Who can afford to go green? Hard-pressed consumers are pushing back

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“All the rich can afford a new car,” an elderly British woman commented at a recent protest in London against plans to expand a toll on older, polluting vehicles to outer suburbs of the city. “It’s affecting so many poor people… Everybody wants clean air but it’s all about money,” she told Times Radio.

Her comments encapsulate growing resistance to pro-climate measures because of the costs they can impose on already stretched household budgets or the hassle they add to daily lives.

Many people have seen their incomes eroded over the past 18 months by soaring food and energy bills and high borrowing costs. Even among those who accept that climate action is needed, rising numbers are unwilling or unable to shoulder additional expenses in these circumstances.

“Across Europe, a backlash against net-zero policy is underway,” Brett Meyer and Tone Langengen at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a think tank, wrote in August.

Net-zero policy refers to measures to reduce planet-heating pollution. Scientists say greenhouse gas emissions must go down to zero by 2050 on a net basis — in other words, after accounting for emissions released into and removed from the atmosphere — to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“While polls show that an overwhelming majority believe climate change is a problem and support policies to address it, that support starts to fall once green policies come into force and people begin to experience their costs,” Langengen and Meyer said.

Why public attitudes matter

Take two recent opinion polls. In a 2022 Pew survey covering 19 countries in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, climate change was named the top global threat. In Europe, more respondents said it was a threat to their country than at any time in the past two decades.

“The results come as wildfires and extreme heat across Europe cause massive disruption to life,” the Pew researchers wrote in August last year, before another bout of deadly wildfires ravaged Greece this summer.

Yet, in a survey earlier this year conducted in 29 countries by Ipsos, only 30% of respondents said they would be willing to pay more in taxes to help prevent climate change.

Public attitudes “matter a lot” for reaching net-zero emissions because of the fundamental changes the transition will require, said Anna Valero, a distinguished policy fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

“What we’re talking about is large-scale structural change that will affect people’s lives,” she told CNN. From the way they heat their homes and the cars they drive, to the skills they need to do the jobs necessary for the transition, everything is in flux.