Net Zero Populism
This project, funded by the internal SCI small grant scheme, focused on net zero policies and it contributed to the development of the SCI’s strand of work on the politics of unsustainability.
There are a number of ways in which the UK’s climate strategy and pursuit of net zero is being challenged.
Some of these are around specific elements in the net zero package – heat pumps in domestic heating, Electric Vehicles transition strategies, low traffic neighbourhoods, land grabs for carbon offsets.
But there is a broader mobilisation of populist forces against net zero itself, organised through remnants of UKIP/Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage, as well as the ‘net zero scrutiny’ group within parliament.
The UK’s climate strategy has been characterised for the most part by a ‘depoliticised’ approach focused on the setting of five-year carbon budgets monitored by an arms-length expert agency, the Committee on Climate Change. More recently it has become more focused on a highly technocentric approach in the ‘Green Industrial Revolution’.
There has been relatively little attention to the social and political conflicts entailed in pursuing net zero, to the differential costs to different social groups of net zero policies, or to the embedded cultural attachments to particular practices that generate resistance when net zero policies are conceived of as an imposition. There is thus a risk that the UK’s climate strategy will be undermined by this sort of political backlash.
The project had two aims in developing a base of knowledge about:
- the specific issues around which backlash against climate policy has formed
- the strategies, interests, and goals of those opposing net zero.
It also pursued two specific outputs:
- a public-facing report document detailing the extent and potential of such ‘net zero populism’
- a larger grant application to carry out more substantial research on this dynamic in UK climate politics.
The project has contributed to the development of the SCI’s strand of work on the politics of unsustainability. It also contributed to our Sustainable Humanities initiative through involving various non-SCI members of the UoM scholarly community, as well as ongoing links in particular with the Tyndall Centre. It will lead to future grant applications within which SCI members would play a central role.
Publications
The Rise of Anti-Net Zero Populism in the UK: Comparing Rhetorical Strategies for Climate Policy Dismantling
This article explores a backlash against the net zero greenhouse gas emissions target within the UK.
It introduces the term “anti-net zero populism” to analyse ideological and opportunistic counter-movements working to undermine climate policy.
It builds a conceptual framework based on the literatures on “policy dismantling” and “discursive opportunity structures” to analyse how right-wing populists seek to undermine the net zero goal and dismantle policies.
The article compares these efforts across six specific policy areas involved in pursuing net zero.
Overall, it contributes to understanding the roles of discourse for policy dismantling, and the comparative strategies pursued to undermine net zero.
Anti-Net Zero Populism and the future of British climate policy
This blog post discusses ideas linked with the article above in relation to the future of climate policies.