The shift to the right and the climate crisis: The secret connection

The climate crisis favors the shift to the right and the shift to the right makes effective climate protection more difficult. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Eight months before the state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, according to surveys in the three federal states, the AfD is at over 30 percent, in some cases well ahead of other parties. This also has to do with the advancing climate crisis. But: The connection is not inevitable; there could be another way.

If we want to stop global warming and preserve our livelihoods, we need major structural changes in all possible areas – and because they have been delayed for so long, we need them in a relatively short period of time. A well-known defense mechanism against the necessary social change is to downplay the climate crisis. And that “doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a radical anti-democratic orientation,” say researchers and right-wing extremism experts Matthias Quent, Christoph Richter and Axel Salheiser. In their book “Climate Racism. The Right’s Fight Against the Ecological Change” they write: “Especially people who have been dissatisfied with the actions of politicians for a long time and who have mistrusted them, block themselves from the ecological change because they associate it with one threatening development.”

(Quelle: Reinaldo Coddou H.)

To person

The situation is extremely serious, but not hopeless. The freelance journalist explains according to this motto Sara Schurmann the big picture and small details of the climate crisis in a way that everyone can understand. Like in her book “Clear language climate!” – and now in her column at t-online. She was honored by “Medium Magazine” in 2022 for her work Science Journalist of the Year chosen.

Quite a few people have doubts that those in power represent the interests of “ordinary people”. Although this well-known pattern is often the basis of conspiracy theories, it cannot be completely dismissed. This feeling is also based on real negative experiences, such as the structural changes in rural areas in East Germany and the former industrial centers in West Germany, write the three authors. I also spontaneously think of the lack of support for nursing staff, not just during the corona pandemic, which repeatedly caused strikes in 2023.

The past years and decades have already been full of changes. Transforming the way we live and do business in a climate-neutral and sustainable way will require many more. At a pace our societies have never experienced before. Communicating and implementing these measures and changes in a socially fair manner has not really worked well so far.

None of this increases trust in the government or that climate protection is being implemented appropriately and in a socially just manner.

Another problem regularly emerges in the Planetary Health Action Survey (PACE), a large-scale research project led by the University of Erfurt. It explores the influence that different factors have on whether people support and implement climate protection measures.

Less than half of those surveyed believe that currently hotly debated – and demonstrably effective – measures are effective, such as the phase-out of coal by 2030, the promotion of plant-based nutrition, a ban on the installation of oil and gas heating systems and an end to the registration of combustion engines. This is a problem because, according to the study, the estimated effectiveness of all factors has the greatest influence on people’s willingness to act.

So there is actually a lack of knowledge among the population. Both in terms of solutions and in terms of what health risks global warming poses to each and every individual.

“The perception of a supposedly exaggerated, senseless and harmful climate protection policy increases a crisis of legitimacy in democracy that has been simmering for a long time,” summarize Quent, Richter and Salheiser. And this is exactly where the radical right can come into play.

Climate protection measures are presented as a threat to the lifestyle of voters and existential fears are deliberately stoked.

This interpretation can also appeal to relatively broad groups that go beyond the AfD’s core electorate because it is not completely wrong: most people in the global north will have to change their lifestyle – less meat, less flying, more bicycles, buses and trains . However, it is not just climate protection measures, but above all the consequences of global warming that threaten our lifestyle. And even more massive.