Exciting new research shows ways to defuse the “green backlash”

I have written before about the outcry in my home city of York, UK, when the council announced plans to increase parking fees to discourage people from driving on our polluted streets. In case you were wondering, the council eventually caved in to opposition and hiked fees by a lot less than it had originally wanted.

This is a good example of “green backlash” – the term given to the growing tide of opposition to pro-environmental policies in high-income countries. This often goes hand in hand with rising support for right-wing populist parties such as Reform in the UK, which cynically stoke and exploit it for electoral gain. It works: Reform leads recent polls asking UK voters which party they plan to support at the next general election.

This isn’t good news for the planet. Meaningful progress against climate change is impossible without government intervention, but such policies may become counterproductive when they open the door to anti-green parties. Research has shown that where right-wing populists hold power in Europe, action on greenhouse gas emissions and the transition to renewable energy slows down.

A recent study published in Nature Climate Change, however, suggests that there are ways to defuse the green backlash. The researchers, led by Valentina Bosetti at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, reviewed the literature on the green backlash in an attempt to understand why it happens – and what can be done to mitigate it.

They found that disaffection with climate policies has two root causes: economic and cultural. The former relates to the costs imposed on voters by the policies, such as having to pay more to park near the city centre. The latter reflects a general and growing mistrust of politicians and scientific elites. Both can seriously erode support for incumbent political parties that are trying to enact environmental policies and push some people into the arms of parties opposed to them, which are overwhelmingly right-wing.

One illuminating case study involving both types of grievance comes from Ontario, Canada, where in 2009 the provincial administration removed the power of communities to veto new wind power installations. More than 50 campaign groups sprung up in protest, fearful of the impact on the value of their properties. Despite the broad popularity of wind power in Ontario, this localised opposition seems to have swung the next provincial election. In October 2011, the incumbent Ontario Liberal Party lost its overall majority, with many of its defeats coming in precincts where there was an operational or proposed wind turbine. Similar backlashes against wind power have been seen in Sweden and Germany.

Moves to encourage people to swap internal combustion engine vehicles for electric ones have also provoked pushback from people who stand to lose out – namely those in the conventional automotive sector. In the 2016 US election, Donald Trump gained an average of 3 percentage points in counties that were home to car part manufacturers. When researchers interviewed workers, they cited the threat of the EV transition as a motivation for deciding to back Trump.

It is a pretty depressing picture: governments that attempt to do the right thing for the environment face pushback and end up watering down their policies or losing power, usually replaced by parties that won’t impose such policies or are dismissive of the need to do so.

It doesn’t have be that way. There is probably no reaching those attracted to right-wing populism by cultural issues, but they will very likely never form a majority. Economic grievances, on the other hand, can be assuaged. Bosetti found that opposition to wind power, for example, melts away when government subsidies are available, when the tax revenues are ringfenced for local projects and when local jobs are created. Fear of job losses and the obsolescence of skills could be addressed by retraining people or simply compensating them fairly, she suggests. It is that simple.

On top of all that, there is broad but underestimated support for the policies that will deliver a green transition. Researchers in the US recently asked adults about their attitude to reducing food waste, eating less beef, installing home solar and heat pumps, driving an EV and buying carbon offsets, and found large majorities in favour of all of them. But when they asked the same people how much they thought other people supported them, they found a huge mismatch between perception and reality. There is another message there for politicians: don’t shy away from green policies because you have fallen into the same trap.

Back in York, the next local elections are in 2027. I expect parking charges will be an issue on the doorstep and fear a green backlash at the ballot box.

Graham’s week

What I’m reading

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.

What I’m watching

I’m re-watching the BBC’s adaptation of Dracula on Netflix in anticipation of my upcoming holiday in Transylvania.

What I’m working on

An article for the Christmas issue. Honestly.

Graham Lawton is a staff writer at New Scientist and author of Mustn’t Grumble: The surprising science of everyday ailments. You can follow him @grahamlawton