How to influence companies, politicians & other people (40+ ways!)

Climate change actions taken by individuals are important, but – let’s be honest – the effect is tiny, compared to the impact of actions taken by companies and governments. Unfortunately, it’s very clear that most companies and politicians are not treating climate change as an urgent, life-threatening problem.

So it’s time to force them to take action – and to do that, we need to persuade other people that they need to take action too.

In fact, we think influencing companies, politicians and other people is the most important, effective climate change action you can do. We reckon you need to be doing something on this list at least once a week! Fortunately, many of them are very easy, cheap, and quick to do, and there’s even an example email/letter you can use at the end of the article.

Let’s talk about:

• why we should influence others
• who we should influence, and how to influence them
• topics to raise if you’re stuck for ideas
• how often to do it

Why should we influence others?

As we said in the intro – actions taken by individuals are important, but the effect of our actions is tiny compared to the impact of actions taken by companies and governments. For example:

• If governments made public transport widely available, frequent, reliable and free, it’s likely that millions more people would use it instead of private cars.
• If supermarkets eliminated plastic packaging at the point of sale, it would have a much bigger and quicker impact than gradually persuading individuals to use their zero-waste shop.
• And if electricity companies ramped up renewables and developed better battery storage technology, we wouldn’t have a gas and oil crisis.

So we’re not going to let politicians and companies off the hook. They’re the ones who are mainly responsible for fixing the climate crisis, even if we have to force them to do it.

Unfortunately, the people that run governments and companies are often driven by short-term or selfish motives. Many of them will only do something if it increases the chance of them getting re-elected, or if it increases profits and therefore their bonuses and share options.

To add to the problem, there’s a huge number of people who don’t want action to fight climate change. This could be because they don’t believe in the facts (perhaps due to the influence of others in their bubble), they have a financial interest in keeping things as they are, or they just don’t want to change their lifestyle. Expertly manipulated by the right-wing press, these people are very vocal. And some climate-sceptic commentators are literally no more than bots – software programmed to act like a real person on social media and spread misinformation.

So our job is to be equally visible and vocal until the voices for change are louder than the voices holding back progress. Only then will companies and politicians put fighting climate change at the top of their agendas.

Who should we influence, and how can we do it?

How to influence national politicians (government)

Politicians are top of the list of people to influence. If we were cynical, we’d say “giving them lots of money” seems to be quite an effective way of influencing politicians and political parties, but that probably isn’t a route open to most of us. So what else can we do?

First, you’ll need to find out who your Member of Parliament, senator or congressperson is. Find out here:

UK: https://www.theyworkforyou.com/
(You can find out who your MP is, how they voted, and how to contact them. You can also set up alerts that tell you when issues you care about are mentioned in Parliament, so you can send your MP relevant and timely messages.)

US Congress: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
US Senate: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

Australia: https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members

Once you’ve found out who your elected representative is, you need to start contacting them and getting your message across.

Traditional communication

Contact your political representative frequently by email, social media, post or phone.

Bear in mind your representative will almost certainly have assistants and interns to read their correspondence for them. If your political representative disagrees with you, the assistant’s job will include sending boilerplate replies to fob you off. Some of them may be quite convincing – for example, they might list the ways in which their party has committed money or made pledges for change. Millions of pounds and promises to change things in 10 years’ time might sound great! But look around you and ask whether enough is actually being done. If the answer is no, then whatever commitments they have made (however impressive they sound) are clearly not enough.

Also bear in mind that just one letter, email, or tweet is not going to change anyone’s mind. Together, we have to build up a metaphorical pile of correspondence, until whoever is in charge of policy takes note and warns them, “Hey, we’d better start taking this seriously, or we won’t get re-elected”. So don’t be discouraged when all you get are standard boilerplate replies. You are adding to that all-important pile, and your aim is to become one of many, persistent, thorns in their side until they start listening.

We don’t mean just one or two letters here. You need to be contacting them regularly, and you need to get other people to contact them too. A lot.

Meet them on their terms

Politicians sometimes hold “surgeries”, which are meetings where they meet their constituents. Yes, you can literally go along and talk to them face-to-face if you want to! Make sure you go prepared with questions that you already know the answer to (so you can’t be fobbed off); appeal to them on a human level; and ensure you have the last word.

Politician: “Spouts final load of greenwash”
You: “Well, thank you for your time. I don’t really think that’s enough though, do you? Perhaps you can think on it. Goodbye” (Immediately leave.)

Meet them on your terms

You can also find out where they’re going to be – opening art exhibitions, parks etc – and go along and make conversation. Make sure you do your homework so you can ask them about a current environmental issue and what their party’s position on it is.

Be nice, so they think you might vote for them, then express great surprise and disappointment if the answer isn’t what you’d like to hear. My goodness, you might have to consider voting for the other candidate! After all, the other party has much better environmental policies. You’ve never voted for them before but these are desperate times after all… Give them something to think about later as they fall asleep.

This works best for backbench politicians. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to approach members of the government in this way.

Target them with a petition

You can target the government with a petition on the UK Government and Parliament Petition site. If a petition gets 10,000 signatures, the government will respond. At 100,000 signatures, the petition will be considered for debate in Parliament. (Sadly, this could be scheduled for late at night or another unpopular time, so it doesn’t guarantee a spirited debate finishing with a decisive vote.)

Protest

If your political representative is unlikely to be swayed by reasoned arguments, placards and protests might be your best option. Find out where they’re going to be, join up with some other people, and stand outside. Take photos or arrange for the local media to be there, and make sure you have a media statement ready. It’s possible you might be arrested, so do this at your own risk.

If your political representative is on your side

If your political representative belongs to the party in opposition, or is in agreement with you, you will probably have an easier time. That’s because they will be looking for ways to embarrass the party in power, or for your support in making the changes they want to see. So give them as much help as you can.

How to influence local politicians

Local politicians have a say in local policies and how local funds are allocated. But as grass-roots members of their chosen political party, they are also useful in feeding back public opinion to national-level politicians.

So if your topic of the day is setting up a park-and-ride, a low traffic neighbourhood, subsidised bus routes, funding local community initiatives, fighting unsustainable development, or encouraging the council to grow wildflower verges, local politicians are the place to start.

To find out who your local politicians are, first, find out who your council is here and then visit your council’s website to find a list of elected councillors.

Local politicians are not public figures in the way national politicians are, so bear that in mind when contacting them. They may have jobs as well as civic responsibilities, and it would be inappropriate to target them in their jobs or personal lives. However, you are absolutely entitled to contact them about political matters, through official channels.

Here are some ways you can engage with local politicians:

• Email them.
• Follow them and engage with their posts on social media.
• Go to community forums.
• Go to town hall meetings and talk to them (they don’t even need to be about green issues, you’re just looking to become a Face They Know).
• Engage with online consultations.
• Go to hustings at election time and ask questions.
• Invite them to your action group meetings.
• Bump into them when they’re opening parks and art exhibitions.
• If you happen to know where they play golf, which business group they’re a member of, which pub they drink at, or which place of worship they go to, you could even develop a friendship and influence or support them over the long term.

How to influence companies

Companies can be particularly responsive to changes in public opinion. That’s because if they lose market share or their profits go down, the directors could very quickly lose their bonuses, share options and jobs.

Companies can be influenced in several ways.

Support them

• Everyone likes some positive reinforcement! If a company is doing something right, support them. Use their services, publicly thank them, recommend their product, “like” their social media posts, and encourage them to keep doing whatever it is.
• Tweet at them nicely. If you’ve got a question, ask it publicly and politely. It’s possible they just need a bit of a push.

Call them out

• When companies are clearly in the wrong, join or create a wave of anger and try to force change through public pressure.
• Write/email/tweet at big brands asking them what they are doing to reduce packaging and introduce better alternatives. If they respond, watch out for greenwash. Are you actually seeing changes in your local store? If yes, thank them, and then ask them what their next plan is. If they say they’re doing something but you’re not seeing the evidence (after a reasonable period of time), ask them what’s going on, ideally publicly.

Go straight to the top

• Start a petition. You can start a petition on Change.org, but first, ask yourself if you’re committed to following it through. The most powerful petitions are started by people who are committed, have the time to meet the petition’s target in real life, and work together for solutions. A half-hearted petition is a wasted effort.
• Sometimes the person at the top can be influenced directly. This is particularly likely for issues that may be nagging at their conscience or issues that would cause massive embarrassment to them if they became public. Find the email of the CEO of most major companies at https://www.ceoemail.com

Change them from the inside

• If you’re employed, or run your own company, read our Things You Can Do At Work page. Implement the suggestions or suggest them to management.
• If you’ve got expertise in a particular area, join the company and push for change from the inside. You could be the reason a multi-national company decides to eliminate plastic from its supply chain, switch to an all-electric fleet, or promote working from home for all its employees. In the right job, your impact could be a million times greater than your individual impact alone.

Become a shareholder

• Subject to national rules, buying even a single share in a company could give you the right to attend the company’s Annual General Meeting and vote in elections, giving you a say in who gets elected to the Board of Directors. With enough support from other members, you could even table a resolution to be voted on. This is most likely to be effective as part of an activist shareholder group, like Ekō (formerly known as SumOfUs). SumOfUs regularly fundraise to buy significant numbers of shares in corporations that are “behaving badly”, and then use their expertise and clout to force those companies to change.

Become a member

• Use your vote. If you bank with a Building Society or shop at your local Co-op, you’re probably already a member of that organisation, with the right to vote at their Annual General Meeting. We know it’s boring reading through the list of potential board members, but try scanning it for people who’ve got good green credentials, or would increase the diversity of the board. Unless they appear to be completely unsuitable for some other reason, vote for them.
• Become a member of your local Co-op and help influence national and local sustainable initiatives by taking part in surveys and assemblies.

How to influence… influencers

Successful influencers have huge followings and are good at – you guessed it – influencing people.

Yet many of them are promoting exactly the wrong sort of behaviour; for example, Kylie Jenner, who took a private jet flight lasting just 17 minutes. The Guardian estimated that her short private flight generated 1 ton of CO₂, which is approximately 1/4 of the annual CO₂ emissions of an average person globally.

Celebrities are very sensitive to public opinion because their income relies on staying popular. So, publicly calling them out could be an effective tool to change their behaviour (over time, and if enough people do it). If you are prepared to deal with the inevitable blowback from climate change deniers, get on X (Twitter) or TikTok and ask these influencers why they’re contributing so excessively to climate change.

How to influence influencers in a more positive way

More positively, find climate change influencers (with any level of popularity) and support them by liking, sharing and commenting on their posts. As well as increasing their reach, this also makes them feel their efforts are appreciated and helps dilute the negativity they are probably getting from trolls.

How to influence people you know

Locally or on social media, you probably have more influence than you think you do.

Your circle of friends, colleagues and acquaintances will see you making sustainable choices and know that you are the person to ask about environmental issues.

Maybe there are people in real life or your social media circle that you generally like, but disagree with on certain issues? When they say something you know is wrong or share factually incorrect posts, use it as an opportunity to direct them to the facts and get them thinking. Emphasising any common ground you share will help build trust. Remember other people will hear or see your replies, so your well-reasoned, polite, factual arguments will have influence even if you don’t convince the person you’re having a discussion with.

Trolls and right-wing thought leaders aside, the “other side” isn’t the enemy – they’re just people who have grown up in different environments, with different priorities and influences. Sometimes they just need to see the evidence from a different point of view. But other times it’s more complicated, and we may need to adjust our own thinking and collaborate to find a solution that works for everyone.

If you have followers on social media, you can influence them by sharing your green lifestyle. Clearly, there are huge numbers of people just waiting to follow other people’s examples – let them be inspired by your green lifestyle, rather than another wasteful wannabe.

How to influence voters

Encourage everyone you know to use their vote, particularly younger people. Younger people tend to vote less often than older people do)^[1] but could make a huge difference if they did.

• In the UK, you can register to vote here
• It’s much easier to vote if you have a postal vote. Anyone can have a postal vote and you don’t need to give a reason.
• Once you’ve registered to vote, you can request a postal vote here

In the UK, make sure people know that there are new rules about voter ID from 2023, and ask them to make sure they have got the forms of ID necessary to cast a vote in person

Wherever you are, encourage people to vote and support them to register and get the necessary ID.

How to get people talking about green issues locally

• Turn up to local hustings at election time and ask a question about environmental issues. Even if some of the candidates give greenwashed answers, you’ll give more environmentally responsible candidates a chance to speak on the issue too.
• Write a letter to your local newspaper. The local press is often popular with older voters so this is a good way to reach them.
• Support greener candidates on social media.
• Support, and share information about, green initiatives in your area.

How to support the Green Party

• Offer your support to the Green Party (or whichever party the Green Party stands aside for in national or local elections).
• Work might involve delivering leaflets, canvassing, awareness drives or even committee positions.
• Volunteers with skills such as photography, graphic design, social media management or communication training would almost certainly be useful at local level.
• Even if you are a member of a different political party, you can still support the Green Party financially by becoming a “Friend” of the Green Party Becoming a Friend allows anyone to support green issues no matter their political leaning.

See our “use your vote” page for more ideas.

How to influence public opinion

If you’re frustrated by the slow pace of change, you might prefer group activism.

Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace, Insulate Britain, Just Stop Oil and Friends of the Earth are just some of the environmental groups that lead campaigns and arrange stunts or protests to keep climate change in the public eye and in the news. Their activities are often disruptive, and are therefore unpopular with the people they are designed to inconvenience – but they’re good for getting the media to talk about climate change.

Alternatively, get the local press involved. Overworked journalists are crying out for local interest stories. Your plan should be to help them fill half a page, a Facebook post, or a news segment with minimal effort – so write your story in the form of a press release or well-written email, and include a good photo, preferably in landscape (wide) format as this will work best on their website. You could use the local press to raise awareness of unsustainable developments, get helpers for community projects, publicise a new sustainable business or even write a regular column on green issues.

Social media can be used in a similar way, but you’ll need to post your own copy to appropriate groups. Again, a relevant photo will help your post stand out.

Make sure you include a “Call To Action”. That means:

• Think about what you actually want people to do as a result of reading your post, and then,
• Make it as easy as possible for them to do it.

Include links to relevant websites (e.g. your council’s planning objection portal, or your community group’s website) in your Call To Action. If you’re publicising an event, make sure you include important details like where and when it’s taking place, and for planning objections, include the deadline for responses and a link to make it easy to submit.

What should I say?

Depending on how you feel, you could go deep on one issue, or take a scattered approach and hope that your message becomes one of many. Your topic should be relevant to your target.

Here are some ideas.

Things you can lobby politicians about

Things you could lobby your political representatives about include:

Ending fossil fuel extraction

• Banning new oil and gas exploration (Ireland, Denmark and Spain have already announced bans on new oil and gas exploration, so it can be done).
• Stopping subsidies for/making it less attractive to invest in environmentally damaging projects like oil drilling, fracking and coal mining (effectively removing finance from these industries).
• Banning fracking (check whether it’s already banned in your country first. If it is, see if there are plans to roll it back, for example, due to the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine).
• Imposing massive windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies, to make it less profitable to invest in them.
• Redirecting the windfall taxes into sustainable transport, green energy generation, and subsidies, so that ordinary people can afford to replace their oil and gas boilers with heat pumps, and replace their petrol or diesel cars with electric vehicles.

Supporting developments in green technology

• Subsidising or supporting new developments in green technology.
• More opportunities for individuals and businesses to invest in green energy generation and insulation.
• Research into carbon capture technology.
• Research into improved battery capacities and battery recycling.

Supporting renewable energy generation

• Imposing a punitive excess profits tax on fossil-fuel energy companies, and investing the proceeds in renewables.
• Making it easier to build on-shore wind farms.
• Legislation to make solar panels, water recycling systems, triple glazing and air-source heat pumps mandatory in all new homes and commercial developments.

Improving our housing and buildings

• Improving insulation and glazing in social housing.
• Making solar panels, heat pumps and renewable energy generation systems mandatory on all new buildings.
• Creating reliable, easy-to-run, effective subsidy schemes to retrofit existing properties.

Protecting oceans and rivers

• The need to protect our oceans and curb emissions to prevent ocean acidification (a serious climate change tipping point).
• Outlawing deep-sea mining.
• Legislating against companies polluting rivers and beaches.
• Forcing water companies to work harder to reduce the amount of water leaking from pipes.

Preventing deforestation

• Action to prevent deforestation, particularly in rainforests.
• Supporting indigenous people’s rights to, and management of, their lands.

Creating sustainable mass public transit systems

• Support for modern public transport systems that are fit for the future, like expanded, subsidised bus routes, electric trams, and safe cycle paths.
• Building permanent sustainable transport routes, like cycle routes, as part of all new large developments.

Protecting wildlife including pollinators

• Banning bee-killing pesticides, including a tighter ban on neonicotinoid pesticides and next-generation replacements.
• Supporting bee-friendly wildflower verges.

Discouraging air travel

• Introducing frequent flier taxes, that are high enough to discourage business travel and frequent fliers.
• Making airlines and train companies publish the environmental impact of each journey so they can be easily compared.

Action on waste

• Legislating to prevent food waste by supermarkets, their suppliers, and restaurants/food chains
• Making it easier for supermarkets to donate surplus food to organisations that need it.
• Legislating to stop manufacturers from artificially limiting the life of their products.
• Legislating to ensure that spares and repairs are available for at least 10 years after a product is discontinued.
• Recognising carbon emissions at the point of demand, not manufacture, to avoid companies pushing the burden onto other countries.
• Legislating to make manufacturers and retailers responsible for recycling the packaging that comes with their products.
• Legislating to put a stop to micro-plastic pollution, e.g. make manufacturers fit microplastic filters to washing machines as standard (France has done it).

The law

• Prosecuting energy company executives who knew about climate change for decades but covered it up.
• Reinstating the right to protest.
• Decriminalising actions taken when protesting against climate change.

Things you can lobby your bank, insurance company or pension fund about

Lobby your bank, insurance company or pension fund about:

• Divesting from environmentally damaging projects like oil drilling, fracking and coal mining (effectively removing finance from these industries).
• Investing in sustainable energy projects instead.

If your bank, insurance company or pension fund actively avoids investing in environmentally damaging projects, make sure other people know about it and share your (hopefully) good experience of using their services.

Things you can lobby companies about

Lobby big companies, and companies you use a lot, about:

• Reducing packaging.
• Making sure the remaining packaging is recyclable (and just to be clear, we don’t count plastic as recyclable, because most of it isn’t actually recycled^[2]– it ends up in landfill, on beaches, in the ocean, or burned).
• Removing plastic from the product itself.
• Removing plastic from their supply chain.
• Ensuring sustainable manufacturing and ethical treatment of workers in their supply chain.
• Taking back worn-out products for recycling/repair.
• Minimising waste in the fashion industry.

Talking to people you know about sustainability

Influence people you know, and people in your community, with your positive experiences of:

• Going vegan or vegetarian.
• Cutting out meat a few days a week.
• Learning to cook from scratch.
• Walking, cycling or using public transport.
• What it’s like to live with solar panels, an air-source heat pump or an electric car.
• Using second-hand and reuse websites like Freegle, Freecycle and Olio.
• All the great stuff you can find at your nearest zero-waste shop.
• Shampoo bars that work in your water area.
• How to grow your own food.
• Recycling hard-to-recycle things with TerraCycle.
• Going thrifting and getting bargains from charity shops.
• Learning to repair things, or teaching other people to repair things.
• Enjoying experiences instead of buying more things.
• Using an ethical bank, pension fund or insurance company.

How often should I influence people?

To some extent, how often you influence a target depends on how much you want them to like you.

If you’re not that bothered whether they like you or not…

You probably don’t care too much whether the prime minister or your local politician likes you. They’re paid to listen to the views of their constituents, so contact them frequently and ask for follow-ups. Private communication with companies is the same.

We suggest contacting a different politician or organisation every week. (Not the same one, that would probably be harassment.) Contact your local politician one week, a company that could do better the next week, and so on. It’s one of the easiest things to do and takes very little time.

Remember it doesn’t even matter how well you write! A simple email, like this one below, is enough, and has the advantage that you don’t have to do much research before sending it:

Dear (name of politician/CEO/company),
Climate change needs to be treated as an urgent issue. I’ve been hearing a lot about (insert issue here) and I wondered what your (political party/company) is doing about it?
Best regards, (your name)
(Include your address if writing to your local politician as they do not have to respond if you don’t)

This is fine, because the reason you’re doing it is not to get a detailed response – although that would be an unexpected bonus – but just to add your correspondence to a growing pile called “people are starting to get concerned about the environment – so we need to start taking it seriously”.

People you want to stay friends with

For people you interact with every day and want to stay friends with, your best bet is sharing interesting and positive stories on a semi-regular basis – frequently enough that they know where you stand, but without becoming such a bore that they mute you (which benefits nobody!)

Your influence is likely to be more effective as they see the changes you’re making in action – e.g. sharing really good vegan meals with them, inviting them to go thrifting with you, telling them you don’t want surprise gifts (a.k.a. unwanted gifts) for your birthday, or telling them about Freecycle when they need to get rid of something.

To help build momentum, we’d love it if you could tag #biggreenideaslist when you influence politicians or companies on social media, so we can see which ideas are currently trending in the community.

Get started!

Using your influence is one of the most important things to do, because of the multiplier effect. If you can persuade a company or political party to change its stance on green issues, you’ve made living sustainably easier for people who just needed a push, and you’ve made it harder for climate change deniers to continue to make bad choices. It’s a win-win, and it’s free (for people who already have internet access).

So get started by committing to one communication a week, and keep it up!

_{[1] BBC News. (2020). Election 2017: If more young people actually voted, would it change everything? [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39965925 [Accessed 8 Mar. 2020].
[2] the Guardian. 2022. ‘Plastic recycling is a myth’: what really happens to your rubbish?. [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish> [Accessed 27 July 2022]}

_{Image credits:
“Dear politicians – do better.” – created from an original photo by Ben Kolde on Unsplash
Green tram line – photo by Martin Tupy on Unsplash
Westminster – photo by Aswin Mahesh on Unsplash
Piles of letters – photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Road closed to motor vehicles – photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash
Office workers discussing business – photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
Influencer – photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash
Friends drinking at a bar – photo by Elevate on Unsplash
“I voted” stickers – photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash
Extinction Rebellion protest – photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Rainforest, Borneo – photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash (image removed from Unsplash)
Mining machine – photo by Albert Hyseni on Unsplash
Plastic packaging in a supermarket – Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash
Group of friends – photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash
Man working on laptop thinking about time – photo by Dylan Ferreira on Unsplash}