Throughout 2017 and 2018, Joost de Moor (Stockholm University) and the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity conducted 43 interviews with experienced environmental activists in Manchester and Bristol. Whilst both cities have historically been central hubs of environmental resistance, they have recently faced similar depoliticizing forces: austerity, anti-squatting laws, police repression and activists’ disillusion with environmentalism. Curiously, as the interviews suggest, these conditions have had very different impacts on the two environmental scenes. In Manchester they have caused environmental resistance to become replaced almost entirely by non-confrontational alternatives. In Bristol, alternatives have emerged that tend to be in synergy with environmental resistance. The comparison thus suggests that Bristol is more conducive to maintaining environmental resistance under depoliticizing conditions.