Populist radical right and radical climate solutions: A cross-country study of populist radical right individuals’ attitudes towards conventional and unconventional climate policies

Right-wing populist (RWP) parties and supporters have received increased scholarly attention for their vocal opposition to climate policy. While some authors focus on why RWP oppose the very idea of anthropogenic climate change, others focus on why RWP oppose policy solutions to counteract this issue. Aversion to the problem of climate change is associated with low trust in scientists and politicians, while aversion to the solutions is associated with fear of societal changes. There is however a lack of empirical evidence testing these two explanations against each other. By conducting a cross-country survey of samples in Australia, Germany, Norway, and USA, we test these two explanations by investigating the relationship between RWP attitudes on an individual level and attitudes towards climate science, policy, and support for large scale manipulation of the atmosphere (geoengineering). Support for geoengineering functions as a proxy for the testing the trust vs. fear of societal change hypotheses, as implementation of geoengineering does not entail societal consequences, but supporting these measures requires high levels of trust in scientists. As expected, individuals with RWP attitudes report higher levels of climate skepticism and opposition to well-known climate policies.