Why do political elites fail on climate policy?

The version below has been edited for length and clarity. 

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Maria Luísa Moreira (Host): Welcome to The Diplomat's Cabinet podcast. Extreme weather is testing more than just our infrastructure. It's exposing the faultlines in our politics as well. From the silence of mainstream parties to the short lived urgency of green agendas, I've always wondered what exactly do climate shocks reveal about the fragility of our political systems? We often talk about climate policy, but we refrain from discussing political behaviour and the subsequent public perception. So that's what we're doing today. My guest is a political scientist and researcher who focuses on how parties respond to the climate crisis, why prevention is not always politically attractive, and how this all interlinked with public opinion and social movements. Let us welcome Doctor Antonio Valentin, assistant professor of European politics and policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, to the podcast. As a starting point, I will just say that if politics keeps treating climate as an afterthought, then perhaps disruption, not consensus, will be the only way forward. Let's get into it.

Antonio, welcome to the podcast. You wrote recently about how extreme weather is exposing policy failure. But if we can zoom out, I would like to know what do these climate shocks reveal about the fragility of our political systems? We can talk about Europe or beyond Europe. You tell me you are the expert, but specifically looking at how parties respond and how political agendas are shaped, and how the public may interpret government failure pertaining to these climate shocks.

António Valentim (Guest): So first of all, thanks for having me. I'm really happy to be here. So most of my work relates to the extent to which these events are seen as, or the work related to to how political parties respond, tries to understand whether they talk about them in terms of climate or environmental issues, which does not seem to be the case. That does not necessarily mean that they don't talk about these events in general. They do. They just talk more about them in terms of general emergencies that need to be addressed and immediate rescue that type of frame. These events more broadly show several things I think they show. So I think it's always easy. They're always more visible when when the response to them doesn't work as we as we think they should work. And in terms of more political responses and political incentives, I think they showcase that there's very little incentives for for prevention work rather than than addressing these the consequences of these events once they've been, once they've taken place. So I think they show a lot of fragility that we have in our political institutions and also in our societies. But what my work kind of shows is that there's very little incentives for political elites to talk about them as climate events, even though climate change. Change both the intensity and the frequency of extreme weather events.

Luísa: Are there any differences between a left leaning party and a right leaning party?

António: ? In this paper that we've published together with people who were all in Berlin, at Humboldt at the time, where we show and what we find is that across multiple countries in Europe and throughout, several years in the in the 21st century, parties do not speak more about environmental issues in the aftermath of extreme weather events, and that is independent of whether they're in government or not, whether they're left or right leaning. The only thing we do, show or find is that green parties talk more about these issues, talk more about environmental issues in in the week right after the events, but they return to baseline after that first week. So it's even among green parties, which maybe we could expect more frames around climate change. The response is very quick.

Luísa: We've also seen climate driven events spark unrest and deepen distrust between parties or politics and the public. Yet we don't talk about this or we don't. This doesn't enter the mainstream political narrative. I'm talking about Portugal, for example. We don't talk about climate at all. We only talk about the climate emergency as an ad hoc or as a separate issue to focus on. Why do you think politicians avoid that framing, and doesn't that lead to more climate activism? It has become more frequent and more aggressive. And isn't that the obvious response to political parties not addressing the issue?

António: It's hard to explain why something happens. It's harder to explain why something does not happen. I think there's multiple reasons for why parties might not be talking about these things. One is that, especially if you're a party that will tend to support more progressive platforms, you might be afraid of being seen as trying to capitalize a humanitarian An emergency by talking about climate agendas in an emergency period. I think there might be sort of that that assumption. I think there's some evidence also that suggests that there is some under that. Some politicians in Europe and also in the US underestimate support for climate policy amongst the public. So they might believe that there's less demand or less support for the, for the type of, for climate policy than there actually is. And so maybe a combination of these two things makes it more likely that they just talk about it in other frames. So usually the response is as either an emergency that everyone needs to act on and address the immediate consequences of. And secondly, they're also framed very often, particularly from parties on the opposition as kind of policy failures. This happened because X, Y, z actor didn't act the way it should. On this specific occasion, I think the floods in Valencia are very good. Example of that recently in terms of activism. I don't know, I think I think a lot of the recent climate movements that started in 2018 and 2020 started from a very clear and explicit frustration at the lack of action from policymakers on climate issues. And I think since since 2018, there's been like a surge of support for these movements. Then slowly but quite progressively decayed. And as it's common in a lot of social movements on issues other than climate change, there has been a debate within the movement on whether they should try to broaden the scope of their appeals, broaden the type of people that support them, but also whether they should become more radical in their type of actions that they engage in in order to make it more explicit how urgent the situation is in their view, but also to make it more likely that people actually react. So I think especially since 2020, there's been a lot of splits within the climate movement and also a lot of discussions and variation on what type of strategies they use.

Luísa: Wearing your political scientist and research hat, are you able to say if there is a risk of radicalization? So going beyond denial and despair. The issue is twofold. We don't talk about climate change as a threat. We also do not consider the implications of climate change for society and how it interlinked with other areas, let's say healthcare. What would make a politician or a political party change their narrative? Is it just pure radicalisation in the future?

António: What would the public need to do for parties to become more progressive on climate action? That's a good question. So again, I think the first wave of protest was quite effective in the first wave post 2018 was quite effective in creating a momentum or a zeitgeist where it was more or less consensual among, I would say, European political elites, that more was was needed in terms of climate action and not only political elites who also had it from business elites. You also have it from universities providing more more programs and hiring more people doing these sort of things. Part of that was due to the bottom up mobilization. I think since then, especially in Europe. Forces opposing climate action have been way more effective and politicizing and polarizing these things. So there's very good evidence from from research, just from the LSC, showing that the radical right parties in across Europe have been very effective in talking more about climate action and being alone in opposing it relative to other party families. And that has been a successful political strategy. So I think there has been more examples in recent years of. Effective opposition to climate policy by highlighting perceived costs, by highlighting perceived threats to the way of life that a lot of Western European countries have been experiencing in regards to what would be needed for more pro climate platforms to even talk more about it. I think these types of bottom up strategies can be successful in certain situations. I think highlighting how climate change is something that will address a lot of the issues that people are facing, being in economic inequality and whatnot and energy costs and all of these things. But I think that's particularly challenging right now, because there's research that shows that people will be less concerned about climate change when they face physical or economic threats or insecurity. And and so a lot of the crises that we're witnessing right now may not be very conductive for pro climate action, because people will tend to focus more on those issues rather than climate change when there's more economic insecurity or even when people feel unsafe.

Luísa: Last two questions. Poly crisis is the word of the moment. But politically, what does it really mean? Or what could it really mean to govern during these multiple overlapping ecological, economic and social shocks? So that's what we have seen since the pandemic. Probably see more often as the climate emergency worsens. So I'm wondering what does it mean to govern? Can you think of examples? How difficult will it be?

António: I think the climate crisis makes it bluntly obvious how political institutions, and how the incentives we've created through these institutions are not made for long term policymaking. And I think we're we're starting to feel very much the consequences of that. So climate change is a relatively slow moving crisis that will that is and will be speeding up. But in terms if you think about it, compared to political cycles, it's more of a long term event wherein it's really hard to create incentives for people to address them by creating long term policies for which the consequences will be very hard to match. As in, like if you do create climate policies, it's really hard to map counterfactual. If you hadn't hadn't had those policies five, ten, 20 years down the line. So I think that creates really hard dynamics. That said, however, I think we're seeing a lot of events and we start talking about about extreme weather events that are exacerbated and deepened by climate change, but are often not seen nor addressed as such. So what we have very often is that these things are seen addressed and policies made on them as if they were discrete events that are not interconnected. So that's what we see a lot. I don't know if this answers the question. I guess it doesn't.

But I think a lot of the way that this crisis is talked about and addressed is by kind of artificially split it. So that's what we see a lot in the in the field.

Luísa: Final question. If you could redesign one part of the international political architecture beyond institutions, maybe even beyond politics, how it works globally to make it fit for the climate insecurity era? What would it be? And you can say climate policies. That's too easy.

António: A major challenge that we have, especially since Paris. There's been a lot of creativity in creating and creating institutional settings or institutions that create the type of address. A lot of the concerns try to address fee writing and whatnot. I think what we've been lacking is two things. One, creating ways through which commitments are stickier and are harder to fall back from. And second, to create ways through which commitments actually translate into policy that is long term and that is not redrawn and very frequently changed over time. So I think those are the two main challenges in a very broad answer. Those are the two main challenges that I think are architecture at the international level, is going to have to address difficult to make it stick because you get the government changes and then politics changes as well.

As a consequence.

António: Yes, and so that's the mood. Uh, so what I was saying about 2018, 2019, it was very clear that there was kind of a consensus on doing more. I think if anything, that's definitely not what we're feeling right now. So these things will change over time. But the need for action will not. So creating systems where that stays in place is really challenging to say the least.

Luísa: Food for thought. Thank you António.

António: Thank you so much.

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