Power and vested interests: systems do not continue simply because nobody has thought of a better alternative. The IPCC identifies incumbent political and economic interests as an important source of institutional lock-in, including networks involving businesses, policymakers, advocacy organisations and other institutions. It also documents the role of lobbying and misinformation in delaying climate action. People do not make environmental choices in a vacuum. Infrastructure, laws, institutions, business models and social norms can make high-carbon behaviour the easiest, cheapest or sometimes only practical option. The IPCC describes how infrastructure and institutions can lock societies into high-emission pathways for decades.

Disinformation and information integrity: misinformation, disinformation, climate denial and the deliberate undermining of climate science can distort public understanding and delay action. In 2025, governments and international organisations adopted the first Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, recognising disinformation and attacks on scientists, journalists and environmental defenders as a threat to effective climate action. The UN also provides an accessible overview of climate misinformation and how to recognise it.

Harmful subsidies and incentives: governments can be trying to tackle environmental problems while still subsidising activities that contribute to them. This includes support linked to fossil fuels, environmentally damaging agricultural practices and unsustainable fishing. The OECD looks at how environmentally harmful subsidies can be reformed and incentives redirected towards more environmentally positive activity.

Individualism: environmental problems are often presented as the result of millions of individual choices, with solutions focused on changing what each of us buys, eats, drives or throws away. Michael Maniates described this as the “individualisation of responsibility”, arguing that it can draw attention away from political power, institutions and collective solutions. The Miracle Inn is specifically exploring hyper-individualism and its personal, social and environmental consequences.

Consumerism, materialism and short-termism: the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment identifies the prioritisation of short-term, individual and material gains as one of the underlying causes of biodiversity loss and nature decline. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and others set out an alternative to the linear “take, make, waste” economy - the circular economy focuses on eliminating waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating nature.

Food and land systems: food systems are both dependent on a healthy environment and a major driver of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. The UN Environment Programme looks at the need to change how food is produced, distributed, consumed and wasted.

Pollution, chemicals and waste: pollution is the third part of the triple planetary crisis, alongside climate change and biodiversity loss. The UN Environment Programme’s Global Chemicals Outlook looks at the growth of the chemicals economy, the impacts of chemicals and waste, and gaps in how they are governed.

Economic growth and GDP: GDP measures economic activity, but does not tell us whether growth is environmentally sustainable, how its benefits are distributed or whether people's wellbeing is improving. The OECD’s Beyond Growth work argues that economic growth should be treated as a means to wider goals including wellbeing, environmental sustainability, reduced inequality and resilience, rather than as an end in itself.

Neoliberal capitalism: there is a substantial body of work examining how economic approaches centred on markets, deregulation, private ownership and limited government intervention have shaped responses to climate change. Research in Ecological Economics examines how neoliberal ideas have constrained public investment, regulation and other forms of collective climate action.

Economic models and degrowth: there is no single agreed alternative economic model. Doughnut Economics explores how economies could meet everyone's needs within planetary limits, while the Wellbeing Economy Alliance looks at economies designed around human and ecological wellbeing rather than GDP growth as the overriding goal. The Doughnut was updated in 2025 with new data on social needs and planetary boundaries. Degrowth questions whether already wealthy economies can continue pursuing increasing production and consumption while reducing environmental pressures quickly enough. A 2024 systematic review found that reducing energy and resource throughput is the central idea running through a large and growing academic literature on degrowth.

Finance and ownership: where money is invested helps determine which systems grow and which decline. The IPCC describes a persistent misallocation of global capital, with significant public and private finance continuing to support fossil fuels despite climate commitments. New fossil fuel investment can also lock emissions in for decades.

Who pays the real cost: the price of a product or activity does not necessarily reflect the damage it causes to nature, climate, health or future generations. The Dasgupta Review looks at how nature has been largely absent from economic decision-making and argues that economies need to be understood as part of nature, rather than separate from it. There is also a question about who pays for the transition. Resolution Foundation research warns that the upfront costs of measures such as home improvements, heat pumps and electric vehicles can put them beyond the reach of lower-income households unless support is carefully targeted, risking a transition in which costs and benefits are distributed unequally. People experiencing hunger and hardship in the UK are especially vulnerable. 

Colonialism, racism and extraction: colonial economies were built in part through the extraction of land, labour and natural resources, and these histories continue to shape environmental inequalities today. The IPCC recognises colonialism and structural inequality as factors shaping vulnerability to climate change. The Runnymede Trust and Greenpeace’s Confronting Injustice explores the connections between colonialism, racism, resource extraction and environmental harm in the UK and globally

Wealth inequality: responsibility for climate change is very uneven. The World Inequality Report 2026 estimates that the richest 10% are responsible for 77% of emissions associated with private capital ownership, while the poorest 50% account for 3%. Wealth also brings greater ability to invest, influence decisions and protect yourself from climate impacts. Patriotic Millionaires UK is an inspiring response from within the wealthiest part of society. Its members campaign for greater taxation of extreme wealth and for reducing the political influence that comes with wealth.

Global resource inequality: high-income countries use around six times more materials per person and generate around ten times the climate impacts per person of low-income countries. UNEP also reports that global extraction of natural resources has tripled over the past five decades. Some resource-intensive production has also shifted from richer countries to middle-income countries, meaning the environmental impacts of consumption can occur far from where goods are ultimately consumed.

Gender and care: climate change interacts with existing inequalities in income, land ownership, political representation and unpaid care. UN Women’s work on feminist climate justice focuses on recognition, redistribution, representation and reparation, including the need to recognise and redistribute care for people and the planet. For a UK perspective see the Women’s Environmental Network.

Poverty and a just transition: people who have contributed least to climate change are among those most exposed to its impacts and least able to absorb the costs of change. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s climate work looks specifically at how the UK's transition can reduce rather than deepen inequality, including through housing, transport and energy policy. Also see the work of Verture, the UK's only climate adaptation and resilience charity.

Our relationship with nature: IPBES identifies disconnection from and domination over nature and other people as another underlying cause of environmental decline. This raises deeper questions about whether nature is understood primarily as a resource for human use, or whether economies and societies recognise human wellbeing as dependent on healthy living systems.

Planetary boundaries: the Planetary Boundaries framework identifies nine Earth system processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the planet. These include climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, ocean acidification, novel entities such as chemical pollution, atmospheric aerosols and stratospheric ozone. The 2025 planetary health check found that seven of the nine boundaries have now been crossed, with ocean acidification becoming the seventh. The framework is useful because it shows that climate change is one part of a wider, interconnected ecological crisis.

Systems change: Donella Meadows’ Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System is useful for pulling these issues together. It explores why changing individual behaviours or targets may have less effect than changing information, rules, power, the goals of a system and ultimately the beliefs and assumptions that underpin it.