Analysis of: From rent to utility bills: the politicians and advocates making climate policy part of the affordability agenda
The Guardian | January 1, 2026
A coalition of progressive politicians, labor unions, and tenant organizations is attempting to resolve a fundamental contradiction in American climate politics: the historical framing of environmental action as requiring working-class sacrifice while capital accumulates profits. This strategic reorientation—linking utility bills, rent, and insurance costs directly to climate change and corporate accountability—represents an effort to build cross-class coalitions around material interests rather than moral appeals. The article reveals the limitations of the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act, which channeled climate investment primarily through private capital and tax incentives benefiting wealthier households. Only 24% of voters felt the IRA helped them, demonstrating how policy captured by capital accumulation logic fails to build durable political support among working people. The emerging 'green economic populism' attempts to correct this by centering public ownership, union labor, and tenant protections—direct challenges to private property relations in energy and housing. However, significant contradictions remain. Democratic politicians 'who are by no means radical leftists' pursuing utility cost reductions represent tactical allies rather than class-conscious actors, while the broader movement must navigate between reformist demands within capitalism and more fundamental challenges to production relations. The Trump administration's attacks on climate policy while failing to deliver promised relief exposes the contradiction between right-wing populist rhetoric and governance serving fossil capital interests.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Fossil fuel industry (owners of extraction capital), Landlord class (property owners), Insurance capital, Working-class tenants and utility ratepayers, Organized labor (teachers' unions, building trades), Progressive politicians (social democrats, democratic socialists), State actors (federal administration, state governments), Youth climate activists
Beneficiaries: Fossil fuel corporations receiving continued subsidies and legal protection, Landlords passing climate costs to tenants, Private companies receiving IRA tax incentives, Wealthier households accessing EV and solar credits
Harmed Parties: Working-class renters facing rising housing costs, Utility ratepayers in investor-owned service areas, Communities displaced by climate disasters, Public transit-dependent workers facing service cuts, Farmers and consumers blocked from right-to-repair
The article depicts a struggle between concentrated fossil fuel capital—wielding state power through the Trump administration and campaign donations—and a dispersed coalition of workers, tenants, and progressive forces attempting to build countervailing power through unions, tenant organizing, and electoral politics. The state functions primarily as an instrument of capital, with climate superfund laws representing attempts to force accountability through legal mechanisms rather than direct democratic control over production.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Rising utility costs from extreme weather and aging infrastructure, Rent increases absorbing building inefficiency and disaster repair costs, Insurance market failures in climate-vulnerable regions, Federal funding cuts to public transit, Healthcare cost increases from climate-related illness, Wealth inequality acceleration under current administration
The core tension is between private ownership of energy production (investor-owned utilities extracting shareholder profits) and public ownership models that could eliminate profit extraction while democratizing energy decisions. Similarly, housing production relations allow landlords to externalize climate costs onto tenants while retaining property appreciation. The IRA's failure illustrates how climate policy filtered through private capital accumulation logic enriches owners while leaving workers with intangible benefits.
Resources at Stake: Energy infrastructure and generation capacity, Housing stock requiring climate retrofits, Public transit systems and funding, Manufacturing equipment (right-to-repair), School buildings as public infrastructure, Waterways and natural resources under pollution threat
Historical Context
Precedents: New Deal era public utility and housing programs, 1970s environmental regulation and corporate resistance, 2018 Green New Deal proposal and subsequent compromises, Superfund legislation holding polluters accountable, Historical labor-environmental coalition building
This represents a recurring pattern in capitalist development where environmental externalities generated by production for profit are socialized onto working-class communities through health costs, displacement, and rising prices. The proposed 'climate superfund' laws echo Progressive Era and New Deal attempts to force capital to internalize social costs—reforms capital consistently resists and eventually undermines. The shift from moral to economic framing reflects lessons from decades of failed appeals to conscience when material interests are at stake.
Contradictions
Primary: The fundamental contradiction between the necessity of rapid decarbonization for human survival and capitalism's requirement for continuous accumulation through fossil-fueled production—a system where the class that must lead climate action (workers) has been positioned to bear its costs while the class causing the crisis (capital owners) profits from delay.
Secondary: The IRA's contradiction: climate investment channeled through private capital enriches owners while failing to build working-class support, Moderate Democrats seeking utility cost reductions without challenging private ownership structures, Trump's populist rhetoric versus governance serving fossil capital donors, Reform demands that could stabilize capitalism versus demands that challenge property relations
The coalition's success depends on whether material benefits—lower utility bills, protected tenancies, union jobs—reach sufficient working-class households to overcome right-wing fossil capital's political narrative. Public ownership campaigns represent potential intensification beyond reform, but face enormous capital resistance. The contradiction may sharpen as climate impacts accelerate costs, forcing either expanded public control or further socialization of losses onto workers while capital extracts remaining value.
Global Interconnections
This domestic political realignment connects to global patterns of climate politics splitting along class lines. The failure of technocratic, market-based approaches (carbon trading, incentive-based regulation) across developed economies has opened space for both right-wing fossil nationalism and left-wing demands for public ownership and planning. The American experience of the IRA—massive investment yielding minimal working-class political benefit—mirrors European struggles where green transitions perceived as elite projects face populist backlash. The emphasis on 'making polluters pay' and public utility ownership represents modest attempts to challenge the international regime where fossil capital externalizes environmental costs globally while capturing state policy. Success in American states could provide models for other contexts, while failure would reinforce the pattern of climate policy captured by capital and rejected by workers trained to see environmentalism as opposed to their interests.
Conclusion
The emerging 'green economic populism' represents a strategic adaptation to material conditions—an attempt to build working-class power by connecting climate action to immediate economic relief. Its success requires overcoming both concentrated fossil capital's political resources and the institutional inertia of a Democratic Party historically comfortable with market-based approaches. The movement's most radical elements—public ownership, tenant power, union control of decarbonization—contain potential to move beyond reformism if material conditions and organization develop sufficiently. The coming period will test whether these coalitions can deliver tangible improvements to working-class lives while building the political consciousness and organizational capacity for deeper challenges to capitalist production relations.
Editorial Note: This analysis applies a dialectical materialist framework to news events. It represents one interpretive perspective and should not be considered objective reporting.
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