Comparing and contrasting populist radical right views on nature conservation versus climate change

It is well established that the populist radical right (PRR) represents an opposition to climate policies. This picture is less clear when it comes to policies for protecting nature (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach 2022; Lubarda and Forchtner 2022). Existing research on the relationship between the far right and environmental protection highlights that nostalgic and authoritarian aspects of environmental protection serve as ideological linkages between the two (Olsen 1999), while research on contemporary PRR parties also identifies opportunistic aspects of PRR stances on protecting nature (Caiani amd Lubarda 2023). With increased focus on implementing environmental policies - and the current rise of the populist radical right across many democracies - there is a need for a better understand of the support for environmental policies amongst those who ideologically align with the populist radical right today. This article contributes with empirical findings to this question, through a cross a cross-country survey analysis of individuals in Australia, Germany, Norway, and the US. Our results show that there is a relationship between having populist and radical right attitudes and opposing the idea of a human-caused ecological crisis. When investigating support for specific environmental policies, respondents with higher scores on populist and radical right attitudes show less support for protecting local environments through regulations, conserving more nature, and prioritizing nature conservation over economic activity, compared to the rest of the sample. This group is however more in favor of conserving nature than the rest of the sample in one specific context: when protecting nature is in conflict with renewable energy.