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(portmanteau noun) A backlash against environmental policy. Not to be confused with greenwashing, green hashing, or green wishing.
It seems like just yesterday that green policies were in full swing. If the US didn’t pass the biggest climate change law in the country’s history, it’s because the EU legislated the world’s first major carbon border tax, or the UK passed the world’s first major carbon border tax, or the UK set a new He had promised to stop selling them.
Green’s progress was particularly noticeable in Europe. By 2022, renewable electricity generation in the EU will be so booming that solar and wind will overtake gas for the first time. EU emissions will fall by 8% in 2023, the biggest annual decline in decades apart from 2020.
But as the promise of climate change became reality, inflation was adding to concerns about the cost of living. Populist parties of net-zero skeptics have used these to denounce environmental policy as a costly elitist conspiracy against workers.
As 2023 turned to 2024, the Green March began to stumble. Companies have moved away from green targets. Germany has watered down a controversial heat pump law that helped push the far-right party AFD’s poll approval rating above 20%. The city of Brussels has scrapped plans to halve pesticide use. The Green Party suffered a blow in June’s European Parliament elections.
In the UK, the previous Conservative government postponed a ban on new sales of gasoline and diesel cars until 2035.
However, the Conservatives still lost a landslide in the election to Labor, which promised to restore the 2030 target and is still committed to ambitious decarbonization policies.
This is a reminder that the green rush has its limits, and so does China’s relentless push for green energy supremacy. But with the incoming Trump administration expected to reverse climate change policies and populism showing no signs of abating in Europe, it’s clear that risky green politics is far from over.
