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An unprecedented year of elections around the world has underscored a sobering trend – in many countries the commitment to act on the climate crisis has either stalled or is eroding, even as disasters and record temperatures continue to mount.
So far 2024, called the “biggest election year in human history” by the United Nations with around half the world’s population heading to the polls, there have been major wins for Donald Trump, the US president-elect who calls the climate crisis “a big hoax”; the climate-skeptic right in European Union elections; and Vladimir Putin, who won another term and has endured sanctions to maintain Russia’s robust oil and gas exports.
“It’s quite clear that in most advanced economies the big loser of the elections has been climate,” said Catherine Fieschi, an expert in European politics and populism.
“It’s been a bad year for climate and we’ve seen a gradual erosion in the public’s commitment to action for a couple of years now. The paradox is, of course, that major climate events are happening more frequently everywhere, yet people are no longer willing to prioritize this.”
From an apogee about five years ago, with Greta Thunberg’s ubiquitous activism and talk of massive new green investments, climate has slipped down the agenda for many countries after a pandemic, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, unease over inflation and a rise in populist political figures.
“It’s been the perfect storm,” said Fieschi. “Even the vocabulary has changed – not so much green now, but clean. There’s been a shift in the political balance where climate has taken a back seat to inflation and energy prices. Rather than climate being the existential threat, it’s the Green New Deal that is seen as the threat.”
Even though this year is almost certain to be the hottest ever recorded globally, with floods and heatwaves roiling Europe, Asia, the US and Mexico, the climate crisis has mostly been a background electoral issue, apart from in India, where protests by farmers, whose harvests have been wrecked by extreme weather and unpredictable rains, helped shape a backdrop upon which Narendra Modi won a third term as prime minister.
In Europe, rightwing parties that declared climate action to be costly and unnecessary fared well in the EU elections, while in the US, Trump defeated Kamala Harris after making explicit promises to gut environmental regulations and ditch “green new scam” climate policies.
The trend isn’t universal – in the UK, Labour resoundingly beat the Conservatives while making clean energy growth a mantra and the far right was unexpectedly defeated in French parliamentary elections. Even in the EU elections, the center-ground parties largely held firm despite the advances on the right.
But this year has suggested a sputtering in the global momentum to deal with rising temperatures, amid scientists’ warnings of breached climate targets and the onward upward march of planet-heating emissions.
“I think it’s misleading to say that there has been a tsunami of populism; not everyone who voted for Trump is onboard with a far-right agenda,” said Jan-Werner Müller, a political scientist at Princeton University. “But there are worrying signs. If you look at the center-right actors in Europe, some of them think they should make concessions on climate to make people think they are listening and not going too far, too fast.
“They are making pre-emptive concessions to populism and are reading climate as part of the culture war. But if you repeat the talking points and framing of the hard right you are just making them more powerful.”
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A troubling year for the climate crisis has been rounded off by a troubled Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, which was skipped by most world leaders. It is the third consecutive UN climate gathering to be held in an authoritarian state, and the second in a row, after Dubai last year, taking place in a petrostate.
Even though governments agreed last year to move away from fossil fuels, there has been a defiant tone at this year’s summit with Ilham Aliyev, president of the host country, Azerbaijan, calling oil and gas a “gift of God” and Argentina, led by the populist president Javier Milei, quitting the negotiations amid speculation the country will exit the Paris climate agreement.
The lack of progress in cutting emissions, or in agreeing to climate finance for vulnerable developing countries, has rankled activists. “We started Cop29 with alarm that the outcome of the US presidential elections would deter global climate action – apparently, the halls of Cop29 are already flooded with many Trumps,” said Gerry Arances, executive director of the Center for Energy, Ecology and Development, on the paucity of funding from wealthy countries.
“We wonder how governments of historically polluting nations still dare show their faces with claims of climate leadership and commitment.”
Even some leaders have publicly expressed similar frustration. “What on earth are we doing in this gathering?” said Edi Rama, prime minister of Albania. “What does it mean for the future of the world if the biggest polluters continue as usual?”
Although this year has also seen progress in the growth of renewable energy and hopes that oil use will soon peak, these ongoing delays and a looming Trump presidency have dampened optimism. “People said in 2016 when Trump won that it might not quite be as apocalyptic as anticipated,” said Müller. “But now we don’t have any leeway with climate change. We are running out of precious time. Every day lost matters now.”