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Hi John,
In 2024, global billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion. UK billionaires amassed a further £35 million a day. [1] For most of the rest of us, struggles are only growing, with public services like the NHS and schools under pressure and climate disasters on the rise globally.
The power and wealth of the super-rich is growing by the day, and big oil is still banking billions each year. If we don’t fight back, communities will pay for billionaires to become trillionaires as the climate collapses around us and governments get taken over by oligarchs.
That’s why we’re calling for our government to act decisively to tackle climate change and inequality together. They must make billionaires and polluting corporations pay for climate action, and a better and fairer society.
Will you sign the petition and tell Keir Starmer to Make Them Pay?
Sign the petition ([link removed])
** What is Make Them Pay?
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The call to Make Them Pay targets the very wealthiest in society, as well as the corporations who have made trillions driving climate breakdown and inequality. It makes three key demands of the government:
1. Tax the super-rich
2. Protect workers, not billionaires
3. Make polluters pay
We’re working with activists, trade unions and major NGOs to build an ambitious civil society alliance ([link removed]) that represents millions of people across the UK and globally. Make Them Pay is supported by major figures in the climate and workers’ movements, including Global Justice Now, PCS union, Greenpeace, and Climate Justice Coalition. [2]
We’ll be in London on Saturday 20 September for a major demonstration and other movement building activity. The more of us there are, the louder our message will be, so save the date!
** Making big oil pay for a just transition
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Governments shouldn’t need to be told that big oil should pay for climate action, but apparently, they do. Half of the world's carbon emissions come from 36 fossil fuel firms. Most of these companies have known about climate change and the widespread harms it threatens for decades. [3]
We urgently need a just transition, but the government’s current approach won’t deliver this. Workers in the oil and gas industry, for example, need funded support to transition their skills to the renewable sector. By failing to create economic headroom for such a process by decisively making polluters pay, the government risks leaving workers and communities high and dry.
Notorious fossil fuel fan Donald Trump is back in the Oval Office, while Nigel Farage’s Reform flirts with climate denial. The only way to fight back against the rise of the far-right and maintain support for climate action is with an agenda which targets the rich and powerful, making those who’ve made the mess pay to clean it up.
** Making the super-rich pay for a better, fairer society
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The combined wealth of 2025’s Sunday Times Rich List could have paid the UK’s 2024 healthcare bill twice over. [4] A relatively small number of people are amassing seemingly endless wealth while many others can’t access lifesaving medical care or pay their energy bills.
Something has gone deeply wrong, and it’s not hard to see how it happened. The super-rich have spent decades buying our politics to try and make sure that laws and policies which should maximise the public good actually maximise profit for them.
Elon Musk’s recent role in the US government shows that billionaire lobbying is no longer happening in the shadows. With oligarchy bedding in across the pond, we have to fight harder than ever and demand as loudly as we can that our government must be independent, and at the service of working people first and foremost.
With a call to Make Them Pay, we can highlight how the super-rich are putting this in jeopardy, often helping to usher in far-right parties simply to serve their endless greed and self-interest. We must make an unanswerable case for taxes on the super-rich.
** Join the call the Make Them Pay
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Economic systems both globally and domestically reward the super-rich and polluting corporations – whose actions are fuelling ecological and democratic breakdown – with more vast wealth. Meanwhile, working people around the world, including climate-vulnerable communities in the global south, are left to pick up the pieces.
For the workers and communities of today, and generations to come, we know we need change. So join us in London on Saturday 20 September to demand it, and join our call to Make Them Pay.
Sign the petition ([link removed])
Thank you
Izzie McIntosh
Climate justice campaigner at Global Justice Now
Notes
[1] Billionaire wealth surges three times faster in 2024 - world now on track for at least five trillionaires within a decade ([link removed]) , Oxfam
[2] Full list of Make Them Pay supporters ([link removed])
[3] Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from 36 fossil fuel firms, study shows ([link removed]) , the Guardian
[4] Healthcare expenditure, UK Health Accounts: 2023 and 2024 ([link removed]) , Office for National Statistics. The Sunday Times Rich List 2025 revealed ([link removed]) , Sunday Times
** At Global Justice Now we’re proud to be outspoken
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We take on issues that others are afraid to touch and we don’t make compromises.
By joining us, you can fight for regulations that put people before profit, and build public pressure against corporate greed.
Become a member and join others standing up to injustice.
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