Voters who view immigration as the biggest crisis mostly back rightwing parties such as the National Rally in France or Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD); those who prioritise the climate tend to support green or leftist parties such as Spain’s Socialists or Poland’s Left.
This seems like a misrepresentation. It is not as if the followers of right-wing parties see the climate crisis as the smaller problem, they usually outright deny its existence and want to sabotage any attempts to limit its impact by actively favouring fossil fuels and other technologies harmful for the climate.
Maybe that differs per culture, but here in the Netherlands I know plenty of right-wing voters who don’t deny the issue at all. They acknowledge it’s a problem, sometimes even want to put effort into fixing it. Their arguments against are usually “we’re such a small country, so whatever we do won’t really affect anything anyway” and “it’s already going quite well, no need to be ahead of the curve”. I’d say that’s actually by far the largest group of right wing voters in my personal experience.
Now personally I don’t agree with them of course. Yes we’re a small country, but als relatively rich and relatively bad for the climate. Also, adding all small countries together still adds up to a big amount of emissions. If all small countries would reason like this nothing would happen. And we’re not exactly ahead of the curve either, even though we’re relatively rich.
We had more of that here in Germany maybe 10 years ago, the people wouldn’t claim we are that small but the closely related argument that we are already doing more than the US and China and they are so much larger than us. Today there is more denial but also more of that “we are for everything that is against what the Greens want” attitude.
Maybe that differs per culture, but here in the Netherlands I know plenty of right-wing voters who don’t deny the issue at all. They acknowledge it’s a problem, sometimes even want to put effort into fixing it. Their arguments against are usually “we’re such a small country, so whatever we do won’t really affect anything anyway” and “it’s already going quite well, no need to be ahead of the curve”. I’d say that’s actually by far the largest group of right wing voters in my personal experience.
It is not just happening in the Netherlands, I can see it in Germany too and there is this study that found it all over Youtube. It is the same group and the same denial, just their agenda framed differently, because they could not win over people with right out denying climate change anymore. They just switched the narrative to “can’t do anything against it” :
The report published on Tuesday shows a shift from the “old denial” – that climate change is not happening or not anthropogenic – to the “new denial”.
These new denial narratives that question the science and solutions for climate change constituted 35% of all climate denial on YouTube in 2018, but now represent the large majority (70%). Over the same period, the share of old denial has dropped from 65% to 30% of total claims.
The report authors believe that this shift is because the scientific evidence is now more accepted and hard to dispute, so those aiming to win people over to climate denial and delay must discredit the solutions and people pushing for climate action.
This seems like a misrepresentation. It is not as if the followers of right-wing parties see the climate crisis as the smaller problem, they usually outright deny its existence and want to sabotage any attempts to limit its impact by actively favouring fossil fuels and other technologies harmful for the climate.
Maybe that differs per culture, but here in the Netherlands I know plenty of right-wing voters who don’t deny the issue at all. They acknowledge it’s a problem, sometimes even want to put effort into fixing it. Their arguments against are usually “we’re such a small country, so whatever we do won’t really affect anything anyway” and “it’s already going quite well, no need to be ahead of the curve”. I’d say that’s actually by far the largest group of right wing voters in my personal experience.
Now personally I don’t agree with them of course. Yes we’re a small country, but als relatively rich and relatively bad for the climate. Also, adding all small countries together still adds up to a big amount of emissions. If all small countries would reason like this nothing would happen. And we’re not exactly ahead of the curve either, even though we’re relatively rich.
We had more of that here in Germany maybe 10 years ago, the people wouldn’t claim we are that small but the closely related argument that we are already doing more than the US and China and they are so much larger than us. Today there is more denial but also more of that “we are for everything that is against what the Greens want” attitude.
It is not just happening in the Netherlands, I can see it in Germany too and there is this study that found it all over Youtube. It is the same group and the same denial, just their agenda framed differently, because they could not win over people with right out denying climate change anymore. They just switched the narrative to “can’t do anything against it” :
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/16/third-of-uk-teenagers-believe-climate-change-exaggerated-report-shows