Climate politics are about to go into reverse

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A few days after Donald Trump won the US election, I was present at the UN climate change conference in Azerbaijan where I met the head of a climate change research center who said something unexpected.

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He told me that his American team had adopted the same communications guidelines that the group used in China, where independent research groups tread carefully to avoid unsettling Beijing’s authoritarian regime. His American staff had to ensure that all public comments were politically neutral, and to avoid any moves that could be interpreted as public attacks on the administration.

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His words were a reminder of how quickly climate politics in the United States are shifting, with Trump expected to undo a series of environmental achievements under Biden. But the COP in Azerbaijan also highlighted this: The United States may not be alone. Elections are scheduled or possible in at least four other large economies, where relatively green ruling parties face challengers who want to curb, water down or reverse climate action.

Consider Canada, where elections are scheduled to be held by October, and where opinion polls show Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government trailing Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party. Trudeau has launched a series of climate measures since he was first elected in 2015, including a 2019 system to put a high price on carbon that has been hailed as the poster child for progressive green politics and a key driver of projected emissions cuts.

Poilievre’s repeated calls to “repeal the tax” are central to his push for a “carbon tax election” over a scheme he claims is pushing up the prices of household necessities in a cost-of-living crisis — even though it is designed to be revenue neutral for the federal government.

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The “Stop Taxes” campaign slogan will sound familiar to voters in another major fossil fuel producer, Australia, where an election is due to be held by May. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott used the same slogan when he led the conservative Liberal-National Party coalition to power in 2013.

The previous Labor government’s carbon pricing plan was duly scrapped, and the current Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has launched a series of different climate policies since winning office in 2022, including plan reforms to reduce emissions from major industrial sites.

He also faces challengers targeting energy costs in what could be a close election. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton attacks the extent of Labor’s support for renewables and wants to build seven nuclear reactors – a tall order for a country with a nuclear ban. Critics describe the plan as a fig leaf to extend the life of fossil fuel generation, because building nuclear plants takes a lot of time and money.

Either way, the future of renewables is emerging in other competitions. As German voters prepare for early elections in February, opinion polls show that the favorite candidate to replace center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz, under whom renewable energy has boomed, is the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, Friedrich Merz.

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Merz recently said he views wind power as a transitional technology and noted that turbines are unattractive. Some of his allies want to revive nuclear energy.

But all the major parties are focused on energy costs, especially as support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party rose after it targeted Schulz’s faltering efforts to enact a home heating law last year. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has long criticized climate action, is ranked second in opinion polls after the conservative Merz coalition.

The rise of right-wing populists is also complicating climate efforts in France, where President Emmanuel Macron has just appointed his second prime minister in three months in a year of political turmoil marked by snap elections that left the National Assembly deadlocked.

The stalemate has led to speculation that new Assembly elections could be held next year, a worrying prospect for climate policy advocates who are already concerned about the influence of the far-right National Rally, the largest party in the Assembly.

While the Front National party supported the 2015 Paris climate agreement, it also opposed transport and green energy measures that would help achieve the agreement’s goals, rejecting what its leaders call a “punitive environment” and costly green “degrowth” thinking.

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The situation is not all bleak. Global surveys continue to show that voters want more climate action and that national governments are not everything. Solar, wind, electric vehicle and grid battery storage rates are up again this year, especially in larger regions and states. But 2025 will still be a test of the pace of the green transition race, where winning slowly means losing slowly, as US climate activist Bill McKibben once said.

© 2024 Financial Times Limited

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