The latest edition of our Sustainable Views newsletter
Dear reader,
After the debacle around the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, the EU Nature Restoration Law is now experiencing a similar fate. After its recent approval by MEPs, EU member states should have been able to rubber-stamp the bill yesterday, but once again unexpected last-minute opposition from various countries thwarted the sign-off. The law’s supporters hope it will be agreed by EU ambassadors on Friday, but this increasing pushback on ESG-related laws in the run-up to the European elections is part of a wider trend some politicians believe is a vote winner.
As Ursula Woodburn, director of the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership Europe office and the Corporate Leaders Group Europe, writes in an Opinion for Sustainable Views, many businesses, investors and citizens want ambitious climate action. She cites the open letter published today by more than 100 businesses and investors, including the chief executives of Unilever and Ikea, urging the EU to set a robust emissions reduction target of “at least 90 per cent” by 2040.
But, according to research published on Thursday by the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, people’s attitudes to climate change and how they want politicians to act is complicated. The researchers examined YouGov and Datapraxis public opinion data from 12 European countries on a wide range of policies and concluded “the EU’s climate policies are particularly divisive”.
They asked people to confront a hypothetical trade-off between pursuing climate ambitions and avoiding a rise in energy bills. In all countries polled, bar Sweden and Portugal, more individuals preferred to reduce energy bills than privilege climate action. “At the same time, however, in none of these countries did a majority select either of these two options,” adds the research. “In each of them, a plurality – ranging from 18 per cent in Greece to 37 per cent in Sweden – opted for curbing carbon emissions. And usually only about a third chose neither of these two options, preferring to sit on the fence.”
It also cites Germany as a potentially cautionary tale against “going big on EU priorities, such as the European Green Deal, in mainstream election campaigns”. The coalition government’s attempt to overhaul the country’s home heating systems “proved exceptionally unpopular [and] the German Green party now wallows in the polls at a pitiable 13 per cent”, says the ECFR study. “German critics of climate policies do not tend to deny climate change, but they do challenge the pace of change. There seems to be an intensity gap between how Green party voters feel about climate change and how others feel.”
The researchers conclude that “if mainstream parties want to push back against the far right, they should embrace an alternative agenda that prioritises national contexts, and develop more targeted campaigns designed to mobilise voters without fanning an anti-European backlash”. Sixty-one per cent of the respondents said the EU has done a bad job of dealing with the climate crisis.
Rather than banging the drum for abstract policies such as the Green Deal or unfathomable concepts like keeping warming below 1.5C, it would seem the moment is ripe for politicians, businesses and investors to work together at a local level to create opportunities that will reduce emissions, but just as importantly lead to jobs and tangible prosperity, as the Inflation Reduction Act is considered by many to be doing in the US. Whether the IRA will influence the US elections is another matter, but it certainly can’t do any harm that some Republican states are benefiting nicely from its budget.
One calculation from August 2023 suggested that out of 210 clean energy project announcements, 123 were in districts that returned a Republican to the House of Representatives, compared with 76 that returned a Democrat.
Sticking with the US, the Environmental Protection Agency has published what it is calling its “strongest-ever” emissions reduction standards for cars and van” (though they are not as strong as they were in previous drafts). The EPA estimates the new pollution thresholds will avoid 7.2bn tons of carbon emissions by 2055 and result in $99bn of annual net benefits to society, including increasing employment in the US car manufacturing industry.
Until tomorrow,
Philippa
Philippa Nuttall is the editor of Sustainable Views