How to deal with the global anti-climate backlash
backlash against climate-friendly policies is under way in rich democracies. It has many causes. Some voters deny that climate change is happening.
Others accept that it is, but do not want to pay higher taxes or energy prices to tackle it. Many object to the hassle of installing new equipment. Some, especially the old, resist any kind of change.
Others ask why they should make sacrifices when other countries, especially ones they dislike, are doing less. Under this cauldron of grievances, populist politicians have heaped lighted coals. Many exaggerate the costs of going green, embellish the details (Britain’s opposition had no plans for a meat tax, whatever Mr Sunak says) and seek to turn climate into a culture-war battleground: the metropolitan elite will grab your car and make you eat tofu! Such tactics have proved potent.
Although awareness of climate change has increased, a political divide has opened. Voters on the left in Australia, Canada, Germany and Sweden are 23-44 percentage points more likely than those on the right to see it as a “major threat"; in America the gap is a stunning 63 points, according to Pew, a pollster. Such polarisation means bigger flip-flops when power changes hands: imagine France under the wind-farm-loathing Marine Le Pen.
Everywhere, making climate policy less predictable makes it harder for investors to plan for the long term, as they must. What can be done? President Joe Biden’s approach has been to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at everything from batteries to smart grids, and to call it a programme to create jobs and face down China. Even voters who do not care about greenery like jobs and fear China, goes the calculation, and a future Republican president would shrink from
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