The Role of Populist Attitudes in Explaining Climate Scepticism and Stances on Environmental Protection

This article assesses the influence of populist attitudes on climate scepticism. Notwithstanding the predominately consensual evidence that carbon dioxide emissions affect the climate, substantial segments of society remain unconvinced that humans contribute to climate change and that environmental politics are necessary. Most studies explain climate scepticism by political ideology. Yet I develop a complementary argument and contend that the attitudinal manifestation of populism, i.e. populist attitudes, can help us understand why individuals are sceptical about climate change. Populism proclaims a moral struggle between two homogeneous and antagonistic groups – the pure people and the corrupt elite. Individuals with populist attitudes reject the elite. Thus I expect that populist attitudes are also associated with rejection of climate change action because of its connotation as an elite-project in which the public is largely excluded from decision making processes, e.g., treaty negotiations. I test this argument against election survey data from the United Kingdom (2016). The results generally support my argument-