Few analysts studying the West’s political landscape saw a populist earthquake coming a decade ago. But then, with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom in 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States later that year, the earthquake hit. Observers were quick to see the rise of a new “silent majority” in the West, one bent on repudiating an out-of-touch elite that was either oblivious to the suffering their policies had caused or entirely indifferent to it. The effects of globalization, deindustrialization, and the financial crisis fueled the discontent at the heart of the populist wave. But other forces drove upheaval in particular countries, including concerns relating to immigrants, tax increases, budget cuts, regulatory excesses, and the general view that government programs unfairly favored the ruling class.

Now, a new populist front is opening in Western politics. Anti-establishment leaders are singling out for scorn efforts to avert global warming. Attempts to curb climate change make an almost perfect target for populist rhetoric and conspiracy theories because policies to forcibly reduce carbon emissions rely on expert knowledge, raise costs for ordinary people, require multilateral cooperation, and rest on the hard-to-prove counterfactual that such policies would stave off disasters that would otherwise happen.

Skeptics of climate policies object to the costs of the transition away from fossil fuels, which in relative terms will weigh more on poorer people and on places where fossil fuels play a significant role in the local economy, and to the often-exaggerated claims made by the promoters of the green revolution about the tremendous potential of future “green jobs.” But, as is often the case with populists, critics also frequently cite misinformation and wild conspiracy theories. Before entering the White House in 2017, for example, Trump tweeted that climate change was a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Spain’s far-right Vox party has labeled the UN climate agenda as “cultural Marxism.” Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland has regularly accused mainstream parties of “climate dictatorship.” Few populist leaders better epitomize the turn against climate policy than Nigel Farage, the British agitator who led the campaign to leave the European Union. In 2022, he lambasted the Conservative government’s net-zero plans. “During the past decade, the people forced the political class to allow us a Brexit vote,” he said. “The same needs to happen again in relation to Net Zero.” In elections this July, he won a parliamentary seat for the far-right Reform UK party after he spent much of his campaign railing against climate policies.

This second anti-elite revolt is already in the making. In the June 2024 European Parliament election, even if the center largely held, far-right parties that are skeptical of the battle against climate change gained seats and influence, while green parties lost votes and seats. Europe’s signature Green Deal, which aims to make the EU climate neutral by 2050, is likely to be scaled back. In the United States, a Trump win in the 2024 presidential election could further undermine efforts to fight climate change. And political disruptions will likely intensify as the deadlines to meet net-zero targets loom ever closer—plans call for the world to move away from coal by 2030, from oil by 2045, and from gas by 2050.

Rational arguments are unlikely to either persuade those convinced of the perfidy of the green transition or allay the grievances that fuel the populist ferment in the West. Only economic incentives will convince doubters of the merits of climate policies. If green technologies are cheaper than brown ones, then people will adopt them. The costs of the green transition need to be reduced through more open trade in the short run and more innovation in the long run. But economic incentives alone will not be enough. Mainstream leaders need also to better mobilize their citizens through more engaging political strategies, more emotional narratives, and more bottom-up and participatory policy approaches. Governments can win backing for climate policies when those measures promise to make a tangible difference to people in the present, not simply save the planet in the future.

The rise of climate populism poses a historic test for Western liberal democracies, as short electoral cycles make it hard for politicians to sell long-term agendas. That is why former U.S. Vice President Al Gore deemed global warming in 2009........

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