Right-wing Populism vs. Climate Capitalism

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter, we critically investigate the threat of right-wing populism to rapid climate change action and governance and highlight its role in undermining the global co-operation necessary to tackle the carbon lock-in of the global economic system. This chapter contributes to the scant literature on climate change governance and populism by arguing that right-wing populism’s ‘critique’ of climate capitalism is an integral part of the capitalist system that sustains market approaches and inequalities that emerge from it to tackle climate change. While right-wing populists focus on climate denial and the negative impact of environmental regulation on the those ‘left behind’, supporters of climate capitalism consolidate neoliberal climate change governance (CCG) as the only politically viable option to tackle the climate emergency. Both approaches are essentially elitist, in the sense that they have a clear track record of supporting extractive and financial business elites, while creating historically unprecedented inequalities and injustices around the world. While right-wing populism focuses on climate denial discourses, posing CCG as a threat to national sovereignty and the economy, the marketization of climate change is in denial of the need for deep transformations within capitalism. Consequently, this double movement enables the extractive and financial businesses elites to thrive, posing a continued and real danger to the climate crisis.