Last year, I stood in front of a black-clad skinhead as he shook a fist full of rings thick enough to double as a knuckle-duster. Flecks of spit flew into my face as he railed against the green agenda of the last German government.
Until recently, it would have felt bizarre to talk to protesters at a neo-Nazi–linked rally about climate change or hear them rant unprompted about heat pumps. But far-right parties have entered the political mainstream, and their scathing tirades against “woke” green rules are energising their base.
That shift is one of several powerful trends that have pushed advocates of climate action on to the back foot – and made the rigorous journalism that many of our readers support even more impactful. From the Trump administration waging war on its environment agencies to the EU ripping up its Green Deal, political resistance to cutting pollution is mounting even as the costs of extreme weather soar.
I joined the Guardian as its European environment correspondent two years ago and have spent much of that time investigating the forces holding back the shift to a clean economy. The question has taken me to rich and run-down German towns that have become strongholds of the anti-green right; through idyllic Portuguese villages threatened by the lithium mines that are needed to replace petrol cars; and on to the decks of diesel-guzzling superyachts in a Mediterranean tax haven.
Much of our work involves tracking the groups working to destroy the environment.
The far right has unexpectedly made green-bashing its number two priority – a strategy its voters seem to tolerate, if not reward – and its increasingly ferocious attacks are giving established parties an excuse to scrap protections they never fully backed.
At the same time, big oil has used the political shift it helped create to double down on fossil fuels, scrapping promises to invest in renewables and hitting activists with spurious lawsuits. My colleagues and I increasingly hold their corporate enablers to account: from the public affairs firms lobbying on their behalf to water down climate policy to the banks financing “carbon bomb” projects that will blow through the dwindling CO2 budget.
As these powerful forces gain influence in governments and boardrooms around the world, it is little surprise that many readers feel dismay. Climate scientists do, too. But experts also warn that we underestimate our own agency.
Two reporting trips have crystallised this line of thinking for me. The first was asking dozens of people at the Monaco Yacht Show how they felt about their carbon footprints. Surrounded by multimillionaires living in luxury, I heard excuses for polluting lifestyles that ranged from feeling like individual action doesn’t make a difference to blaming China to arguing that people with bigger yachts were the real problem. It was absurd – and strikingly similar to how middle-class people in rich countries justify their holiday flights and SUVs.
The second was visiting a cook in a local hospital that has begun to serve its patients a mostly vegetarian diet. Convincing older Germans to swap schnitzel for tofu sounds like a hard sell, but he told me it has been made easier by the boom in fake meats, which in the last decade have become much more realistic. The tiny vegetarian percentage of the population in the 2010s created enough demand to spur companies to massively invest in how good replacements taste. Today, those improvements are making it easy for health-conscious meat-eaters – a far bigger group – to cut down their consumption.
From home renovations to country-sweeping protests, and from supermarket trolleys to class-action lawsuits, there are countless examples of climate progress that challenge the prevailing apathy. The ways we shop, vote, live, work and save have meaningful ripple effects that – together – can cut pollution and push governments to act with urgency.
The Guardian has long been at the forefront of agenda-setting climate journalism, and the generous support our readers provide allows us to push those boundaries even as the crisis escalates. In a news cycle dominated by autocrats and war, I am particularly grateful that our editors – who are free from the pressures of corporate owners – refuse to let the health of the planet slip out of sight.
The Guardian relies on the small percentage of readers who support our work financially, and we are currently in the middle of a three-week campaign aiming to reach 40,000 new acts of support. If you’re not already a supporter but appreciate our work and believe that it is important, please consider backing us on a monthly basis today.
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Join George Monbiot and special guests on 16 September for a special climate assembly to discuss the growing and dramatic political and corporate threats to the planet. Book tickets – in person or livestream