At COP26, global elites are delivering sermons about rolling back the damage that they themselves caused. The people getting rich off of killing the planet are never going to save it.

At COP26, we are being told that the answer to this problem is to trust “market-based solutions.” The conference has even given Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos a platform to talk about what his vanity space travel expeditions taught him about climate change. Clearly, for those of us interested in preventing this crisis, few answers will be found in Glasgow.

The real fight against climate change will come from below, grassroots organizing that forces change to the polluting system which benefits the world’s most powerful interests. But here we have a problem: whether it is Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain, or Green New Deal Rising, climate movements are using a mobilization strategy which aims to maximize disruption which then increases media coverage and thus public awareness of the issues.

This is a strategy for a problem we are not facing. The problem that exists, the barrier to change, is not a lack of knowledge or concern on the population’s part, but a deficit of power. The Left’s strategy must reflect this, or we risk frenetic campaigning activity that ultimately changes little.

The repertoire of environmental direct action that includes blocking roads and bridges and disrupting business can be thought of as achieving two things. The first is increasing exposure through media coverage, which should convert more people to act for your cause. The second is a symbolic form of power — symbolic because each act of disruptive direct action can be without trouble overcome by the state, through selective arrests, injunctions, or police simply outnumbering protesters.

The idea of exposure as a strategy is that this will lead to an ever-growing number of people taking action until there is majority support for something to change. This is a model of political change built upon the belief that there is a deficit of knowledge: that if people were only informed, then change would happen. Such a belief in the primacy of spreading awareness means that the power a blockade holds for a few hours being little more than symbolic is no issue, since the crux of the strategy is the dissemination of knowledge, not the distribution of power.

The reality is that people are informed. There is a clear majority of people throughout society who are concerned about climate change and want action taken on it — so it follows that instead of a deficit of knowledge, the problem is a deficit of power.

The story of the climate crisis is a story of power. Companies and individuals pollute, destroy, and exploit the world and its marginalized populations, knowing the disastrous effects. They do it because it makes them filthy rich, and it is the logic on which the global economy operates.

If we want real change we cannot locate the climate crisis as an exceptional event outside of politics. We cannot afford to simply be given scraps of carbon credits here and heat pump grants there. If we cannot generate a majority for action, and so meaningful power, then the cause is lost.

This majority for action means our story of the climate crisis must weave in other stories, too. That the changes we need to save the planet are also changes that can give dignity to workers.

The logic that dictates deforestation in Brazil is the same logic that leaves children below the poverty line in Britain. It is a logic of sublimating human dignity, and even survival, for profit. Shouting ever louder with more bombastic media spectacles will not be what shifts mass support into mass action. For that, we need deep organizing.

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