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(portmanteau noun) the backlash against environmental policies. Not to be confused with greenwashing, green hushing or green wishing
It seems it was only yesterday that green policies were on the march. If it wasn’t the US passing the biggest climate law in the country’s history, it was the EU legislating for the world’s first major carbon border tax or the UK pledging to end sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
Green progress was especially notable in Europe. By 2022, the EU’s renewable power generation had boomed so much that solar and wind overtook gas for the first time. EU emissions plunged 8 per cent in 2023, the steepest annual fall in decades outside of 2020.
But as climate promises were becoming a reality, inflation was spurring cost of living anxieties. Net zero-sceptic populist parties seized on these to denounce green policies as a costly elitist plot against working people.
As 2023 turned into 2024, the green march began to stumble. Companies backed away from green targets. Germany watered down a contentious heat pump law that had helped to push the far-right AFD party’s poll numbers above 20 per cent. Brussels scrapped a plan to halve pesticide use. Green parties were hammered in June’s European parliament elections.
In the UK, the former Conservative government pushed back the ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2035.
Yet the Conservatives still suffered a crushing election loss to the Labour party, which pledged to restore the 2030 target and is still committed to an ambitious decarbonisation agenda.
That’s a reminder that the greenlash has limits, as does China’s remorseless charge towards green energy supremacy. But with an incoming Trump administration expected to reverse climate policies, and populism showing no sign of easing in Europe, it is clear that fraught green politics are by no means at an end.
pilita.clark@ft.com
