As someone who once worked seven miles under the North Sea on the coal face, I may not be the most stereotypical of eco-warriors.

But I have been watching COP26 from afar, hoping upon hope that those currently running the globe could come to an agreement that will see it survive.

Sadly, as events in Glasgow come to an end, it feels as if we have missed out on a golden opportunity.

The warnings from scientists could not be clearer. If the world doesn’t go much further than it is currently willing, 2.4°C of warming will be reached. Temperature rises of that level will render much of the globe almost uninhabitable and unleash weather patterns that will throw life as we know it into chaos.

It is now almost being accepted that right-wing commentators should be allowed into debates as counterbalancing experts, and they shriek that we cannot afford the bill to decarbonise.

It is the ultimate pinnacle of disaster capitalism for someone to argue that the futures of countless species, including our own, cannot be protected because the finances don’t stack up.

It is stupid even on its own terms. A UCL report last year estimated the cost of doing nothing to be $5.4 trillion by 2070. It’s not that we can’t afford to act—we can’t afford not to.

But if we are to achieve a breakthrough, we must acknowledge what is an almighty elephant in the room: the climate movement has an image problem.

For decades, good people with the very best of intentions have been campaigning to bring the coming chaos to prominence. But it is a movement that has been too easily labelled middle-class, and too often seen to be lecturing others they deem less enlightened to cut down on their habits.

While the movement has grown exponentially to include huge swathes of trade unionists, working-class young people, and those from other struggles, the image problem continues to dominate.

We will all have seen the way activists from Insulate Britain have been portrayed in the press. And whether we like their tactics or not, the characterisation strikes a chord. Without ‘Ashington man’ or ‘Bedlington woman’ on board, there is no way to tackle the crisis.

COP26 has poured fuel on the fire for many in our communities who feel they are being talked down to. When the global elite descended on Glasgow to discuss climate crisis, many will have watched in horror as they were chauffeured around in huge convoys of gas guzzling cars while lecturing others about cutting down our personal emissions.

My stomach turned when we were met with billionaires like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, who have done so much more than anyone in my constituency of Wansbeck to cause planetary catastrophe, telling us how we can all be more sustainable.

The reality is that working-class people across the globe don’t need lectures about sustainability. They don’t need talking down to.

Though working-class culture tends to get written out of history, people in constituencies like mine have lived sustainably for generations. It is they who have maintained allotments to feed their families, made the best out of clothes, furniture, and goods, found ways to make food stretch further, knitted the once ubiquitous draft excluder snakes, or drawn heavy curtains over their front doors to preserve what little heat they had.

If Bezos wants to talk to working-class families about sustainability, he should get on his hands and knees and beg them to pass on their knowledge.

The climate crisis has another class dimension, too. The phasing-out of fossil fuels will have a disproportionate impact on those working in extracting the resource and those working in power stations. I fully support the calls of unions for a just transition—but as someone who saw the mining industry decimated a generation ago, with communities still struggling today, words are cheap.

My constituency office stands on the site of the former Ashington Colliery. At its height it employed thousands of men, and their endeavours aided Britain’s modernisation for more than a century.

Just beyond the former pit stands Lynemouth windfarm. Built in 2012, its turbines churn out renewable energy day after day, with little to no intervention from workers, and those turning up unlikely to live locally. The march of thousands of miners across Wansbeck to jobs powering this country are a distant memory.

There is a potential to breathe life into our communities through a green industrial revolution that creates high-skilled, well-paid jobs, and whose workforces can rekindle the spirit of the miners who went before them, building sustainable institutions that, in the future, the public can look at with pride.

But we must face hard realities here, too. It was reported earlier this week that the fossil fuel industry had the largest delegation at COP26. That isn’t surprising—over the past 30 years, the big oil companies have made trillions in profits, spending huge sums paying for influence over governments.

In this light, it’s perhaps unsurprising that so little is said about fundamentally reforming energy production. It is clear that if we don’t challenge this immense power, the move to renewables will simply spark another transfer of wealth, with energy ownership still in the hands of unaccountable corporations, decarbonisation paid for through government subsidies, and energy customers charged handsomely for the privilege of using it.

There needs to be a fundamental decoupling of the energy we all need to fulfil our daily lives from those who seek to squeeze profit from it. We need any real transition to lever jobs into Britain, and energy sources need to be in the hands of the public, so its benefit can be felt equitably—and any profits ploughed back into a just society.

In the words of the great James Connolly, ‘Our demands most moderate are—we only want the earth.’