewart’s latest medium article on the cost of living crisis and the cost of not going green. Like everything Stewart writes it’s unusually clear on how “green crap” could help your average punter, and what the barriers are to that happening.

The failure of politicians to actually convince people of these benefits is a topic that’s been in the air recently. Neil MacKay shoots for the moon in a way that makes my eye twitch when he makes bold statements about human selfishness, but his analysis of political failure in Scotland seems right to me. That he expresses disappointment in Green politicians and saves his rage for those who would scream down every good idea shows good judgement, and awareness of the stakes as well as the thwarted possibilities.

I don’t have any great strategy here, but the absence of such a strategy from the broader political sphere – and the evident naivety of waiting for physical evidence to do the talking – gnaws at my heart. Environmentalists will never get to do politics on easy mode, as those whose interests are aligned with big money do. This fact makes knowing how to talk to people even more necessary for anyone who gives a damn.

My gut tells me that a successful environmental politics will need to go deeper, to speak to the ways in which people’s basic requirements aren’t being met. I’m thinking once again about David Graeber’s writing on care and labour:

What would happen if we stopped acting as if the primordial form of work is laboring at a production line, or wheat field, or iron foundry, or even in an office cubicle, and instead started from a mother, a teacher, or a caregiver? We might be forced to conclude that the real business of human life is not contributing toward something called “the economy” (a concept that didn’t even exist three hundred years ago), but the fact that we are all, and have always been, projects of mutual creation. Labor, similarly, should be renegotiated. Submitting oneself to labor discipline—supervision, control, even the self-control of the ambitious self-employed—does not make one a better person. In most really important ways, it probably makes one worse. To undergo it is a misfortune that at best is sometimes necessary. Yet it’s only when we reject the idea that such labor is virtuous in itself that we can start to ask what is virtuous about labor. To which the answer is obvious. Labor is virtuous if it helps others.

Say this out loud and you’ll likely be dismissed as a do-gooder, as Graeber knew well – the last chapter of Bullshit Jobs has some great observations on how “moral envy” works to police what’s possible and determine what work is rewarded. Still, there’s something real here – something those who are better at mass communication might be able to get across to those who need to hear it most.

RELATED: British Gas profits jump 900% to £969m due to price cap

British Gas has reported record profits of almost £1bn – boosted by the price cap increase during the energy crisis – in a sign that Britain’s energy system is broken, fuel poverty campaigners have said.

British Gas Energy, the firm’s retail energy division, saw underlying earnings leap to £969m from £98m a year earlier – its highest first-half profit and an increase of almost 900 per cent.

Delighted to hear it. I was really worried about the lads for a minute there.

Sing it with me now: “Economic forecast soothe our dereliction…”