Greenlash

This Week's Trend In Brief:

• This week, Belgium’s central bank chief urged EU lawmakers “to tell the truth about the real costs of ‘greening’ the economy,” because otherwise there will be a public backlash as voters realize “going green won’t make you richer,” despite the claims of many elected officials and climate advocates.
   

• Indeed, as the EU’s parliamentary elections draw closer, European green politicians find themselves facing intense public backlash and protests across Europe blaming aggressive green climate policies for cost increases on their ways of life. 
   

• Increasingly, European political parties that received a climate mandate in 2019 face a stark choice: compromise on their policies in order to secure wins at the ballot box or continue to call for aggressive climate action to meet global climate goals.
   

• The main center-right party, EPP, has already stepped back from some more ambitious climate policies, even as the Greens double down. A similar dynamic is playing out in the UK in advance of their potential election later this year and even in the U.S. elections this November.
   

• In this complex landscape of shifting political tides and societal expectations, public affairs professionals and the companies they represent must educate candidates, the press, and the public about both the positive and negative implications of climate goals for the electorate, lest the debate be dominated by populists and progressives advancing their own agendas.

Digging Deeper:

 
This week, Belgian central bank chief Peter Wunsch urged EU lawmakers “to tell the truth about the real costs of ‘greening’ the economy,” arguing that many in the public are realizing “going green won’t make you richer,” despite claims from climate advocates. Discussing the EU’s aggressive climate policies, Wunsch urged European lawmakers to “be more candid” with their constituents, pointing to the rising costs across Europe that he attributes to these climate policies. Wunsch told EU lawmakers “to tell the truth about the real costs of ‘greening’ the economy and the loss of wealth that will follow ― because they will face public anger if they don’t.” This economic and political pressure leaves European political parties that received a climate mandate in 2019 facing a key dilemma.
 
Indeed, European green politicians are facing intense and increasing public backlash and protests across Europe targeting their aggressive climate policies for rising costs. Over the past few weeks, farmers across Europe have loudly declared that EU policies, especially its costly sustainability rules, are responsible for “rising costs, higher debt, competition from cheaper markets and falling sale prices.” According to a young farmer participating in the protests in Spain, “They’re drowning us with all these regulations.” Other farmers criticized “politicians who impose unrealistic regulations, consumers who know little about how food is produced, and environmentalists who cast [farmers] as evildoers.” While the Greens attempt to deflect the criticism and the farmers reject any connection to the far-right parties, those parties are surging in the polls as the protests continue. Companies across the EU and abroad must understand the current reality and prepare for what it may mean for the elections this June. 
 
While some across Europe are backing down from aggressive climate policies in the wake of the protests, the European Greens doubled down last week on their climate ambitions. In recent months, the Greens have “been fighting back against the conservatives’ and far right’s attacks blaming them for farmers’ current struggles and for forcing the green transition [too] quickly on the sector.” The Greens have even attempted to blame conservatives for the farmers’ struggles, arguing they were caused by conservative farming and trade policies. Now, even as the EU has generally “toned down its climate policies,” the Greens adopted a manifesto arguing the EU should “go beyond” a 55 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and “achieve full climate neutrality by 2040,” a decade earlier than current policy. The demand has caused a headache for some lawmakers who understand voters are increasingly awakening to the impact aggressive green policies can have on their lives.
 
As we noted last October, “as voters’ awareness of the climate challenge grows, their willingness to bear the costs demanded of them do not,” leading “elected officials … to downplay or deny these costs” as they “face difficult election prospects.” The European Greens made their strongest-ever showing in 2019, but now “are at risk of losing about a third of their seats” in the upcoming election amidst the “backlash against Brussels’ green agenda.” While the Greens deny their policies are the root cause of the societal disruptions, this same tension is shaping an expected national election in the U.K., where we noted last year voters rejected green policies at the polls in an early bellwether of the expected upcoming election. Indeed, Britain’s energy secretary Claire Coutinho has sworn the country “will not repeat the kind of ‘clumsy’ climate policies which have caused social unrest elsewhere in Europe.” Meanwhile, the European People’s Party condemned a plan to cut 90 percent of EU emissions by 2040, asking why the European Commission would forward aggressive climate policies “with anti-green rage simmering, the far right pouncing, the EU election looming, and farmers blockading the front gates of the legislature.” As the elections grow closer, expect these tensions to grow even more heated. 
 
In this complex landscape of shifting political tides and societal expectations, public affairs professionals and the companies they represent must ensure candidates, the press, and the public understand the reality of climate goals’ impact, for good and ill, before the debate is overwhelmed by populists and progressives advancing their own agendas. Green politicians across Europe fully embraced their climate mandate in 2019, but now voters, even those who are generally supportive of action on climate, are coming to terms with the costs of pursuing net zero too quickly. In the words of Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts, “Everyone is green as long as it’s free of charge. Once it starts costing someone a penny then they all scatter.” With the ongoing protests against green policies raging across Europe and climate on the ballot in the U.S., public affairs professionals need to prepare for a loud debate with uncertain outcomes as this Super Bowl of election years unfolds.   

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