Climate Backlash: Contentious Politics of Ambitious Policy Action

Contemporary climate change governance is both high-stakes and turbulent; the need for ambitious policy action has never been more urgent. However, recent experience of climate policy enactment across a range of contexts demonstrates that realizing ambitious climate policy is challenging because such action can trigger backlash. Examples include the acrimonious removal of a national carbon pricing scheme in 2014 in Australia, the repeal of subnational climate policy elements in Alberta and Ontario in Canada in 2018-2019, and the Yellow Vests protests in France in 2018-19 linked to the introduction of a fuel tax. With attention now converging on Green (New) Deals capable of driving transformative climate action (e.g. Europe, North America), mitigating the potential for backlash to climate policy is crucial. More broadly, the success of global climate change governance under the Paris Agreement hinges on realizing ambitious domestic climate policy. Yet, the potential for backlash may only grow as climate action becomes more demanding, particularly in response to coercive (cf. voluntary) policies (e.g. regulation, taxes, pricing, industry phase-outs), which are typically seen as necessary to achieve climate targets. Conceptually, backlash is a poorly-explained phenomenon in contemporary politics, which also occurs in many other areas beyond climate change. ‘Climate backlash’ refers to an abrupt and impactful reaction that seeks to counter or reverse climate policy, going beyond ordinary forms of disagreement to challenge both policy substance and political authority. This paper explores the issue of climate backlash, asking: How can climate backlash be conceptualized and analysed, and what implications does it have for climate governance? The paper first situates climate backlash in relation to broader emerging notions of backlash politics, and innovatively grounds climate backlash in conflicts over legitimacy, leading to a preliminary framework for empirical study. It then illustrates the approach through two illustrative cases (i.e. removal of a national carbon pricing scheme in Australia in 2012-14, and the emergence of the Yellow Vests protests in France in 2018-2019). Findings suggest that climate backlash can occur in different ways and for different reasons. The case of policy removal in Australia shows strategic mobilization of public sentiment to trigger a backlash, which tapped into a reservoir of discontent with climate policy in a way that has hallmarks of being a reactionary response against a progressive development to deny policy-making on this issue. In contrast, the case of the Yellow Vests in France shows a spontaneous eruption of discontent seemingly disproportionate to the policy trigger, but which revealed a much broader range of grievances linked to frustration over perceived unfairness and social inequity and called for a different view of policymaking. Yet, both cases also clearly indicate that deeper, slow-moving forces created conditions for the occurrence of backlash. Moreover, both cases suggest the potential for enduring effects in stalling further climate policy action. Overall, the paper contributes to theorising the phenomenon of backlash to policy, which is relevant to climate politics and many other domains of contemporary governance which are increasingly challenged by volatile policy-society relations.