Protest against the IMARC conference in Melbourne, Australia, October 28, 2019. Extinction Rebellion and other groups march in Southbank to oppose the mining and resource industry event. Photo: Adam Calaitzis.

ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 – Prof. Philippe Le Billon: Climate Change, Natural Resources and Conflicts

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Professor Philippe Le Billon’s lecture critically examined how climate-related conflicts emerge from three sources: the impacts of climate change itself, contestation over climate inaction, and backlash against climate action. He argued that climate change operates as a “threat multiplier,” intensifying pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities rather than acting as an isolated trigger of violence. He explored how climate activism—while driven by moral urgency—can be framed as elitist and provoke populist opposition, and how the implementation of climate policy can generate new conflicts when perceived as unjust or technocratic. Professor Le Billon warned that “green capitalism” risks reproducing extractive logics, creating new “green sacrifice zones,” and underscored that climate justice requires confronting colonial legacies, class inequality, and structural power relations.

Reported by ECPS Staff

The seventh lecture of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025—titled “Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders”—took place online on July 10, 2025.  The day’s featured lecturer was Professor Philippe Le Billon, an esteemed scholar of political geography and political ecology at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Prior to joining UBC, Professor Le Billon worked with prominent institutions including the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), as well as with environmental and human rights organizations. His research has long focused on the political economy of natural resources, extractivism, and the connections between environment, development, and security—especially in conflict settings. His current work engages closely with environmental defenders, small-scale fisheries, and the socio-political dimensions of the so-called “green transition.”

Though Professor Le Billon modestly framed himself as “not a major expert on climate change,” his extensive scholarship on the political economy of resource sectors, conflict, and environmental governance provided a compelling framework for analyzing climate-related conflicts in relation to populism. His lecture, titled “Climate Change, Natural Resources and Conflicts,” examined how climate-related conflicts increasingly shape and are shaped by populist mobilizations globally.

Professor Le Billon invited participants to think critically about climate conflict through a tripartite analytical lens: conflicts driven by the impacts of climate change; conflicts driven by perceived climate inaction; and conflicts triggered by the implementation of climate action itself. Framing his talk within what he described as the current era of “polycrisis”—marked by intertwined crises of climate, inequality, and governance—Professor Le Billon emphasized that climate change must be understood as a political issue embedded in structures of power, inequality, and historical injustice.

By drawing on case studies from around the world, his lecture challenged participants to reflect on the multifaceted relationship between populism and climate politics, showing how climate change is at once a driver of conflict and a contested arena where competing visions of justice, sovereignty, and socio-ecological futures play out.

Conflicts over Climate Impacts: From Environmental Stress to Political Violence

Hundreds of climate activists lie down in front of News Corp Australia headquarters in Sydney calling the Murdoch press liers on January 31, 2020.

Professor Le Billon reflected on the prevailing focus in academic and policy circles on conflicts attributed to the material impacts of climate change itself. He framed this discussion within the literature that examines how climate-induced environmental stress—particularly droughts, altered rainfall, and extreme weather—affects resource availability and contributes to tensions over land, water, and livelihoods.

As he explained, “generally, the drivers have been portrayed and naturalized as fitted with things like higher temperature, altered rainfall patterns, more frequent and intense disasters, sea level rise, etc. So droughts in particular have been a major focus.” To this list, he added lesser-discussed ecological dynamics such as “shifts in resources—so grassland seasonality, but also fish migrations. Every fish species has a temperature range that they like, and so they’ll migrate as temperatures warm up or cool down, and that can lead to fishing conflicts.”

Professor Le Billon was careful to emphasize that while climate change is an important contextual factor, it is rarely the sole or primary driver of violent conflict. He invoked the now widely accepted notion that climate change acts as a “threat multiplier,” noting that it “amplifies existing vulnerabilities” where poverty, inequality, livelihood insecurity, and political exclusion already prevail. He stressed that scholars and policymakers must avoid simplistic causality and instead attend to these intersections as the crucial sites of analysis.

To illustrate this argument, he cited several case studies, including the recurrent droughts in Syria, which “had a nasty effect on communities in Syria, and would have been part of the lead-up to the Syrian civil war. Of course, this is by far not the only factor, but it would have been an aggravating one.” He similarly highlighted the Sahel, where tensions between farmers and herders reflect a long history of land disputes now exacerbated by environmental pressures.

Professor Le Billon also drew attention to lesser-known cases of ecological disruption, such as fisheries conflicts prompted by species migration as ocean temperatures change. These examples underscore that climate change is interwoven with complex social and economic dynamics rather than being an external or autonomous driver of violence.

Critically, Professor Le Billon challenged dominant frameworks for analyzing these conflicts, identifying two key forms of reductionism: the naturalization of climate change itself and the culturalization of conflict. He argued that “what it has done also is generally depoliticized the inequalities that are at play in those countries, the kind of colonial legacies that have led to the type of property rights or absence of property rights,” and the “type of extractivist legislation that is in place.” Such framings, he cautioned, obscure the historical and structural conditions that have made many communities in the Global South so vulnerable to environmental shocks in the first place.

This depoliticization, he warned, enables securitized responses, particularly in the Global North, where governments increasingly treat climate-affected populations as threats—especially potential climate migrants—rather than as subjects of justice and solidarity. As Professor Le Billon put it, “many of these conflicts take place in, and affect, populations in the Global South which are the least responsible for what has happened.” Yet Northern discourse tends to focus on fears of migration, feeding into anti-immigration agendas and populist narratives of external threat.

Professor Le Billon’s intervention here was also a normative one: he argued that these conflicts should not be framed as technical problems requiring security solutions, but rather as calls for climate justice. He proposed that “rather than seeing [them] as a conflict,” these phenomena “should be seen as a call for justice rather than a call for militarized protection from Northern societies against those climate and conflict migrants.”

Moreover, he drew attention to the way populist actors at the domestic level have manipulated identity politics to escalate these conflicts. In many contexts, governments have “legitimated violence against those groups,” by framing nomadic herders or marginalized populations as scapegoats for broader socio-economic grievances. He noted that this dynamic is mirrored at the international level, where right-wing populists in the Global North leverage the specter of mass climate migration to bolster anti-immigration policies.

Conflicts over Climate Inaction: The Rise of Climate Activism and Eco-Populism

No Mining protest sign in Kaeo, New Zealand, September 15, 2013. While coal mining produced 5.3 million tonnes in 2010, acid mine drainage remains a serious environmental problem. Photo: Rafael Ben Ari.

The second broad category explored by Professor Le Billon concerned conflicts motivated by perceived inaction on climate change. These conflicts, while often nonviolent and institutional in form, represent an important and increasingly contentious terrain of political struggle. Professor Le Billon traced the rise of protests, demonstrations, and civil disobedience aimed at governments and corporations failing to address climate change. These movements, such as Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, have emerged as potent social forces, demanding rapid action to avert climate catastrophe and often invoking the urgency of saving humanity and the planet. As Professor Le Billon put it, these movements are driven by “concerns for current and future impacts of climate change… it’s often a call for saving humanity and the planet in general, and in itself it can be sometimes quite problematic.” This universalist framing, he noted, is both rhetorically powerful and politically vulnerable.

While recognizing the moral force and legitimacy of these movements, Professor Le Billon offered a critical reflection on their social composition and political rhetoric. “Very often the people participating in the protests also have a relatively privileged background, and so it’s relatively easy to frame them as essentially privileged elites not being too preoccupied with the immediate concerns of some of the other population,” he observed. This tension, he argued, can be—and often is—instrumentalized by populist actors who portray climate activists as out-of-touch elites imposing burdens on ordinary people.

At the same time, Professor Le Billon highlighted the distinctive populist inflection of much climate activism itself, particularly in its critique of fossil fuel lobbies, global corporations, and corrupt elites. In this framing, “the climate inaction is framed as a result of decisions made by corrupt elites, greedy corporations, elitist global institutions that are done at the expense of local communities and the planet.” Thus, progressive eco-populism casts “the people” as aligned with the planet against an oligarchy of corporate and political actors who block meaningful climate action. This framing frequently intersects with indigenous and peasant movements, as seen in opposition to pipelines and extractive projects in North America and beyond.

However, as Professor Le Billon noted, these movements are not without internal tensions and external challenges. He pointed out that their demands often shift toward more radical critiques of the underlying political economy: “Essentially when people start not only to claim that there is climate inaction on the part of governments, but that the current system means that the government is incapable of acting… thus there is a need for a system change—that’s when we see a lot of violence taking place in different ways.”

This dynamic helps explain why such movements are subject to escalating repression and criminalization, particularly when they adopt disruptive tactics such as blockades and sabotage. Professor Le Billon discussed how governments in liberal democracies such as Australia, the UK, and Norway have responded with “very high arrest rates… while police violence has tended to be relatively low,” in contrast to countries like France, South Africa, or Peru, where “the rate of arrest is very low but the rate of police violence is very high.”

He emphasized that repression tends to correlate with movements that shift their critique beyond specific policies to systemic structures of capitalism and fossil fuel dependence: “It’s essentially when they start to challenge the system itself that we see an intensification of violence and repression.” Thus, his lecture illuminated the complex relationship between climate activism, eco-populism, and state repression. Professor Le Billon’s analysis underscored both the promise and the perils of contemporary climate movements, situating them as key arenas where conflicts over climate inaction are contested not only between activists and the state but also within broader struggles over privilege, legitimacy, and systemic change.

Conflicts over Climate Action: Green Transitions and Class Struggles

Protest against lithium mining in Belgrade, Serbia, August 10, 2024. A protester holds a placard reading “Stop Rio Tinto” during a demonstration opposing the company’s lithium mining plans. Photo: Dreamstime.

The third type of conflict examined by Professor Le Billon concerned resistance to climate action itself. Paradoxically, he noted that even as climate movements demand urgent measures, the implementation of climate policies can generate backlash and new sites of conflict—especially when these policies are perceived as unjust, unequal, or technocratic. As he remarked, “it’s common sense to intervene and change our system so that we’ve got more climate action—but the common sense also is that this transition cannot happen overnight,” capturing the contested terrain of climate policy.

He discussed the removal of fossil fuel subsidies in countries such as Nigeria, where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and climate policy imperatives have converged in advocating for subsidy reforms. While the removal of subsidies might advance climate objectives on paper, they also provoke protests from populations who view them as essential to their livelihoods and who see such reforms as anti-poor. “Many people see material well-being and the imperative of social reproduction as being very important,” he observed, underscoring why such reforms often spark resistance.

Similar tensions have emerged around carbon taxes, electric vehicle subsidies, and renewable energy projects. In Canada, for example, carbon taxation became a major electoral issue in 2025, with fierce populist opposition portraying it as an attack on the working class. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right party has opposed offshore wind farms, portraying them as an imposition on local fishing communities—a populist strategy that, Professor Le Billon noted, mirrors narratives used in the American context around coal miners and oil workers. He pointed out that such movements tap into a grievance that “green liberalism puts a lot of focus on individual responsibility,” leading to perceptions that environmental policies disproportionately burden working-class populations while privileging elites.

Professor Le Billon introduced a critical perspective on what he termed “green capitalism” and “green extractivism”: the reproduction of extractive logics in the pursuit of green growth. Renewable energy infrastructure and low-carbon technologies, he observed, rely heavily on critical minerals such as lithium, often extracted from indigenous lands or ecologically sensitive regions in the Global South. These new “green sacrifice zones,” as he put it, “frame the climate crisis as resolvable through resource-intensive technological fixes” while perpetuating inequality and ecological harm. He noted that “about 70% of the energy transition mineral projects are near land that can be qualified as sites with indigenous people or traditional peasants,” a statistic that lays bare the colonial patterns embedded in the green transition.

He referenced resistance movements in the Andes, where lithium extraction has threatened fragile ecosystems and indigenous communities, as well as protests in Serbia against a Rio Tinto mining project. These conflicts illustrate how green transitions, if pursued within the existing capitalist framework, may perpetuate old injustices even as they address carbon emissions. As one protester quoted by Le Billon put it, “Green mining doesn’t exist… Politicians need to stop trying to get rid of pollution in cities by polluting our villages instead,” a vivid expression of the local-global tensions animating these struggles.

Professor Le Billon argued that the articulation of populism in these conflicts often turns on competing definitions of “the people.” In some cases, populist rhetoric is mobilized from the right, defending local or national sovereignty against globalist green agendas. In others, it emerges from the left, articulating an anti-elite critique of corporate greenwashing and imperialism. Both forms, he suggested, reflect deeper class struggles over who bears the costs and reaps the benefits of the energy transition: “We see a kind of two main categories… one is a critique of green liberalism… and the second one is against green extractivism, pushing back against the so-called extractivist imperative.”

In sum, Professor Le Billon’s analysis illuminated the complex and often contradictory ways in which climate action itself generates conflict, highlighting how struggles over green transitions are increasingly shaped by narratives of class, sovereignty, and justice. His lecture invited participants to recognize that without attention to these underlying dynamics, climate policy risks reproducing precisely the inequalities and exclusions it seeks to remedy.

Conclusion

In concluding his lecture, Professor Le Billon underscored the importance of understanding climate conflicts in all their complexity—not simply as environmental disputes but as deeply embedded in histories of inequality, structures of capitalism, and struggles over power and justice.

His three-part framework highlighted that conflicts emerge not only from the material impacts of climate change but also from contestation over climate inaction and from the contested implementation of climate policies themselves. Across these domains, populism plays an ambivalent role: sometimes reinforcing reactionary politics and obstruction, sometimes animating progressive alliances around climate justice.

Throughout the lecture, Professor Le Billon emphasized the need to critically examine the political economy of the green transition. He warned against narratives that frame climate mitigation as a purely technocratic project, disconnected from questions of inequality, colonialism, and class power. Without confronting these deeper structures, he argued, climate action risks reproducing the very injustices it seeks to redress.

His analysis also illuminated the paradoxical dynamics at play: climate policy can simultaneously be a site of progressive mobilization and conservative backlash; climate discourse can empower grassroots movements but also invite repression; and the pursuit of sustainability can generate new forms of extractivism and environmental sacrifice.

In sum, Professor Le Billon’s lecture made an invaluable contribution to the ECPS Summer School’s exploration of the nexus between populism and climate change. It provided participants with critical tools for understanding how climate conflicts are not simply about environmental degradation but also about contested visions of justice, sovereignty, and the political future. His call to recognize the uneven and contested terrain of climate politics resonated with the overarching theme of the Summer School: the urgent need to craft policy responses that are attentive not only to ecological imperatives but also to the demands of social and global justice.

Professor Erik Swyngedouw, a globally respected scholar in the fields of political ecology and critical social theory. He is Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Change.

ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 – Prof. Eric Swyngedouw: The Climate Deadlock and The Unbearable Lightness of Climate Populism

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeReports

In his compelling lecture, Professor Erik Swyngedouw offered a radical critique of contemporary climate discourse, describing it as trapped in a “climate deadlock” where knowledge and activism coexist with deepening ecological crisis. He argued that mainstream and radical climate narratives mirror the structure of populism, constructing simplistic binaries while displacing attention from capitalism’s core role in driving environmental destruction. Professor Swyngedouw challenged participants to recognize that the environmental apocalypse is not an imminent future but an unevenly distributed present reality for much of the world. His provocative call to dismantle the comforting fantasy of a unified humanity urged a re-politicization of the climate crisis, demanding systemic transformation and solidarity grounded in confronting global inequalities.

Reported by ECPS Staff

The sixth lecture of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025, titled “The Climate Deadlock and The Unbearable Lightness of Climate Populism,” was delivered as part of the broader program, “Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders,” held online from July 7 to 11, 2025. 

The lecture was presented by Professor Erik Swyngedouw, a globally respected scholar in the fields of political ecology and critical social theory. He is Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Change. His work interrogates the political dimensions of environmental crises, urbanization, and social power. Among his major publications are Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a Post-Democratic Environment (MIT Press), Liquid Power: Contested Hydro-Modernities in 20th Century Spain (MIT Press), and Social Power and the Urbanisation of Nature (Oxford University Press). His forthcoming book Enjoying Climate Change (Verso), co-authored with Lucas Pohl, extends his critical inquiry into the paradoxes of contemporary climate discourse.

Moderating the session was Jonathan White, Professor of Politics at the London School of Economics. Professor White is a prominent scholar of democracy, political temporality, and European politics. His books include In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea (2024), Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union(2019), and The Meaning of Partisanship (2016, with Lea Ypi). As moderator, Professor White introduced the speaker, contextualized the discussion within contemporary debates on populism and climate change, and facilitated a lively and thoughtful discussion by drawing connections between climate discourse, democratic politics, and visions of the future.

In his lecture, Professor Swyngedouw advanced a provocative and unsettling critique of contemporary climate discourse. He argued that despite widespread scientific consensus, institutional action, and activist mobilization, the condition of the planet continues to deteriorate—a paradox he termed the “climate deadlock.” Drawing on a psychoanalytically informed, Marxist perspective, Professor Swyngedouw contended that mainstream climate discourse functions in ways structurally parallel to populism, constructing binary narratives of virtuous “people” versus villainous “elites” or “external threats” (such as CO₂), while masking the real systemic drivers of ecological catastrophe: capitalism’s relentless imperative for accumulation and growth.

Professor Swyngedouw’s central claim—that both liberal and radical climate discourses reproduce depoliticization by focusing obsessively on carbon emissions as a fetish object—challenged participants to rethink familiar narratives. He argued that the obsessive focus on CO₂ reduction displaces attention from the deep class antagonisms and material inequalities at the root of the climate crisis, allowing societies to “act as if” they are responding to climate change while leaving intact the socio-economic structures that cause environmental destruction. This displacement, he explained, generates what he termed the “unbearable lightness of climate populism”—an empty consensus that obscures the political transformations truly required.

This lecture, rich in theoretical rigor and critical insight, provided a powerful contribution to the Summer School’s objective of fostering critical debate about populism and climate change. It invited participants to reflect on how even well-intentioned environmental discourses can perpetuate depoliticization and obstruct radical action, urging a re-politicization that directly confronts the systemic drivers of ecological crisis.

Focusing on the Climate Obscures the Politics

Flooding in Bangladesh’s delta region: Villagers on Charkajal Island endure rising waters, sea-level rise, and intense monsoon rains—making Bangladesh one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations. Photo: Dreamstime.

In his lecture, Professor Erik Swyngedouw delivered a provocative opening that set the tone for his critical analysis of climate discourse. Speaking with characteristic wit and candor, Professor Swyngedouw began by emphasizing a paradoxical but central claim: if we truly want to take the climate crisis seriously, we must stop focusing on the climate itself. This counterintuitive assertion framed his argument that the mainstream climate consensus—shared across liberal, radical, and even activist sectors—has become trapped in what he described as a “climate deadlock.”

According to Professor Swyngedouw, this deadlock emerges not from ignorance but from a deep structural dynamic. While knowledge and consensus about the seriousness of climate change are widespread, genuine transformative action remains absent. He argued that climate discourse today is structured in ways that parallel populist discourses: it constructs a binary narrative of virtuous “people” versus villainous “elites” and simplifies complex socio-economic realities by reducing them to fetishized objects—greenhouse gases like CO₂, methane, and nitrous oxides.

Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Professor Swyngedouw contended that greenhouse gases have come to function as a “fetish” in the classic sense: a symbolic object that absorbs collective anxiety while allowing the underlying socio-political structures that drive ecological crisis—especially global capitalism and accumulation—to remain intact. In this view, the obsessive focus on CO₂ reduction serves as a form of displacement that assures that nothing fundamentally changes. Thus, Professor Swyngedouw’s core proposition was that mainstream and even radical climate discourses have become part of a pervasive depoliticization process, obscuring the real sources of the crisis while creating the illusion of action.

Mapping the Climate Deadlock

Professor Swyngedouw offered a penetrating analysis of what he termed the “climate deadlock,” a paradoxical condition in which global awareness and consensus about climate change coexist with mounting environmental degradation and policy failure. Professor Swyngedouw underscored that, despite widespread knowledge, sophisticated technologies, radical activism, and repeated calls for urgent action, climate parameters continue to worsen, with greenhouse gas emissions rising relentlessly. He framed this as a profound political and psychological impasse demanding a different conceptual lens.

To illuminate this impasse, Professor Swyngedouw employed a Marxist-Lacanian, psychoanalytically informed perspective, focusing especially on the psychology of those most committed to climate action: radical activists and conscientious citizens alike. He argued that many such actors—while passionately advocating for change—are caught in forms of what psychoanalysis calls “surplus enjoyment” and “hysterical acting out,” manifested in both symbolic protests and personal lifestyle adjustments, such as reducing air travel or adopting vegetarianism. These practices, while seemingly transformative, actually sustain an underlying attachment to the existing socio-ecological order.

Fetishistic Disavowal and the Object Cause of Desire

Drawing inspiration from the French philosopher Alain Badiou, Professor Swyngedouw suggested that the dominant climate discourse operates as a new “opium of the people”: a depoliticizing ideology that channels political energies into managing “the climate” as a technical object while obscuring the deeper power structures—especially capitalism—that drive ecological crisis. Central to this critique is the concept of “fetishistic disavowal,” where societies simultaneously acknowledge the reality of climate change yet act as if they do not know, displacing transformative political struggle onto the technical management of greenhouse gases, which have been fetishized as the primary cause of crisis.

Professor Swyngedouw thus identified a dangerous cognitive dissonance: even as greenhouse gas concentrations reach record highs, mainstream discourse congratulates itself on partial regional successes, such as EU emissions reductions, while ignoring how these reductions are offset by increases elsewhere to sustain global consumption patterns. This displacement allows societies to avoid confronting the “real” socio-political antagonisms and material inequalities embedded in the climate crisis.

Professor Swyngedouw argued that climate discourse and activism are not only shaped by the urgent need to address ecological breakdown but also marked by a libidinal attachment to the very socio-ecological order they critique. He suggested that many climate activists, while sincerely desiring a socially just, democratic, and environmentally sustainable world, displace this larger, daunting desire onto a “small object” that stands in for systemic transformation: the reduction of CO₂ emissions.

Professor Swyngedouw likened this displacement to the structure of fetishism in psychoanalysis, where desire attaches to a fragment or object—such as a shoe—allowing the subject to avoid confronting the whole, more difficult reality of a relationship. In this case, he contended that CO₂ becomes the “little object of desire,” the symbolic focal point around which hopes for ecological and social renewal revolve. This focus allows activists and institutions alike to engage in practices like recycling, dietary changes, and ethical consumption—actions that offer partial satisfaction but ultimately fail to address the root cause of the crisis: the capitalist drive for endless growth.

Professor Swyngedouw maintained that this fetishization ensures that the true trauma at the heart of the climate crisis—the need for radical political and socio-economic transformation—remains disavowed. By focusing on CO₂ as the manageable object, climate discourse paradoxically enables enjoyment of critique and activism while leaving intact the structures that produce ecological harm, thereby sustaining the status quo under the guise of transformation.

The Unbearable Lightness of Climate Populism

Respect Indigenous Peoples’ Rights: A group representing Indigenous communities marches during a climate protest in Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo: Dreamstime.

Professor Swyngedouw advanced a critical argument about what he termed “the unbearable lightness of climate populism.” He began by asserting that, despite widespread calls for change, many subjects do not truly desire a different socio-ecological order. Instead, their desire becomes articulated around CO₂ reduction as the privileged object of action. This displacement, Professor Swyngedouw argued, leads to a discourse whose architecture mirrors the logic of populism—a framework typically associated with right-wing nationalism but, in his analysis, equally at work within liberal and even radical climate discourses.

Professor Swyngedouw described how climate populism unfolds through the consensualization of the climate question, the mobilization of an apocalyptic imaginary, and the reliance on technocratic and managerial solutions. Central to this process, he contended, is the commodification of greenhouse gas emissions, the encouragement of individualized responsibility and guilt, and a focus on technical fixes rather than systemic change. In this way, climate discourse parallels right-wing populism’s structure, even as it espouses different substantive aims.

He outlined that both right-wing populism and mainstream climate discourse frame their arguments around a virtuous “people” threatened by a dangerous “other”—whether migrants or greenhouse gases—while externalizing the root causes of crisis. Both deploy narratives of existential threat and call for decisive action but stop short of confronting the real systemic drivers of inequality and ecological degradation. In Professor Swyngedouw’s formulation, this amounts to a profound depoliticization, where urgent rhetoric masks an incapacity to challenge the socio-ecological status quo.

Professor Swyngedouw summarized the hegemonic view underlying climate populism as a narrative where a global humanitarian threat—caused by idle elites or external invaders like CO₂—requires urgent mitigation using precisely the market-conforming technologies and governance structures that caused the crisis in the first place. This narrative sustains the illusion that catastrophe can be averted, that humanity can be saved, and that a lost Arcadian socio-ecological harmony can be restored if CO₂ levels return to 300 parts per million (ppm)—a formulation that he dismissed as a populist fantasy.

Expanding on this critique, Professor Swyngedouw presented twelve theses illustrating the structural parallels between right-wing populist discourse and climate populism. He invited his audience to imagine substituting the term “migrant” for “CO₂” to recognize the architectural similarity. Both discourses invoke “the people” or even “humanity” as a whole, presupposing a unity that he argued does not exist, as demonstrated by the vast disparities between, for instance, Gaza or Ukraine and wealthier regions. Both posit a direct relationship between public participation and the legitimacy of governance while short-circuiting genuine political conflict by reframing structural issues as matters of technical management.

Professor Swyngedouw pointed out that climate discourse has no privileged subject of transformation—no agent akin to the proletariat for socialists or women for feminists. Instead, it defines the enemy in externalized, fetishized terms: CO₂ becomes an ambiguous, socially empty, homogenized object that obscures the historical and material conditions of its production. A ton of CO₂ is treated as identical regardless of its source or context, encouraging a depoliticized response aimed at trimming “excess” emissions so that business-as-usual can continue.

He warned that dominant climate policies express demands addressed to elites to “act decisively,” rather than seeking to transform the elites themselves or the structures of accumulation and inequality that they defend. As an illustration, Professor Swyngedouw cited the exponentially expanding energy demand driven by artificial intelligence, whose corporate proponents are already ensuring that energy provision—including nuclear energy—will meet future AI growth. This example, he argued, epitomizes how climate discourse moves problems around rather than solving them.

Professor Swyngedouw then probed the appeal of climate populism, asking why so many—from radicals to mainstream actors—are drawn to this discourse. He suggested that its attraction lies in its function as a form of fetishistic disavowal: it allows individuals and societies to take the climate question seriously while avoiding the need for fundamental change. It enables solutions to be located within the familiar contours of technical and managerial governance arrangements while preserving existing socio-ecological power relations.

He cited Alain Badiou’s claim that environmentalism has become the “new opium of the people,” a soothing discourse that ensures things can go on as normal. The result is a climate debate that depoliticizes environmental matters by shifting attention away from what Professor Swyngedouw called “the mad dance of accumulation and its constitutive class dynamics”—the real drivers of climate breakdown. Instead, focus is displaced onto the symptom: CO₂, a fetish object that can be measured, traded, and managed, while the systemic causes remain unchallenged.

Professor Swyngedouw concluded that this logic leads to forms of “obsessive or hysterical climate activism,” which he characterized as “impotent acting out”—a pattern of behavior that allows society to appear engaged while keeping the underlying disease intact. He argued that this practice is supported and reproduced through the deployment of “empty signifiers” like sustainability, mitigation, adaptation, transition, and resilience. These terms enjoy universal approval yet lack substantive content, generating a hollow consensus that depoliticizes the climate question even further.

For Professor Swyngedouw, this configuration exemplifies the depoliticizing and uncannily populist phantasmic narrative and practice of what he termed “the climate catastrophe consensus.” His critique invited participants to reflect critically on the ideological architecture of mainstream climate discourse and the ways in which it allows a destructive socio-ecological system to persist under the guise of environmental concern.

The Real of the Climate Condition

Then, Professor Swyngedouw turned to “the real of the climate condition,” aiming to expose the systemic drivers of climate breakdown often concealed by mainstream discourse. He began by emphasizing the near-perfect correlation between GDP growth and greenhouse gas emissions. For Professor Swyngedouw, this relationship reflects how economic growth—understood as capitalist accumulation—is not merely an obsession but a structural necessity for the sustainability of modern societies. Without growth, crises ensue; thus, attempts by eco-modernists to claim that economic expansion can be decoupled from environmental degradation are, in his words, “fantasy land.” This illusion is starkly challenged by phenomena such as the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence, whose rapid rise portends escalating energy and resource demands.

To illustrate the material reality underpinning climate change, Professor Swyngedouw provided examples that disrupt the common narrative of an immaterial, post-industrial economy. Internet use, often celebrated for replacing carbon-intensive travel, accounts for approximately 2% of global climate emissions, rivaling aviation. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets adds to this footprint: each device represents 22 kilograms of CO₂ emissions, with over 3.5 billion devices globally. Their manufacture also embodies grim socio-ecological consequences, notably in Central Africa, where coltan mining—vital for ICT equipment—occurs under exploitative and violent conditions, often at the hands of militias and through the involvement of Chinese corporations. Professor Swyngedouw noted the irony that while Western societies discuss “decolonization,” they outsource contemporary extractive imperialism elsewhere, absolving themselves of direct responsibility.

Furthermore, he pointed to the extreme inequality of emissions: the top 10% of emitters are responsible for nearly half of global energy-related CO₂ emissions, while the poorest 10% contribute a mere 0.2%. The richest 0.1% alone emitted ten times more than the rest of the richest 10% combined, exceeding 200 tons of CO₂ per capita annually. These empirical facts reveal a deeply unequal, class-driven structure at the heart of the climate crisis. Yet, Professor Swyngedouw argued, this “real” is systematically disavowed in public discourse, displaced onto fantasies centered on technical management and abstract targets.

This fetishistic disavowal, Professor Swyngedouw explained, allows societies to “know very well” the facts of climate breakdown while continuing to “act as if we do not know.” In this paradox, knowledge itself becomes complicit in maintaining a socio-ecological order premised on endless growth, inequality, and environmental destruction. He warned that unless this structure is confronted, climate discourse will remain trapped in what he called a “populist climate fantasy.”

To move beyond this impasse, Professor Swyngedouw identified two key fantasies that must be transgressed. The first is the dystopian imaginary of an imminent catastrophe that can still be averted. For decades, climate narratives have proclaimed that we are five minutes to midnight, yet never past it, perpetuating an atmosphere of fear that serves neoliberal governance by depoliticizing conflict and presenting climate breakdown as a universal humanitarian threat. This framing enables techno-managerial responses while disavowing the combined and uneven realities of climate impact, where some communities are already experiencing collapse.

The second fantasy revolves around the idea that “humanity” itself is at risk. Professor Swyngedouw questioned the very notion of a singular humanity, pointing to stark global inequalities and conflicts that belie the fiction of a unified global subject. By invoking the danger to an imagined humanity, dominant discourse displaces recognition of the structural antagonisms that produce ecological catastrophe and directs political attention toward generalized, abstract fears.

Professor Swyngedouw underscored that rejecting the apocalyptic narrative—asserting instead that for many, the catastrophe has already occurred—is a necessary step toward politicizing the climate condition. Only by confronting these repressed traumas and dismantling the fantasies that sustain depoliticization can we begin to envision a genuinely transformative ecological politics.

Toward Political Ecologies

Drought in Indonesia: Residents collect murky water from a well in the dried-up reservoir of Kradenan village, Central Java. Photo: Dreamstime.

In this concluding section of his lecture, Professor Swyngedouw advanced a stark and provocative argument: the environmental apocalypse so often framed as an impending future catastrophe has, in fact, already occurred—but unevenly. For many across the world, especially in vulnerable regions, the dystopian conditions of climate collapse are not abstract scenarios but the lived reality of water conflicts, food insecurity, forced displacement, extractivism, and unlivable environments. These conditions, he argued, demonstrate that the “socio-ecological embroglio” has long passed the point of no return.

Professor Swyngedouw insisted that it is precisely this realization—that the apocalypse is both “combined and uneven”—that must become the foundation for any future politics. The comforting idea of returning to some lost Arcadian climate balance, or maintaining a stable global environment, he rejected as a fantasy that displaces the real conflicts and inequalities underlying ecological crisis. Even ostensibly sustainable practices in affluent societies, such as driving an electric vehicle in Amsterdam, are entangled in ecological destruction elsewhere—a global interdependence often obscured.

He then addressed what he termed the second “fantasy”: the very idea of “humanity” as a singular global subject deserving salvation. Drawing on Maurice Blanchot’s critique from the Cold War era, Professor Swyngedouw argued that this notion of humanity is itself a construct, masking deep antagonisms of class and geopolitical violence. From Gaza to Ukraine, the fractured, conflict-ridden nature of the world belies the fantasy of a coherent, unified human community. Professor Swyngedouw called for the construction of a “real humanity”—a project that does not presuppose unity but seeks to forge solidarity from division. Referencing Blanchot, he described this task as “Communism”: the transformative political process of creating humanity where it does not yet exist. 

Conclusion

In concluding his incisive lecture, Professor Erik Swyngedouw left participants of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 with a profound and challenging set of reflections. His critique of contemporary climate discourse invited attendees to reconsider how mainstream and even radical environmental narratives have become complicit in reproducing a depoliticized consensus—a consensus that sustains the very socio-ecological structures responsible for the crisis. By exposing the fetishization of CO₂ reduction as a displacement of attention from systemic drivers like capitalist accumulation and class inequality, Professor Swyngedouw urged a reframing of the climate challenge as a fundamentally political, not merely technical, struggle.

Central to his lecture was the insistence that the environmental apocalypse often depicted as a looming future catastrophe is, in fact, already here—unevenly distributed and deeply entangled with global inequalities. He argued that for millions across the Global South and other marginalized communities, the dystopian conditions of water scarcity, extractivism, forced migration, and environmental degradation are an everyday reality, not an impending threat. Recognizing this uneven, ongoing catastrophe is essential for any honest and transformative political response.

Professor Swyngedouw’s provocative claim that “humanity” itself is a fantasy—masking deep divisions and antagonisms—challenged the audience to reject the comforting notion of a unified global subject requiring salvation. Instead, he called for the active construction of a “real humanity”: a project of solidarity forged from division, attentive to class, geopolitical violence, and the histories of imperialism and exploitation that underpin today’s ecological breakdown.

In sum, this lecture pushed participants to interrogate the ideological architecture of climate populism and reflect on what genuine politicization of the climate condition would entail. It provided not only a critique of prevailing discourses but also an invitation to imagine and enact a more radical, just, and emancipatory ecological politics.

Carnival float showing Greta Thunberg holding the older generation by their ears, symbolizing "Fridays for Future" in Düsseldorf, Germany on March 3, 2019. Photo: Christian Drees.

ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 – Dr. Heidi Hart: Art Attacks – Museum Vandalism as a Populist Response to Climate Trauma?

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeReports

Dr. Heidi Hart’s lecture illuminated the provocative intersection of art, activism, and climate trauma. Through an interdisciplinary lens, she explored why climate activists increasingly target iconic artworks in museums as sites of performative protest, interpreting these acts not as mere vandalism but as symbolic disruptions challenging elitist cultural values amid ecological crisis. Drawing on frameworks from populism studies, art history, and affect theory, Dr. Hart examined how these interventions reflect a passionate response to climate grief and injustice. Her analysis underscored the importance of understanding such protests within broader debates on decolonization, posthumanism, and collective responsibility, encouraging participants to view artistic destruction as both a critique of cultural complacency and a call for ecological transformation.

Reported by ECPS Staff

On the third day of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025—titled “Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders”—took place online from July 7–11, 2025, participants were treated to a rich and thought-provoking lecture by Dr. Heidi Hart, who offered an interdisciplinary perspective on a particularly provocative theme: the intersection of art vandalism, populist performance, and climate trauma.

Dr. Hart is an arts scholar, curator, and practitioner with a deep commitment to exploring the affective dimensions of ecological crisis through cultural forms. She is based between Copenhagen and North Carolina and holds a Ph.D. in German Studies from Duke University (2016). Her scholarly trajectory spans environmental humanities, climate grief, sound and music in ecological narratives, and the artistic aesthetics of destruction. Among her major works is the recently published monograph Climate Thanatology, which examines artistic engagements with death, loss, and creative transformation in the shadow of climate collapse. Her current research project, Instruments of Repair—supported by the Craftford Foundation—extends this inquiry into the ecological afterlives of musical instruments, analyzing how materials and sound objects decay, renew, and reenter cycles of natural transformation.

Framing the Inquiry

In her lecture, titled “Art Attacks: Museum Vandalism as a Populist Response to Climate Trauma?” Dr. Hart asked two provocative and interrelated questions: Can climate-motivated attacks on cultural heritage be understood as populist interventions? And are such acts animated by collective trauma in response to escalating ecological collapse?

Drawing on her intellectual background in German studies and arts-based environmental research, Dr. Hart invited participants to think critically about what lies behind these acts of museum vandalism—actions that, at first glance, may seem merely destructive but are laden with symbolism and ambiguity. In doing so, she framed her lecture around key themes that set the tone for further discussion: populism, affect, trauma, artistic disruption, and cultural elitism. Through this framing, she encouraged participants to interrogate how contemporary protest blurs boundaries between art and activism, and how cultural heritage itself becomes a site where competing visions of justice, grief, and ecological survival play out.

Dr. Hart began by situating her own intellectual journey—from early research on music as resistance during the Nazi era, where she explored how art could disrupt authoritarian propaganda’s narcotic appeal, to her current focus on the affective and symbolic power of art in the context of environmental crises. This personal trajectory underscored a continuity in her work: a persistent interrogation of how artistic practices can interrupt complacency, provoke reflection, and mobilize engagement.

In today’s context, she argued, museum vandalism by climate activists invites interpretation beyond its surface-level appearance as mere destruction. While many view these actions as disruptive irritations—summarized in a tongue-in-cheek remark she recalled from a recent Oxford symposium, “Everyone hates climate activists”—Dr. Hart challenged participants to probe more deeply: why and how are these interventions disruptive, and could they be productive in drawing attention to the climate emergency?

She acknowledged that her presentation, though informed by her expertise in sound and music, would focus more on visual art, reflecting the prominence of museum spaces as recent sites of climate protest. The lecture’s key themes—populism, trauma, and the aesthetics of disruption—were introduced as analytical frames through which to interrogate these acts of vandalism. Dr. Hart signaled that she would offer preliminary thoughts while leaving ample space for dialogue, emphasizing that these questions remain open and contested.

By foregrounding her inquiry in this way, Dr. Hart set the stage for a rich exploration of not only whether climate activist vandalism constitutes a populist response but also how it may serve as an expression of collective climate grief and a critique of cultural elitism. This framing invited participants to think critically about the ambiguous and provocative role of art in times of ecological crisis and political polarization.

Museum Vandalism as Performative Protest

Dr. Hart discussed recent attacks on artworks, including pink paint on Picasso’s Le Tête in Montreal, pea soup on Van Gogh’s The Sower in Rome, and black paint on Klimt’s Death and Life in Vienna.

In her lecture, Dr. Hart has drew attentions to a striking phenomenon that has emerged in recent years: the vandalism of iconic artworks by climate activist groups. Framing these incidents as potential cases of “performative protest,” Dr. Hart explored not only their aesthetic shock value but their underlying motivations and rhetorical strategies, situating these acts within broader cultural and political debates.

She began by providing concrete examples of such actions. In 2022, museum vandalism became a prominent feature of climate activism, with protesters targeting cultural masterpieces in acts carefully calibrated for visibility. Dr. Hart discussed a recent attack in Montreal, where pink paint was thrown at Picasso’s Le Tête. Other high-profile incidents included activists hurling pea soup at Van Gogh’s The Sower in Rome, and black paint splashed on Gustav Klimt’s Death and Life in Vienna. These actions, though dramatic, typically did not cause irreversible damage. As Dr. Hart noted, most of these targeted paintings were protected by glass or varnish, meaning the interventions were more symbolic than materially destructive.

Yet, the symbolism itself was deeply provocative. The activists’ chosen targets were canonical works—artworks regarded as cultural treasures—imbued with historical and aesthetic value. The protests’ visual violence demanded attention but also raised questions about the meaning of “treasuring” art in an age of ecological collapse. Dr. Hart highlighted the activists’ rhetorical position: Why admire art while the planet burns? For these groups, art becomes a symbol of elitism and privilege, and their interventions serve to challenge that perceived complacency.

Who perpetrates these actions? Dr. Hart shared that the vast majority—about 95%—are carried out by organized groups, typically operating within their own countries and avoiding long-distance air travel for environmental reasons. Three major groups—Ultima Generazione in Italy and the Vatican, Just Stop Oil in the UK, and Letzte Generation in Germany—account for over half of such incidents globally. These groups share coordination mechanisms, including networks like “A22,” and their communications reflect a shared sense of existential urgency. As their manifesto proclaims: “The old world is dying. We are in the last hour. What we do now decides the fate of this world and the next.”

Dr. Hart unpacked the dramatic language used by these groups, noting how their invocation of being the “last generation” implies both despair and futurity. On one hand, their rhetoric signals apocalyptic loss—both ecological and cultural—while on the other it invokes protection of generations yet to come. Their critique extends beyond climate change itself to the cultural frameworks that structure inaction: museums and artworks become proxies for a broader critique of elite indifference to planetary crisis.

The lecture also probed the deeper ideological terrain of these protests, linking them to contemporary struggles over rights discourse. Dr. Hart reflected on how activist groups claim an “inalienable right” to protest through disruptive means—a phrase that resonates with the language of populism on both the left and right. In today’s polarized context, she observed, concepts like “freedom” and “rights” are highly contingent, shifting according to political alignment. Where once calls for “freedom” in the US were often heard from right-wing movements opposing government regulation, the post-2024 political landscape has seen left-leaning groups appropriating the same rhetoric to resist new authoritarian currents.

Thus, these acts of museum vandalism reflect not only artistic disruption but also a contest over language itself—over what rights mean, who can claim them, and in what contexts. Dr. Hart emphasized that the activist invocation of freedom and rights is part of a wider populist dynamic that questions authority and elite cultural spaces, even as it seeks to defend collective planetary futures.

Dr. Hart’s exploration of climate activist vandalism revealed these actions as complex, ambiguous performances: visually disruptive yet materially restrained, symbolically powerful yet ideologically contested. By probing their underlying motivations, rhetorical strategies, and populist dimensions, she invited participants to view these protests not simply as acts of destruction but as calls for attention to deeper crises of climate, culture, and democracy itself.

Populist Dynamics and Iconoclash

Dr. Heidi Hart shared insights from her forthcoming book Piano Decompositions, exploring how broken or abandoned instruments—burning pianos, rotting harps—become ecological sites.

In her lecture, Dr. Hart also offered an expansive reflection on the relationship between contemporary climate activism, populist dynamics, and artistic practice, emphasizing how recent acts of vandalism against artworks in museums embody complex cultural and ideological tensions. Dr. Hart examined why some climate activists engage in such performative protests, throwing substances on masterpieces as a way to challenge the cultural hierarchies that museums symbolize.

She framed this as a populist gesture, drawing on arguments in the Encyclopedia of New Populism (2024), which describe left-oriented populist activists viewing museum art as symbolic of elitism. These artworks, attributed with immense monetary and cultural value, are seen to set apart a privileged cultural elite (“them”) from the general public (“us”). For these activists, museums become metaphoric “ivory towers,” and vandalism functions as a provocative performance rather than a reactionary outburst. In this framing, the splashing of paint or soup on a painting is not mere destruction, but a deliberate disruption aimed at exposing what they perceive as misplaced societal priorities in a time of environmental crisis.

Dr. Hart then broadened this inquiry by situating these acts within an evolving discourse in the art world itself. Museums today are increasingly sites of reflection on their own complicity in colonial histories, leading to active debates about “decolonizing the museum.” Many institutions are critically reassessing their collections—particularly artifacts acquired during imperial periods—and grappling with ethical questions of provenance and restitution.

Closely linked to these debates is the burgeoning discourse of posthumanism, another current Dr. Hart identified as central to understanding the contemporary art world. Posthumanism, she explained, takes two key forms: one engages with technological transformation, contemplating the future of humanity in an age of AI and bodily augmentation; the other de-centers humans as the central agents in history and culture, emphasizing human entanglement with non-human animals, ecosystems, and material forces. This second strand, Dr. Hart noted, deeply informs the proliferation of artworks today that abandon traditional materials like oil paint and canvas in favor of organic or ephemeral substances—horsehair, moss, soil, cultivated bacteria—all signaling a shift away from an anthropocentric worldview.

In this context, Dr. Hart suggested that climate activist vandalism tends not to target contemporary works that already embrace this ecological sensitivity. Instead, activists have focused on older, canonical works of art that are emblematic of human exceptionalism and Western aesthetic traditions. Their interventions thus function as a critique of a cultural legacy that they see as complicit in ecological extraction and exploitation.

Returning to the theme of populism, Dr. Hart introduced the work of political theorist Chantal Mouffe, whose book Toward a Green Democratic Revolution: Left Populism and the Power of Affects argues that left populism is a vital mode for mobilizing collective political will in the face of ecological collapse. For Mouffe, affective energy—passion, anger, grief—must be harnessed not just as protest but also channeled into institutional processes like voting and policymaking. Dr. Hart affirmed that Mouffe’s ideas offer a strong theoretical justification for interpreting climate activist actions as populist interventions aimed at reconfiguring democratic priorities around ecological survival.

However, Dr. Hart was careful to draw an important distinction between left populist climate activism and right-wing eco-fascism. Though both can appear populist in form, their ideological contents diverge dramatically. Eco-fascism, she observed, is often animated by a Malthusian impulse to restrict human populations, frequently tied to racialized or exclusionary worldviews—a “protection of the earth” that serves a narrowly defined community, often coded as white. In contrast, left populist climate activism typically expresses solidarity with all humans and non-humans alike, animated by a vision of ecological justice that centers collective responsibility and inclusivity.

An instructive example here is the “seven-generation principle,” drawn from Indigenous philosophies, which advises that every decision be made with consideration for its impact on seven generations to come. Dr. Hart explained that this principle encapsulates a form of temporality and collectivity that stands in stark opposition to the extractive logic of neoliberal capitalism. Where eco-fascists would advocate reducing populations to “protect” the earth, left populists call for an expanded, solidaristic ecology that embraces future human and non-human lives alike.

Dr. Hart then turned to the language of passion and affect in this context. While critics often dismiss passion as unstructured and chaotic, Mouffe and others argue that passion is essential for building a political project powerful enough to challenge entrenched structures of extraction and domination. Activism in museums, from this perspective, should not be seen as mindless vandalism but as part of a broader affective politics—a politics that seeks to reorient collective attention from cultural elitism to planetary emergency.

Dr. Hart continued her lecture by introducing the provocative concept of iconoclash, coined by French philosopher Bruno Latour. Distinct from “iconoclasm,” which implies a clear intent to destroy sacred images, iconoclash suggests a productive ambiguity: an act that simultaneously destroys and provokes reflection. When activists splash paint on canonical artworks, they may not seek to obliterate their cultural value outright but to force a public reconsideration of what those values signify at this moment of ecological precarity.

This framing resonates with Dr. Hart’s own scholarly and artistic work. She shared insights from her forthcoming book Piano Decompositions: The Ecology of Destroyed and Decaying Instruments, co-authored with Beata Schirrmacher, which explores how broken or abandoned instruments—burning pianos, rotting harps—become ecological sites in their own right. A decaying harp in her own backyard, she explained, has become home to spiders and plants, its strings transformed into webs, its wooden frame absorbing rain and wind. Such work re-embeds cultural artifacts into natural cycles of decay and regeneration, proposing destruction itself as a mode of ecological engagement.

In this light, Dr. Hart suggested, climate activist attacks on canonical artworks might also be understood not simply as negations but as attempts to transform how society values cultural and material artifacts—raising questions about what should be preserved, what should be mourned, and what should be allowed to return to the earth.

Trauma, Affect, and Eco-Populism

Dr. Heidi Hart reflected on the power of artistic ambiguity to address ecological crisis, highlighting the Icelandic film Woman at War and its eco-warrior protagonist’s complex duality.

Moreover, Dr. Hart addressed the psychological and emotional dimensions underlying acts of climate activism that target cultural institutions, focusing on the role of trauma and affect. She posed a central question: Are these destructive actions simply about drawing attention to the climate crisis, or do they emerge from an emotional intensity—what Chantal Mouffe describes as a passion driven by collective hurt and grief over ecological loss?

Dr. Hart cited Catherine Stiles’s work on destruction art as a useful lens, noting that such artistic interventions can be seen as a visual expression of the trauma of survival itself. According to Stiles, destruction art embodies the precarious condition of human survival in the 20th and 21st centuries, echoing broader existential anxieties that are increasingly acute amid escalating climate disruptions.

Dr. Hart also referenced Ian Kaplan’s Climate Trauma, a study exploring dystopian narratives across film and fiction, as further evidence of how popular culture processes this collective sense of impending ecological catastrophe. She observed that dystopian imaginaries reflect an implicit recognition that the world as we know it has already ended—a powerful backdrop for understanding the emotional logic of activist vandalism.

Drawing connections to current events, Dr. Hart emphasized that even those not directly affected by disasters like recent floods in Texas experience a form of mediated trauma through relentless news coverage. This ambient, cumulative distress, particularly among younger generations contemplating their futures, helps explain why destructive activism may increasingly be motivated not only by strategic intent but also by genuine emotional exhaustion and eco-anxiety.

In concluding her lecture, Dr. Heidi Hart offered a compelling reflection on the potential of artistic ambiguity and creative narratives to engage with ecological crisis in ways that transcend binary thinking. She highlighted the Icelandic film Woman at War (2013) as an exemplar of this approach, noting how its protagonist—a passionate eco-warrior—embodies a complex duality: she actively sabotages industrial infrastructure in Iceland while also serving as a beloved choir director in Reykjavík, deeply invested in her community and the arts.

Dr. Hart described how the film explores the interplay between destruction and creativity, emphasizing the ambiguity at its core. Throughout the film, a roving ensemble of musicians appears in unexpected settings—on hillsides, in the protagonist’s apartment, at an airport runway—blurring the lines between reality and imagination, and inviting viewers to question the role of art and music during times of crisis. This device creates a distancing effect that allows for reflection on art’s relevance when ecological and social structures are under threat. She also pointed out how the film weaves in another narrative thread: the protagonist’s pending adoption of a child from Ukraine, adding further layers of ethical complexity around responsibility, personal obligations, and global injustice.

Dr. Hart praised the film’s ability to offer hope without sacrificing complexity or humor. She encouraged participants to consider creative, less binary ways of thinking about activism, destruction, and repair, and left them with key questions: Can we understand these acts as a form of left-wing populism? Are they rooted in trauma? And can artful destruction productively draw attention to planetary crisis?

Conclusion

Dr. Heidi Hart’s lecture for the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 offered participants a rich and provocative framework for understanding contemporary climate activism’s engagement with art, populism, and trauma. By tracing the phenomenon of museum vandalism through multiple analytical lenses—political, cultural, and affective—she challenged easy dismissals of such acts as mere nihilism or spectacle. Instead, she invited participants to interpret these performative protests as complex interventions that reflect an urgent critique of cultural elitism, a contest over the meaning of “rights” and “freedom,” and a passionate response to collective eco-anxiety.

Throughout her talk, Dr. Hart emphasized the importance of nuance and ambiguity. She invoked Bruno Latour’s concept of “iconoclash” to describe how these interventions simultaneously destroy and provoke reflection, suggesting that climate activist vandalism compels society to reconsider what it treasures, preserves, or lets decay. Drawing on her own research on the ecology of destroyed instruments, she extended this theme to propose that destruction itself can become a creative act—reembedding human culture within natural cycles of decay and renewal.

In concluding, Dr. Hart highlighted the Icelandic film Woman at War as a hopeful model for thinking beyond binaries of destruction versus creativity, or human versus nature. She encouraged participants to explore how affective politics, populist passion, and artistic ambiguity might offer new modes of engaging with ecological crisis. 

Protesters demonstrate on Earth Day against President Trump’s environmental policies in Ventura, California, on April 29, 2017. Photo: Joe Sohm.

ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 –Prof. Daniel Fiorino: Ideology Meets Interest Group Politics – The Trump Administration and Climate Mitigation

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeReports

The fourth lecture of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 featured Professor Daniel Fiorino, a leading expert on environmental policy at American University. Professor Fiorino examined how right-wing populism—characterized by distrust of expertise, nationalism, and hostility to multilateralism—combined with entrenched fossil fuel interests to undermine climate mitigation efforts in the United States during the Trump administration. He highlighted the geographic and partisan divides that shape US climate politics and explained how Republican dominance in fossil fuel-dependent states reinforces skepticism toward climate action. Professor Fiorino’s lecture underscored the vulnerability of US climate policy to political polarization and partisan shifts, warning that right-wing populism poses an enduring challenge not only to American climate governance but to global efforts to address the climate crisis.

Reported by ECPS Staff

The fourth lecture of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025, held online under the theme “Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders” (July 7–11, 2025), featured Professor Daniel Fiorino, one of the United States’ most respected scholars on environmental and energy policy. His lecture, titled “Ideology Meets Interest Group Politics: The Trump Administration and Climate Mitigation,” explored how right-wing populism and entrenched fossil fuel interests intersect to shape and undermine climate policy in the United States—a subject deeply relevant not only for US politics but for global climate governance more broadly.

Professor Fiorino is currently based at American University’s School of Public Affairs in Washington, DC, where he serves as the founding director of the Center for Environmental Policy. Prior to his academic appointment in 2009, he had a distinguished career at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where he worked in policy development and environmental governance. Professor Fiorino’s work is both theoretically rigorous and policy-relevant, addressing some of the most pressing governance challenges posed by the climate crisis.

His published books include Can Democracy Handle Climate Change? (Polity Press, 2018), which examines the compatibility of democratic systems with effective climate action; A Good Life on a Finite Earth: The Political Economy of Green Growth (Oxford, 2018), which explores pathways toward sustainable prosperity; and The Clean Energy Transition: Policies and Procedures for a Zero-Carbon World (Polity, 2022). Professor Fiorino is also currently writing a book on the evolution of the EPA, further cementing his authority on American environmental policy.

In this lecture, Professor Fiorino provided participants with a critical framework for understanding how the Trump administration became emblematic of the global rise of right-wing populism and its impact on climate policy. He contextualized his analysis by drawing attention to the defining characteristics of right-wing populism—namely, distrust of scientific expertise, skepticism of multilateralism, and nationalist economic priorities—and how these traits directly contradict the requirements for effective climate mitigation, which depends on science, international cooperation, and long-term policy consistency.

Through this lens, Professor Fiorino examined how the Republican Party’s longstanding relationship with the fossil fuel industry became fully aligned with right-wing populist ideology during the Trump years. His lecture traced not only the Trump administration’s concrete policy reversals—such as rolling back EPA regulations and undermining international climate agreements—but also the broader cultural and institutional dynamics that entrench resistance to climate action in the US.

Professor Fiorino’s contribution offered participants a nuanced and empirically grounded insight into one of the most acute cases of populism’s challenge to climate governance today, setting the stage for a wider discussion on how democratic societies can respond to these intersecting threats.

Trust in Government and Political Polarization

Participants in the Hands Off March in Silver City, New Mexico, on April 5, 2025. On this day, men, women, and children gathered at over 1,000 locations across the United States to protest the Trump administration. Photo: Arienne Davey.

In his lecture, Professor Fiorino offered an incisive introduction to the political landscape surrounding climate change in the United States, situating it within broader international patterns. Professor Fiorino framed his presentation with a candid declaration of his own critical stance toward Donald Trump, whose administration he described as emblematic of right-wing populist dynamics globally.

Professor Fiorino began by outlining the structure of his talk, which sought to explain how ideology and interest group politics intersect in the US context, particularly around climate mitigation policy. He distinguished between left-wing populism—which tends to emphasize protection of vulnerable groups and acknowledges climate threats—and right-wing populism, which he characterized as deeply skeptical of climate science and resistant to mitigation policies.

A core theme of Professor Fiorino’s lecture was the alignment of the Republican Party with the interests of the fossil fuel industry. He argued that while this alignment has long defined Republican political economy, it is now reinforced by a populist ideology marked by distrust of expertise, nationalism, and hostility to multilateralism. This convergence of interests and ideology, Fiorino suggested, has resulted in a Republican Party that is uniquely resistant to climate action among conservative parties worldwide.

To illustrate this context, Professor Fiorino presented data on declining trust in government, highlighting that confidence in the US federal government fell from over 50% in the early 1970s—when foundational environmental laws were enacted—to approximately 20% today. This erosion of trust reflects a broader trend in Western democracies but is especially acute in the United States.

Professor Fiorino underscored that climate change has become a highly polarized political issue, with public concern split sharply along partisan lines. He noted that while general surveys might suggest widespread concern about climate change among Americans, this concern is overwhelmingly concentrated among Democrats and those who lean Democratic. By contrast, Republican voters and leaders exhibit skepticism toward climate policy and its scientific foundations. He illustrated this divide with historical data showing that partisan gaps on climate issues, which stood at approximately 36% around 2009–2010, had widened to over 50% in recent years.

Professor Fiorino traced this widening divide back to the 1990s and highlighted that, unlike their conservative counterparts in many other countries who acknowledge the necessity of climate action, Republican leaders in the US have cultivated or tolerated a strong climate denial movement. He emphasized that even when some Republican figures concede that human activity contributes to climate change, they often reject mitigation efforts as too costly or harmful to other national interests.

Professor Fiorino’s analysis portrayed a political environment in which climate and environmental issues have become deeply entangled in cultural and partisan identity. He argued that this entrenched polarization represents a significant barrier to effective climate policy, reflecting not just interest group influence but a broader ideological shift that has positioned climate skepticism as a core feature of right-wing populism in the United States.

Geography, Economy, and Political Alignment

Moreover, during his lecture, Professor Fiorino examined the intricate relationship between US geography, economic structure, and political alignment, especially as it pertains to climate politics. He traced a geographic realignment of American political parties over recent decades, emphasizing how the Northeast and West Coast have become reliably Democratic, while much of the South—including states that were part of the Confederacy—along with the rural Midwest and interior West, have become Republican strongholds. This realignment has contributed to the sharp partisan polarization around issues such as climate policy.

Professor Fiorino noted that this polarization has coincided with a growing identification of the Republican Party with specific economic sectors, particularly mining, energy, and farming. Drawing on the work of political scientist David Carroll, Professor Fiorino highlighted that by 2015, Republican representation of these sectors had markedly increased, deepening party-aligned divisions around resource development and climate mitigation. While elite polarization on climate issues began first among policymakers, Professor Fiorino explained that these divisions quickly diffused to the broader electorate, making attitudes toward climate action increasingly partisan.

A key insight from Professor Fiorino’s analysis concerned the connection between a state’s economic dependence on fossil fuels and its political attitudes toward climate mitigation. Though definitive causal studies remain limited, Professor Fiorino observed a clear pattern: states with economies heavily reliant on oil, gas, or coal—such as Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Louisiana, Wyoming, and Alaska—have tended to lean strongly Republican and exhibit skepticism or hostility toward climate mitigation policies. Even among the top nine mining-intensive state economies identified in a Brookings Institution study, most are Republican-dominated and resistant to aggressive climate action.

Exceptions to this pattern, such as New Mexico and Colorado, underscore the complexity of regional politics. New Mexico’s large Native American and Latino populations, Professor Fiorino noted, contribute to its Democratic leanings despite its extractive economy. Overall, Professor Fiorino concluded that states’ economic dependence on fossil fuels is a powerful predictor of their political alignment and climate policy stance, reinforcing the geographic and partisan divides shaping US climate politics today.

Interest Groups and the Ideological Foundations of Right-Wing Populism

In his lecture, Professor Daniel Fiorino also examined how the intersection of interest group politics and right-wing populist ideology has shaped US climate policy, particularly during the Trump administration. Professor Fiorino began by noting that while scholars often overemphasize the role of campaign contributions in presidential politics, campaign finance remains a revealing indicator of partisan alliances. He pointed to data showing that during recent election cycles, approximately 92% of oil and gas industry contributions to US Senate campaigns and 85% to House campaigns went to Republican candidates, underscoring the fossil fuel sector’s deep alignment with the Republican Party.

Professor Fiorino then turned to the ideological features of right-wing populism and their relevance for climate politics. Drawing on his involvement in a special issue of Environmental Politics (2021–22), he identified three defining characteristics of right-wing populist movements: hostility toward elites and experts, skepticism of multilateral institutions, and a strong nationalist orientation emphasizing reliance on domestic resources. He explained that these attributes directly clash with the core requirements of effective climate action, which depend on scientific expertise and international cooperation to address a global challenge.

Professor Fiorino observed that the Trump administration embodied these populist traits, with President Trump declaring an “energy emergency” on his first day in office and promoting an aggressive policy of oil, gas, and coal development. Despite the irony that renewable resources such as wind and solar are also domestic, this nationalist framing ignored those alternatives in favor of traditional fossil fuels.

This ideological posture aligned seamlessly with the Republican Party’s long-standing alliance with the fossil fuel industry—a relationship further strengthened by geographic realities. Professor Fiorino explained that Republican political dominance is concentrated in states where fossil fuel extraction is economically significant, such as West Virginia and Wyoming (coal) and Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Alaska (oil and gas). These states have consistently resisted climate mitigation policies, reflecting both economic interests and the populist-nationalist narratives advanced by Republican leaders.

Finally, Professor Fiorino highlighted a key legal development shaping the regulatory framework for climate policy: the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, which established that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide could be regulated under the Clean Air Act if found to endanger public health and welfare. Professor Fiorino warned that one priority of the Trump administration was reconsidering this “endangerment finding,” thereby undermining the scientific and legal basis for federal climate regulation—a testament to how deeply right-wing populist ideology and fossil fuel interests converged during this period.

The Trump Administration’s Climate Policy Record and Future Prospects

Professor Fiorino provided a critical overview of the Trump administration’s climate policy record, emphasizing its ideological and institutional efforts to roll back climate mitigation initiatives. Professor Fiorino began by highlighting the significance of the “endangerment finding”—a scientific determination under the US Clean Air Act that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. While the first Trump administration did not formally challenge this finding, Professor Fiorino noted that there is growing discussion within conservative circles about overturning it, a development that would severely undermine the federal government’s authority to regulate carbon emissions.

Professor Fiorino also discussed the social cost of carbon, a metric developed through interagency collaboration to quantify the economic harm of each additional ton of carbon dioxide emitted. Under Trump, this metric was effectively discarded: the interagency working group responsible for calculating it was disbanded, and agencies were directed to ignore it in decision-making processes. This represented a major departure from the approach of prior administrations, which had used the social cost of carbon as a benchmark for evaluating the benefits of climate regulations.

Another key policy reversal under Trump targeted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which Professor Fiorino described as being under unprecedented assault, even more so than during the Reagan era. The Trump administration reconstituted the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, weakening the role of scientific expertise in policy evaluation, and sought to dismantle many components of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), despite the fact that more than 80% of the IRA’s benefits flowed to congressional districts represented by Republicans.

Professor Fiorino framed these developments within a broader pattern of policy oscillation, where President Obama had advanced climate action to the extent possible, only to see these efforts reversed by Trump, with Biden again reinstating them—illustrating a deeper challenge for US climate policy: the lack of consistency and durability.

Looking ahead, Professor Fiorino offered a sober assessment of prospects. He emphasized that while Donald Trump may eventually exit the political stage, the populist, anti-elite, and anti-science sentiments he amplified remain deeply embedded among American voters. This division is exacerbated by the United States’ closely balanced partisan coalitions and severe polarization, making sustained climate action difficult.

Professor Fiorino also noted that state-level policies matter but reflect this national divide: progressive states like California and New York continue to advance mitigation efforts, while roughly half of US states remain disengaged or actively opposed. He concluded by identifying the rise of right-wing populism as one of the principal threats to global climate action, warning that climate disruption itself could fuel political instability, including immigration pressures and social unrest, further complicating the path toward coherent climate governance.

Conclusion

Professor Daniel Fiorino’s lecture at the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 offered participants an incisive and comprehensive analysis of the intersections between populist ideology, interest group politics, and climate policy in the United States. His examination of the Trump administration revealed how right-wing populism—characterized by distrust of expertise, nationalist rhetoric, and hostility toward multilateral governance—has compounded the Republican Party’s long-standing alignment with fossil fuel interests to obstruct meaningful climate action.

Professor Fiorino’s lecture illuminated the structural and ideological forces that have rendered climate change one of the most polarized issues in contemporary American politics. By contextualizing partisan divides within broader geographic and economic patterns—highlighting how fossil fuel-dependent states have become Republican strongholds skeptical of climate mitigation—he underscored that resistance to climate policy is not simply a matter of individual attitudes but is deeply embedded in economic structures and political identities.

A key takeaway from Professor Fiorino’s analysis is the vulnerability of US climate policy to abrupt reversals driven by partisan shifts. His account of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle environmental regulations, challenge the scientific basis for climate action, and undermine institutions such as the EPA illustrated the fragility of policy gains in the face of ideological polarization and institutional instability. Even major legislative initiatives like the Inflation Reduction Act, Professor Fiorino warned, remain at risk due to the cyclical nature of US partisan politics.

Looking forward, Professor Fiorino’s concluding reflections pointed to enduring challenges: while Donald Trump himself may eventually leave the political stage, the populist sentiments he amplified—skepticism of expertise, resentment of elites, and climate denial—remain entrenched among significant segments of the US electorate. This dynamic, coupled with a deeply divided federal landscape and uneven state-level engagement, poses significant obstacles to sustained and effective climate mitigation efforts.

In closing, Professor Fiorino emphasized that the rise of right-wing populism constitutes not only a domestic American challenge but also a global threat to coherent climate governance. His lecture provided participants with a sobering but necessary understanding of these intersecting forces, encouraging critical reflection on how democratic societies might navigate these headwinds to craft resilient and effective climate policy.

Farmers and truckers protest against subsidy cuts at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, on January 14, 2024. Photo: Shutterstock.

ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 – Prof. Sandra Ricart: Climate Change, Food, Farmers, and Populism

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeReports

Professor Sandra Ricart delivered a timely and insightful lecture on the intersection of climate change, agriculture, and populism in Europe. She explored how structural and demographic challenges, including a declining farming population and economic precarity, have fueled widespread farmer protests across the continent. Prof. Ricart emphasized how these grievances, while rooted in genuine hardship, have increasingly been exploited by far-right populist movements eager to position themselves as defenders of rural interests against European institutions. Her analysis highlighted the pressures created by climate change, policy reforms, and global market dynamics, and she called for more inclusive, responsive, and sustainable agricultural policies. Prof. Ricart’s lecture provided participants with a critical understanding of rural Europe’s evolving political and environmental landscape.

Reported by ECPS Staff

The ECPS Academy Summer School 2025, held online from July 7–11, 2025, brought together scholars and participants under the theme “Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders.” On Tuesday, July 8, 2025, the third lecture of the program featured Professor Sandra Ricart, who delivered an insightful presentation titled “Climate Change, Food, Farmers, and Populism.”

The session was moderated by Dr. Vlad Surdea-Hernea, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. Dr. Surdea-Hernea’s research on the intersection of populism, climate, and democracy provided a fitting context for introducing Professor Ricart’s work.

Prof. Sandra Ricart is a Professor at the Environmental Intelligence for Global Change Lab within the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. A geographer by training, she holds a PhD in Geography – Experimental Sciences and Sustainability from the University of Girona (2014) and has held research positions in Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States. Her research focuses on climate change narratives, farmers’ perceptions, adaptive capacity, and participatory environmental governance. She is also Assistant Editor for the International Journal of Water Resources Development and PLOS One, and serves as an expert evaluator for the European Commission.

At the outset of her lecture, Prof. Ricart emphasized that her presentation was grounded in a collective, collaborative research tradition—a reflection of shared knowledge developed through interdisciplinary and cross-national scholarly networks. Acknowledging the diversity of her audience’s expertise, she framed her lecture as both a conceptual overview and an empirical analysis, blending theory with practical illustrations drawn from recent European developments.

Her talk was organized around several key themes: an overview of the structural and demographic features of European agriculture, public and farmer perceptions of climate change and agricultural policy, the socioeconomic challenges farmers face, and the role of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as Europe’s primary agricultural governance framework. She explained how these structural factors intersect with climate change impacts, shaping both agricultural livelihoods and political discourses.

A central theme of Prof. Ricart’s lecture was how recent farmer protests across Europe reflect not only deep-seated socioeconomic grievances but also how these grievances have been increasingly co-opted by far-right populist movements. She raised the critical question of whether this emerging nexus between agricultural discontent and populism represents a transient political episode or the early stages of a deeper realignment in European rural politics.

Throughout the session, Prof. Ricart’s analysis provided participants with a nuanced, multi-scalar understanding of how climate change, policy pressures, and populist narratives are converging on European farming communities, offering a timely foundation for further reflection and debate on rural Europe’s evolving political landscape.

Structural and Demographic Features of European Agriculture

In this section of her lecture, Prof. Sandra Ricart provided a thorough examination of the structural and demographic characteristics of European agriculture, establishing a foundation for understanding the current crisis in the farming sector and its relationship with populist politics. She began by presenting an overarching picture of European agriculture today, emphasizing that while European farms continue to supply the essential public good of food production, their demographic base is in decline. One of the key concerns, Prof. Ricart explained, is the significant reduction in the number of young people entering the farming profession—a worrying trend that raises doubts about the future viability of agriculture across the continent.

This demographic challenge is not only contributing to the fragility of the sector but has also become a recurring theme in farmer protests and critiques of policy frameworks like the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Prof. Ricart highlighted that farming is no longer as attractive as other sectors to younger generations, who are drawn instead to professions perceived as more innovative or economically viable. The absence of generational renewal within farming communities threatens to exacerbate the structural weaknesses of European agriculture, an issue that populist movements have readily exploited.

Turning to structural characteristics, Prof. Ricart observed a striking duality in European agriculture: on the one hand, very small farms, and on the other, large-scale agribusinesses. This dual structure shapes debates around policy and representation. Small farmers, who often feel excluded from decision-making processes and inadequately represented in policy outcomes, have become increasingly vocal in their grievances—grievances that, as Dr. Ricart noted, form fertile ground for far-right political movements seeking to mobilize rural discontent.

Land ownership patterns further complicate this picture. Prof. Ricart emphasized that ownership versus tenancy is a critical determinant of farmers’ capacity to plan for the future and adapt to challenges such as climate change. Farmers who own their land generally have more autonomy to invest in sustainable practices or infrastructure, while tenant farmers must navigate complex relationships with landlords, making long-term planning and adaptation more difficult. Access to land, and the sense of security it brings, is thus a central theme in both farmer protests and wider rural political discourse.

Geographically, Prof. Ricart provided a comparative overview of farming’s importance across European countries, noting that countries such as France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Poland dominate agricultural production. Unsurprisingly, it is in these countries that farmers’ protests have been most intense and visible. However, she also noted that smaller agricultural producers such as Belgium have played outsized roles in protest dynamics, in part because of their political significance as hosts of EU institutions—a symbolically powerful site for expressing Europe-wide grievances.

Prof. Ricart drew attention to the uneven distribution of farming activity in both crop production and livestock rearing, noting that this structural diversity partly explains national differences in protest intensity and focus. For instance, she pointed out that livestock farming has been particularly vulnerable to recent regulatory pressures concerning animal welfare, further fueling discontent in sectors already under demographic and economic strain.

Another central theme in Prof. Ricart’s analysis was the economic precariousness of the farming sector. While agricultural productivity in some areas remains high, farm incomes across the EU have stagnated or declined over the past 15 years, despite increasing demands on farmers to comply with new environmental, health, and quality standards. This trend, she argued, is pushing many farmers toward poverty and fueling the perception that the sector is in structural crisis. Dr. Ricart noted that this growing economic pressure is also a focal point for populist messaging, with far-right parties seeking to position themselves as champions of “forgotten” rural communities whose economic contributions are undervalued and whose livelihoods are threatened.

Prof. Ricart then turned to a discussion of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) itself, providing participants with a succinct history of this keystone of European agricultural governance. The CAP, she noted, is over sixty years old and reflects an evolving set of priorities, including ensuring fair incomes for farmers, guaranteeing food quality and security, and increasingly, delivering environmental public goods such as biodiversity protection and landscape conservation. Yet, despite this broadening policy remit, she emphasized that much of the farming community continues to view the CAP as insufficiently responsive to their day-to-day struggles and future uncertainties.

She detailed how the CAP operates through three principal instruments: direct payments to farmers, market regulation mechanisms to stabilize prices and ensure quality standards, and rural development measures aimed at supporting sustainable and resilient agricultural practices. While these instruments theoretically provide a safety net for farmers and a policy framework to navigate market volatility and environmental pressures, Prof. Ricart noted that many farmers feel excluded from the design of these instruments and find them too bureaucratic or insufficiently tailored to their realities.

Finally, Prof. Ricart encouraged participants to reflect on the broader societal role of agriculture. Beyond producing food, she argued, farmers maintain landscapes, provide ecosystem services, and sustain rural ways of life that are part of Europe’s cultural heritage. Yet these broader contributions, while rhetorically valued, are not always matched by policy support or financial compensation.

In sum, this section of Prof. Ricart’s lecture painted a complex portrait of European agriculture as a sector at once economically vital, socially significant, and deeply troubled. Demographic decline, structural dualities, insecure land tenure, uneven income trends, and rising regulatory demands all combine to create a sense of existential threat among farmers—a sentiment that far-right and populist movements have been quick to harness. Prof. Ricart’s analysis offered participants a critical foundation for understanding how these material and structural conditions form the backdrop against which agricultural grievances are expressed and politicized in contemporary Europe.

Climate Change Impacts and Farmer Perceptions

After discussing the demographic and structural features of the agricultural sector, Prof. Ricart shifted focus to how climate-related concerns, perceptions of fairness, and economic pressures are shaping farmer reactions across Europe—culminating in recent protests and increasing alignment with far-right narratives.

Prof. Ricart began by highlighting key findings from the latest Eurobarometer survey, which collects European citizens’ perceptions of agriculture and the CAP. She emphasized that across Europe, there is broad recognition among the public that farmers play a vital role in providing a common good: safe, reliable, and sustainable food production. Yet this recognition comes with expectations. Citizens increasingly call for farming that is not just productive but also healthy, safe, and environmentally sustainable. Prof. Ricart explained how this demand for responsibility intersects with the pressures farmers face today. While the farming sector remains foundational for European societies, farmers increasingly feel they are being asked to meet high standards without receiving sufficient support or understanding from policymakers and consumers.

This dynamic, Prof. Ricart noted, feeds directly into the tensions underlying farmer protests and far-right mobilization. The narrative of an “us versus them” divide—between farmers and urban consumers, between national farming sectors and EU-level regulators—has become central to both farmer grievances and far-right political messaging. Farmers are not only demanding fairer prices or simpler regulations; they are questioning the fairness of a system that expects sustainability but struggles to compensate the costs associated with these demands.

One critical source of tension has been the perceived destabilization of agricultural markets due to imports from outside the European Union. Prof. Ricart observed that many European farmers feel exposed to unfair competition from imports that may not meet the EU’s rigorous environmental, safety, or labor standards. Coupled with broader concerns over food security and living standards, these anxieties have animated recent protests and provided fertile ground for far-right groups eager to position themselves as defenders of national farming communities.

Prof. Ricart then introduced the European Green Deal (EGD) as a policy framework that, while ambitious, has intensified these debates. The Green Deal, launched in 2020, aims to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050, setting interim targets for 2030. Its requirements have direct implications for agriculture, from reducing pesticide and fertilizer use to expanding organic farming and ensuring sustainability throughout supply chains. Prof. Ricart acknowledged the policy’s laudable goals but underscored the dilemma it creates for farmers: many feel that the timeframes imposed are too short, the costs too high, and the support mechanisms insufficient.

For example, Prof. Ricart pointed out that transitioning to organic farming entails fundamental changes to farm structures and practices, requiring new equipment, training, and often a reorientation of entire business models. Likewise, reducing pesticide and fertilizer use demands investment in new technologies or methods, which smaller farms especially may struggle to afford. These requirements arrive amid other pressures such as fluctuating commodity prices, demographic decline within the farming population, and challenges related to land tenure, which collectively threaten the long-term viability of small and medium-scale farms.

The core of Prof. Ricart’s analysis centered on how climate change itself magnifies these difficulties. Drawing on survey data from research directly engaging with farmers, she illustrated how climate impacts—such as rising temperatures, more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves, and increasingly erratic rainfall—are already deeply felt by farmers across Europe. These environmental stresses compound the pressures from policy reforms, making adaptation both urgent and costly.

Notably, farmers’ perceptions of climate change reflect a mix of acknowledgment and anxiety. Most farmers accept that climate change is happening and that it is affecting their livelihoods. However, their capacity to respond is constrained by the intersection of environmental change with market conditions, regulatory burdens, and infrastructural limitations. This complexity explains why climate-related grievances have become entangled with broader frustrations about agricultural policy and governance.

In concluding this section, Prof. Ricart emphasized that climate change acts as an overarching factor, reshaping every challenge farmers face and intensifying old grievances while generating new ones. While environmental sustainability is an essential goal, the pathways toward that goal must recognize the diversity and vulnerability of agricultural systems across Europe. For many farmers, the question is not whether to pursue sustainability but how to do so while maintaining livelihoods and ensuring intergenerational continuity in farming communities.

Prof. Ricart made clear that understanding farmer protests and far-right populist responses requires attention to this nexus of environmental pressures, policy demands, and lived economic realities. Climate change is not an abstract concern for European farmers; it is a daily challenge that intersects with perceptions of fairness, justice, and recognition—making it a central terrain on which political struggles over the future of European agriculture will continue to unfold.

Examining the Widespread Farmers’ Protests

View of the A15 motorway near Paris, where the demonstration of farmers in tractors, are blocked by the police on January 29, 2024. Photo: Franck Legros.

Prof. Ricart also examined how the farmer protests that erupted across Europe in late 2023 and early 2024 reflected a deeper and widespread crisis in agricultural policy and governance. These protests, Prof. Ricart noted, were not isolated or confined to any single country or grievance; rather, they represented a growing pan-European tendency where farmers across national contexts expressed similar frustrations and demands. The protests became an important transnational phenomenon, with farmers mobilizing around shared grievances and converging symbolically in Belgium, home to European Union institutions, to amplify their voices at the continental level.

Prof. Ricart highlighted three core drivers motivating the protests: falling food prices, increasingly stringent environmental regulations, and a growing perception that European agricultural policy was failing to address national specificities. Low food prices, often a result of global market pressures and import competition, squeezed farm incomes, exacerbating rural economic insecurity. Simultaneously, farmers faced new and challenging environmental regulations associated with the EGD and climate action objectives. These regulations demanded significant changes in production methods, often imposing costs that smaller farmers in particular struggled to meet.

The third factor, Prof. Ricart emphasized, was a nationalist framing of grievances that far-right populist movements readily exploited. By portraying European Union policy as a detached elite imposition and emphasizing the loss of national sovereignty, populist actors framed the discontent in binary terms: a struggle between “us,” the farmers and citizens, and “them,” the distant European policymakers and foreign competitors. The far right’s message was that only national governments—not European-level institutions—could defend farmers’ interests, a rhetoric that found resonance among frustrated agricultural communities.

Prof. Ricart also pointed to widespread farmer criticism of the CAP, which has been revised repeatedly since its inception in 1962. Many protesters argued that successive CAP reforms had failed to resolve longstanding issues while introducing additional bureaucratic burdens. Farmers felt caught between contradictory pressures: on one hand, to modernize and adapt to environmental goals; on the other, to survive in a competitive market that undermined their income and livelihoods.

In countries like France, where agriculture has historically been a politically privileged sector, Prof. Ricart noted that many farmers nevertheless felt marginalized at the European level. This perceived disconnect between national pride in agriculture and EU-wide agricultural governance became a further source of frustration and mobilization. The protests, Prof. Ricart concluded, reflected not just sectoral discontent but broader tensions between rural communities and European integration, exacerbated by the politics of populism.

Farmers’ Protests and the Rise of Far-Right Populist Actors Across Europe

Tractors with posters of farmers protesting against the government’s measures at the Ludwig Street in Munich, Germany on January 8, 2024. Photo: Shutterstock.

In her lecture, Prof. Ricart also explored how recent farmers’ protests across Europe intersect with the rise of far-right populist actors, revealing complex political dynamics. Prof. Ricart underscored that while farmers’ grievances are rooted in real economic, environmental, and policy challenges, the far right has increasingly sought to instrumentalize these frustrations to expand its influence.

She began by highlighting how the farmers’ protests that erupted across the continent in late 2023 and early 2024 were not isolated events, but part of a transnational pattern. Farmers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and other countries took to the streets, expressing concerns over falling food prices, rising costs, burdensome environmental regulations, and trade competition. While these protests expressed legitimate anxieties about livelihoods and rural futures, Prof. Ricart pointed out that they have become fertile ground for far-right populist narratives.

One key theme Prof. Ricart identified was the way far-right actors strategically differentiated between national and supranational representations of farmers. In France, for instance, far-right politicians emphasized that while the French state historically recognized and honored its farmers, European-level governance failed to acknowledge their unique role and plight. This narrative enabled far-right movements to portray themselves as defenders of national agricultural traditions against what they framed as an out-of-touch European elite.

Prof. Ricart emphasized that this trend was not confined to France. In Germany, while farmers’ unions and associations initially led protests with non-partisan messages, far-right parties quickly appropriated these discourses, tailoring them to appeal to rural voters. These actors often moved faster than traditional political parties, repackaging farmers’ demands into simplified, emotive slogans, aimed at mobilizing disaffected segments of the rural population.

In Italy, Prof. Ricart observed similar patterns, citing protest slogans such as “We are farmers, not slaves” as emblematic of the populist rhetoric. Such messages resonated with farmers’ sense of marginalization, but also opened the door for far-right narratives that positioned themselves as authentic champions of “the people” against technocratic elites. Across these contexts, Prof. Ricart noted how the far right’s involvement blurred the boundaries between farmers’ legitimate protests and politicized mobilizations aimed at electoral gain.

A notable point in Prof. Ricart’s analysis was how far-right actors framed these protests as the “beginning” of a broader rural revolt. Farmers’ actions were reinterpreted as symbolic of a wider societal struggle, fueling a narrative of grievance that transcended agricultural policy and encompassed broader themes of national sovereignty, identity, and distrust of transnational governance structures. Prof. Ricart emphasized that this framing intensified the division between “us” (the nation’s people) and “them” (European bureaucrats and elites), reinforcing nationalist populist logics.

Prof. Ricart also addressed how environmental and climate change policies—particularly those associated with the EGD—became a focal point for far-right mobilization. She explained that climate-related regulations, such as pesticide and fertilizer restrictions or the promotion of organic farming, were recast by populist actors as evidence of elite detachment from the material realities of rural life. In this context, far-right rhetoric constructed a powerful image of embattled farmers struggling to comply with costly, unrealistic demands imposed from Brussels, appealing to a broad coalition of discontented rural and peri-urban voters.

Further, Prof. Ricart noted that the far right’s engagement with farmers’ protests coincided with the European Parliament elections, a crucial opportunity for these actors to expand their electoral base. By framing themselves as responsive to farmers’ frustrations—while traditional parties appeared slow or ambivalent—the far right strengthened its foothold in rural regions. In countries such as France, Italy, and parts of Eastern Europe, this alignment translated into electoral gains and a consolidation of populist influence over rural political discourse.

Toward the conclusion of this section, Prof. Ricart reflected on the broader implications of this intersection between protest and populism. She warned that while far-right parties appropriated farmers’ grievances to gain visibility and votes, their actual policy platforms offered few substantive solutions to address the underlying economic and environmental challenges facing agriculture. In contrast, she emphasized that farmers themselves were primarily concerned with ensuring the sustainability of their livelihoods and agricultural traditions, rather than endorsing a particular ideological agenda.

Ultimately, Prof. Ricart argued that this dynamic illustrates how populist politics can exploit genuine socio-economic discontent while offering simplistic narratives that obscure the structural complexities of agricultural transformation in an era of climate crisis and globalized markets. As farmers continue to grapple with these pressures, the interplay between their protests and far-right populist strategies will remain a critical area for further analysis and political reflection.

Conclusion

Prof. Sandra Ricart offered participants of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025, a nuanced analysis of the evolving relationship between climate change, agriculture, and populist politics in Europe. Her presentation revealed that European farming communities today face a convergence of pressures: demographic decline, economic precarity, regulatory demands, and intensifying climate-related challenges. These stresses have not only shaped farmer perceptions and protests but have also provided fertile ground for far-right populist actors who seek to frame rural discontent in nationalist and anti-European terms.

Prof. Ricart emphasized that while farmers’ grievances are real and rooted in structural inequalities and policy shortcomings, the appropriation of these grievances by far-right movements raises important questions about the politicization of rural discontent. She underscored that populist narratives tend to simplify complex agricultural challenges, presenting an “us versus them” logic that pits national farmers and citizens against distant European elites and external competitors, while offering few substantive solutions for the sector’s long-term sustainability.

At the same time, Prof. Ricart acknowledged the legitimacy of farmers’ frustrations, particularly their concerns over falling incomes, generational decline, and a perceived disconnect between European policy frameworks and the lived realities of rural communities. Her analysis called for a more inclusive and responsive agricultural policy that better reflects farmers’ needs, supports adaptation to climate change, and ensures economic viability while promoting environmental sustainability.

Ultimately, Prof. Ricart concluded that the future of European agriculture will depend on addressing these multifaceted challenges without allowing populist actors to monopolize the narrative. Her lecture encouraged participants to think critically about how governance frameworks, political discourse, and climate adaptation strategies must evolve in tandem to protect both Europe’s rural communities and the democratic structures that underpin them.

Dr. John M. Meyer, Professor in the Departments of Politics and Environmental Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.

ECPS Academy Summer School 2025 – Prof. John Meyer: Climate Justice and Populism

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeReports

In his lecture at the ECPS Summer School 2025, Professor John M. Meyer offered a compelling exploration of the relationship between populism and climate politics. He critiqued authoritarian populism as a threat to equitable climate action while also questioning mainstream climate governance’s elitist, technocratic tendencies. Rather than viewing populism solely as an obstacle, Professor Meyer argued that climate justice movements themselves embody a form of inclusive, democratic populism—centered on equity, participation, and solidarity. Drawing on examples from grassroots activism and Naomi Klein’s concept of “eco-populism,” Professor Meyer proposed that climate action must address material injustices and engage people where they are. His lecture encouraged participants to rethink populism as a political form that, when inclusive and justice-oriented, can help build legitimate, durable, and democratic climate solutions.

Reported by ECPS Staff

Climate change intersects with numerous issues, transforming it into more than just an environmental challenge; it has developed into a complex and multifaceted political issue with socio-economic and cultural dimensions. This intersection makes it an appealing topic for populist politicians to exploit in polarizing societies. With the global rise of populist politics, climate change has increasingly become part of populist discourse—whether as a scapegoat for economic grievances, a symbol of globalist overreach, or an arena for nationalist contestation.

Populist politics present additional barriers to equitable climate solutions, often framing global climate initiatives as elitist or detrimental to local autonomy. As a result, populism in recent years has profoundly impacted climate policy worldwide, encompassing a wide spectrum—from the climate skepticism and deregulation of leaders like Donald Trump to the often ambiguous and contradictory stances of left-wing populist movements.

We are convinced that this pressing issue not only requires an in-depth understanding but also demands our combined effort to seek innovative and just solutions. Against this backdrop, the ECPS Academy Summer School on “Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders,” held online from 7 to 11 July 2025, aims to critically examine these themes. The program sought to foster a deeper understanding of the tension between economic, political, and environmental interests in populist ideologies, with a particular emphasis on the key conclusions from the Baku Conference on climate justice and populism (2024), which foregrounded the impact of authoritarian and populist politics in shaping global climate governance.

In this context, the second lecture of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025, titled “Climate Justice and Populism,”represented a major conceptual pivot. It was masterfully moderated by Dr. Manuela Caiani, Associate Professor of Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Italy, whose own scholarship on right- and left-wing populism, new authoritarianism in Europe, and the politics of emotions provided an ideal framing. Dr. Caiani’s introduction emphasized how populism, climate justice, and ecological transition intersect in her ongoing research projects. She underscored that these issues occupy overlapping analytical terrains and encouraged participants to re-examine prevailing assumptions about the relationship between populism and environmental politics.

The lecture was delivered by Dr. John M. Meyer, Professor in the Departments of Politics and Environmental Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. Professor Meyer’s work as a political theorist seeks to illuminate how social and political values and institutions shape—and are shaped by—our relationship to the environment. His scholarship includes influential contributions such as Engaging the Everyday: Environmental Social Criticism and the Resonance Dilemma (MIT Press, 2015) and The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2016), both regarded as foundational texts in environmental political theory.

Between 2020 and 2024, Professor Meyer served as editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal Environmental Politics, where he promoted interdisciplinary dialogue on environmental governance, justice, and democracy. In this lecture, Professor Meyer foregrounded theoretical and normative questions over empirical case studies, inviting participants to rethink fundamental assumptions about populism, climate change narratives, and policy frameworks. His intervention challenged the view that populism is inherently an obstacle to climate action, instead offering a nuanced analysis of how climate justice movements themselves may embody a form of progressive, democratic populism.

This lecture not only set an intellectual benchmark for the ECPS Summer School but also provided a critical lens through which to engage with the central themes of populism and climate governance for the remainder of the program.

Structure of the Lecture

Professor Meyer organized his presentation into three interrelated thematic strands:

  1. Authoritarian Populism as a Threat to Climate Justice
  2. Mainstream Climate Action as Anti‑Populist
  3. Climate Justice as a Manifestation of Inclusive Populism

These three themes, Professor Meyer argued, should be understood sequentially and relationally, with each offering a reframing of the politics of climate change in contemporary democracies.

Authoritarian Populism as a Threat

In the opening analytical section of his lecture, Professor Meyer turned his attention to what he termed authoritarian populism as a threat to climate policy and action. Speaking from a conceptual standpoint, Professor Meyer carefully clarified that while he sought to illuminate the ways in which authoritarian populism undermines climate governance, he did not intend to suggest that populism itself is the core problem. Rather, he argued, authoritarian populism should be understood as a significant manifestation of a broader political challenge to climate justice, while populism as a mode of politics might also contain emancipatory potential.

Professor Meyer outlined key characteristics of this authoritarian populist threat, situating it primarily among right-wing and, in some cases, explicitly fascistic parties and leaders. These actors, he observed, routinely frame climate policy as an elite-driven and globalist project, leveraging this framing to claim that they are defending “the people” against perceived external impositions. Yet, Professor Meyer noted that the conception of “the people” advanced by authoritarian populists is deeply homogenizing—constructed in a way that deliberately excludes as many as it purports to represent, marginalizing pluralism and dissent.

An important distinction Professor Meyer drew was between authoritarian populists’ selective embrace of environmental concerns: many such actors profess to defend local or national environments—protecting land, waterways, or rural communities within their conception of the “homeland”—while simultaneously attacking global climate change mitigation efforts. This selective environmentalism serves to bolster nationalist narratives while rejecting multilateral climate agreements and policies.

Professor Meyer further emphasized that authoritarian populist parties and movements often deny or express skepticism about the very existence, causes, or urgency of climate change. This skepticism politicizes climate change itself, framing it as a contested, ideologically loaded topic rather than a shared global challenge grounded in scientific consensus.

While acknowledging these dangers, Professor Meyer stressed that authoritarian populism’s climate denialism and obstructionism should be understood in context—not as an indictment of all populist politics, but as one specific configuration that climate justice advocates must confront. This framing set the stage for his subsequent analysis of mainstream climate policy and the potential for democratic populist alternatives.

Mainstream Climate Action as Anti‑Populist

In this significant portion of his lecture, Professor Meyer offered a penetrating critique of what he characterized as the mainstream climate action framework, which he argued functions as a form of anti-populism. Beginning with an overview of the institutional landscape—anchored by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings— Professor Meyer drew attention to the global policy architecture and its regional manifestations, notably the European Green Deal and the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Professor Meyer suggested that this mainstream approach, despite institutional diversity, shares a common political imaginary steeped in technocratic elitism. It is dominated by establishment actors—mainstream parties, legacy media, global NGOs—who are routinely cast as “elites” in populist discourse. He suggested that this framework is shaped by a nostalgic vision of politics, one that emphasizes civility, pluralism, respect for scientific expertise, and globalist ethics, typified by UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ oft-cited appeal that “we are all in this together.” While these values have guided international climate discourse, Professor Meyer argued that they also drive a political culture that instinctively rejects populist critiques as dangerous politicization.

This elitist imaginary, Professor Meyer contended, is reflected in the dominant policy instruments. For over three decades, mainstream climate policy has revolved around carbon pricing mechanisms, including cap-and-trade schemes and carbon taxes. More recently, policies such as the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the European Green Deal have moved toward industrial policy approaches centered on state incentives and partnerships with private industries to foster green innovation. Yet Professor Meyer highlighted a key limitation: the political invisibility of these policies. The IRA, for instance, delivered substantial subsidies and jobs to economically disadvantaged, Republican-leaning regions in the US, yet beneficiaries were largely unaware of the policy’s role due to its technocratic and opaque design. This invisibility, Professor Meyer suggested, made these reforms politically vulnerable to rollback efforts such as Donald Trump’s successful campaign to dismantle key elements of the IRA.

Turning to the discursive landscape, Professor Meyer cited recent commentary—including from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change—which emphasized that mainstream actors must reclaim climate debate from “campaigners” and instead promote pragmatic, outcome-driven solutions. Tony Blair’s framing, Professor Meyer noted, epitomizes an explicit anti-populist stance, doubling down on elite-driven governance while treating public skepticism and populist critique as obstacles to be neutralized rather than symptoms to be understood. Similarly, scholars like Eduardo Campanella and Robert Lawrence, while encouraging better climate storytelling, advocated narratives rooted in entrepreneurial genius and open trade—further exemplifying the technocratic ethos of the mainstream.

Professor Meyer argued that this anti-populist orientation constitutes a political trap. Rather than defusing populist critique, it reinforces the binary at the heart of populist discourse: a moral division between elites and “the people.” By implicitly casting technocratic expertise as virtuous and popular sentiment as irrational, mainstream climate governance aligns itself with elite politics and alienates the very publics whose support it requires. Citing Jonathan White’s distinction between a politics of necessity and a politics of volition, Professor Meyer noted that mainstream discourse tends to present climate action as an imperative dictated by science—a domain where policy options are viewed as objectively correct and public deliberation as an impediment.

However, this technocratic framing, Professor Meyer observed, fails on two critical fronts. First, it overlooks the deep injustices inherent in both the causes and impacts of climate change. Marginalized and impoverished communities—whether in the Global South or within advanced economies—bear the brunt of climate harms despite having contributed the least to global emissions. Second, mainstream climate policy often exacerbates these injustices, imposing disproportionate burdens on precisely those least equipped to bear them while offering inadequate mechanisms for redress or participation.

Professor Meyer further noted that this anti-populist imaginary tends to misconstrue populism itself as inherently exclusionary, skeptical of climate science, and therefore an existential threat to climate action. While authoritarian populists often engage in climate denialism and evidence skepticism—ranging from rejection of warming trends to downplaying human causation and impacts— Professor Meyer emphasized that skepticism can take other forms as well. Drawing on von Rensburg’s typology, he distinguished between evidence skepticism and process skepticism. Notably, while many climate justice movements accept the scientific consensus on climate change, they remain deeply critical of the processes by which climate knowledge is produced, who gets included or excluded in decision-making, and the equity of proposed policy responses.

Professor Meyer observed that some right-wing populist movements in Europe and North America have increasingly adopted critiques of climate policy process and response—not to advance climate justice but as part of their broader assault on liberal governance. This convergence of critique from vastly different ideological poles underscores the complexity of the political terrain.

Ultimately, Professor Meyer’s analysis warned that mainstream climate policy’s anti-populist reflex may undermine its own legitimacy by failing to engage with these deeper political, social, and ethical concerns. Instead of depoliticizing climate action, Professor Meyer suggested that a more inclusive, participatory approach attentive to justice and popular grievances is essential for achieving both legitimacy and effectiveness in climate governance.

Climate Justice as Inclusive Populism

In the final—and most innovative—section of his lecture, Professor Meyer turned his attention to a theme that he framed as pivotal to rethinking climate politics: climate justice as a manifestation of populism. This focus represented both a conceptual intervention and an effort to challenge dominant narratives that either marginalize or misunderstand climate justice movements. Professor Meyer argued that climate justice movements represent an alternative, democratic populism. If populism is understood simply as a political form that pits “the people” against “the elites,” then climate justice activists, indigenous movements, and youth-led campaigns embody a progressive populism rooted in solidarity, justice, and inclusivity. 

Professor Meyer began by clarifying a key distinction: climate justice movements should not be conflated with climate policy writ large, nor should they be treated as an add-on or afterthought to conventional policy mechanisms. He warned that policymakers often make the mistake of assuming that technocratic tools—such as carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems—can be implemented first, and then some portion of the resulting revenues can be redistributed to marginalized communities to compensate for inequitable impacts. This “compensatory” logic, Professor Meyer emphasized, misreads what climate justice movements themselves seek to achieve. Rather than viewing justice as a supplemental objective, climate justice movements embed questions of equity, inclusion, and systemic critique at the very core of their agenda.

Professor Meyer identified five defining features of climate justice movements that, in his view, mark them as distinctively populist. First was their inclusive conception of “the people.” Unlike the exclusionary and homogenizing populist rhetoric characteristic of many authoritarian right-wing movements, climate justice movements articulate a broad, pluralistic vision of “the people.” This vision centers on those most directly affected by environmental harms: marginalized communities in both the Global South and Global North, Indigenous populations, youth activists, and other groups on the frontline of ecological disruption. Drawing on examples such as the Climate Justice Now coalition in Brazil—organizing a “People’s Summit” ahead of COP30—Professor Meyer illustrated how this inclusive populist imaginary juxtaposes “the people” against polluters, corporations, and political elites.

A second core feature is the rejection of “false solutions.” Professor Meyer noted that climate justice activists frequently deploy this language to critique policies that may appear progressive but fail to address root causes or distribute benefits equitably. He referenced prominent critiques from activist networks and figures like Greta Thunberg, whose characterization of empty climate promises as mere “blah blah blah” captured the impatience of youth-led movements with elite foot-dragging and performative commitments.

The third characteristic Professor Meyer discussed was a distinctive understanding of expertise. Climate justice movements elevate Indigenous, local, and community-based knowledge systems, particularly in the realm of climate adaptation. Professor Meyer stressed that this should not be misunderstood as a wholesale rejection of scientific knowledge but rather as a critique of how dominant climate science and policymaking processes have historically marginalized or ignored situated expertise. By foregrounding these alternative epistemologies, climate justice actors contest the monopoly of elites over what counts as legitimate knowledge and authority.

The fourth feature is a commitment to meeting people “where they are,” recognizing and engaging with their immediate material conditions and everyday struggles. Rather than demanding that communities subordinate their pressing concerns to abstract climate imperatives, climate justice movements insist that effective and just climate action must be grounded in, and responsive to, those lived realities.

Finally, Professor Meyer highlighted the movements’ investment in building cooperative and institutional structures that can sustain long-term commitments to justice and equity. This organizational orientation reflects an ambition to institutionalize solidarity and embed democratic accountability into the very fabric of climate governance.

Throughout this section of his lecture, Professor Meyer implicitly challenged prevailing academic frameworks that define populism narrowly as a phenomenon of electoral politics or demagoguery. Referencing scholars such as Nadia Urbinati, who tend to disregard social movements as “not unusual” and therefore outside the purview of populism studies, Professor Meyer argued that climate justice movements reveal a more complex, inclusive, and potentially emancipatory form of populist politics—one that foregrounds horizontal solidarity, material justice, and epistemic pluralism. In sum, Professor Meyer’s analysis offered a powerful reconceptualization of climate justice not as a peripheral adjunct to mainstream climate action but as an alternative paradigm rooted in participatory populism, critical of elite-driven processes, and attentive to social and environmental equity at every level.

‘Fascist Flip’ in Post‑Disaster Communities

In the final section of his lecture, Professor John Meyer turned to what he identified as a crucial focus of climate justice movements: engaging people where they are now and constructing durable, cooperative structures to sustain solidarity over time. To illustrate this principle, Professor Meyer invoked the recent work of Naomi Klein, highlighting her concept of eco-populism as an alternative political approach capable of countering the dynamics that foster exclusion and reactionary backlash.

Professor Meyer drew on Klein’s 2025 lecture titled “Fascism or Eco-Populism: Our Stark Choice,” in which she revisited the tragic aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire—the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. The fire had devastated the town of Paradise, destroying more than 18,000 structures and leaving over 30,000 people homeless. Many of these displaced residents sought refuge in nearby Chico, California—a city of approximately 100,000 people—which initially greeted them with warmth and compassion. Early on, Klein reported, there was a collective spirit of welcome, described by some as a “blanket of love and comfort” extended to these climate refugees.

But as Professor Meyer recounted, Chico’s initial solidarity eroded over time. The city’s limited housing stock, strained schools, and overwhelmed social services could not sustainably absorb such a sudden population increase. This material strain gave way to a political backlash: new conservative officials were elected, and crackdowns on homelessness followed. What was especially notable, Professor Meyer emphasized, was that these refugees were neither immigrants from distant countries nor culturally alien populations—they were displaced residents from a neighboring town. Their rejection underscored how even solidarity rooted in geographic proximity can fracture under economic and infrastructural pressure.

Klein, Professor Meyer noted, described this shift as a “fascist flip”—the transformation from empathy to hostility when societies fail to build the material and institutional foundations necessary to sustain care over time. According to Klein, only eco-populism can counteract this dynamic: a politics rooted in universalism, material equity, and the creation of cooperative structures that ensure no group is scapegoated or left behind.

Professor Meyer highlighted Klein’s praise for figures like Zohran Mamdani, a New York City politician who exemplifies this approach. Mamdani, representing a racially diverse and economically marginalized community where many residents paradoxically supported Donald Trump, did not dismiss or condescend to his constituents. Instead, he listened to their material grievances—stories about broken elevators in public housing and perceived inequalities in the treatment of immigrants. Rather than responding by retreating from migrant solidarity, Mamdani concluded that the left must “raise the floor” for everyone, fighting for universal access to housing, transportation, food, and healthcare.

This vision of eco-populism, Professor Meyer observed, embodies a politics of meeting people where they are—politically, economically, and emotionally. It does not ask individuals to overcome their immediate material insecurities in the name of an abstract climate imperative. Instead, it insists that justice-oriented climate action must address those insecurities as an integral part of building an equitable and sustainable future.

For Professor Meyer, this example crystallized the core lesson: without institutions and structures that can translate compassion into durable material support, solidarity remains fleeting. But with such structures, there exists the possibility—though never the guarantee—of sustaining care, fostering democratic participation, and bridging divides that reactionary forces seek to widen.

Professor Meyer closed this section by emphasizing that climate justice as populism offers an alternative political logic to both authoritarian populism and elite technocracy. It politicizes climate action not through denialism or obstruction, but by challenging whose knowledge counts, whose voices are heard, and whose needs are prioritized. It calls for participatory, bottom-up governance that reinforces solidarity and delivers concrete improvements to people’s everyday lives.

Ultimately, Professor Meyer’s analysis invited his audience to rethink not only climate policy but also their understanding of populism itself. In this reimagining, populism need not be defined solely by exclusion, demagoguery, or authoritarianism. Instead, climate justice movements reveal the potential of an inclusive, egalitarian, and democratic populism—one rooted in solidarity, dignity, and sustainability. As Professor Meyer concluded, this vision does not offer easy guarantees but opens up crucial possibilities for the future of both democracy and the planet.

Conclusion: Toward Eco‑Democratic Renewal

Professor Meyer’s lecture, “Climate Justice and Populism,” delivered as part of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2025, provided a profound conceptual intervention into the nexus between populism and climate politics. By critically interrogating both the exclusionary tendencies of authoritarian populism and the elitist reflexes of mainstream climate governance, Professor Meyer advanced a compelling alternative: understanding climate justice movements as a form of inclusive, democratic populism.

Professor Meyer’s analysis cautioned against simplistic binaries that frame populism as inherently antagonistic to climate action or that valorize technocratic expertise while marginalizing public concerns. He argued that mainstream climate policies, deeply shaped by anti-populist sensibilities, often fail to address the disproportionate burdens faced by marginalized communities. Their tendency to depoliticize climate action by presenting it as a matter of technical necessity, grounded solely in scientific expertise, not only alienates segments of the public but also risks exacerbating the very injustices that climate policies should redress.

In contrast, Professor Meyer’s portrayal of climate justice movements illuminated their emancipatory potential. These movements do not treat justice as an afterthought or compensatory gesture but embed demands for equity, solidarity, and participatory governance at the heart of climate politics. Their inclusive notion of “the people,” attention to material conditions, valorization of indigenous and local knowledge, and critique of “false solutions” all point toward a populism that is pluralist, democratic, and responsive.

Importantly, Professor Meyer’s lecture underscored that climate justice as populism offers a path forward: one that politicizes climate policy not to obstruct but to democratize it, ensuring that climate action is socially just, politically legitimate, and broadly supported. As climate change intensifies and populist pressures grow, this reframing may prove indispensable—not only for advancing climate goals but also for renewing democratic life itself.

Alina Utrata, Murat Aktaş, Luana Mathias Souto and Matilde Bufano explore how artificial intelligence, digital infrastructures, and Big Tech influence democratic participation, redefine 'the people,' and challenge gender rights and state foundations in the digital age.

ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel 2 — “The People” in the Age of AI and Algorithms

by Digital-populismEditor’s ChoiceHomeReports

Please cite as:
ECPS Staff. (2025). “ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel 2 — “The People” in the Age of AI and Algorithms.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). July 8, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00104

 

Panel II: “‘The People’ in the Age of AI and Algorithms” explored how digital technologies and algorithmic infrastructures are reshaping democratic life. Co-chaired by Dr. Alina Utrata and Professor Murat Aktaş, the session tackled questions of power, exclusion, and political agency in the digital age. Together, their framing set the stage for two timely papers examining how algorithmic filtering, platform capitalism, and gendered data practices increasingly mediate who is counted—and who is excluded—from “the people.” With insight and urgency, the session called for renewed civic, academic, and regulatory engagement with the democratic challenges posed by artificial intelligence and transnational tech governance.

Reported by ECPS Staff

As our technological age accelerates, democracy finds itself in an increasingly precarious position—buffeted not only by illiberal politics but also by opaque digital infrastructures that quietly shape how “the people” see themselves and others. Panel II, titled “The People in the Age of AI and Algorithms,” explored how artificial intelligence, social media, and digital governance are reconfiguring the foundations of democratic life. Far from being neutral tools, these technologies actively structure political subjectivity, reshape the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, and deepen existing inequalities—often with little accountability.

This timely and incisive session of the ECPS Conference at the University of Oxford, held under the title “‘We, the People’ and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches” between July 1-3, 2025, was co-chaired by Dr. Alina Utrata, Career Development Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute and St John’s College, Oxford University, and Professor Murat Aktaş from the Department of Political Science at Muş Alparslan University, Turkey. Together, they provided complementary perspectives that grounded the panel in both international political theory and real-world geopolitical shifts.

Dr. Alina Utrata opened the session by noting how technology corporations—many based in the United States and particularly in Silicon Valley—play a crucial role in shaping today’s political landscape. Referencing recent headlines such as Jeff Bezos’s wedding, she pointed to the growing entanglement between cloud computing, satellite systems, and global power dynamics. She emphasized the importance of discussing AI in this context, particularly given the intense debates currently taking place in academia and beyond. Her remarks framed the session as an opportunity to critically engage with timely questions about artificial intelligence and digital sovereignty, and she welcomed the speakers’ contributions to what she described as “these thorny questions.”

Professor Murat Aktaş, in his opening remarks, thanked the ECPS team and contributors, describing the panel topic as seemingly narrow but in fact deeply relevant. He observed that humanity is undergoing profound changes and challenges, particularly through digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligence. These developments, he suggested, are reshaping not only our daily lives but also the future of society. By underlining the transformative impact of these technologies, Aktaş stressed the importance of discussing them seriously in this panel.

The panel brought together two compelling papers that tackled these questions from interdisciplinary and intersectional perspectives. Dr. Luana Mathias Souto examined how digital infrastructures exacerbate gender exclusion under the guise of neutrality, while Matilde Bufano explored the political dangers of AI-powered filter bubbles and the rise of the “Broliarchy”—a new digital oligarchy with profound implications for democratic governance.

Together, the co-chairs and presenters animated a rich discussion about how emerging technologies are not only transforming democratic participation but also reshaping the very concept of “the people.”

Dr. Luana Mathias Souto: Navigating Digital Disruptions — The Ambiguous Role of Digital Technologies, State Foundations and Gender Rights

In her powerful presentation, Dr. Luana Mathias Souto (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, GenTIC, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) analyzed how digital technologies, often portrayed as neutral and empowering, are increasingly used as instruments of exclusion, surveillance, and patriarchal control—especially targeting women.

In her compelling presentation, Dr. Luana Mathias Souto, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the GenTIC Research Group, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, examined how digital technologies—often framed as neutral tools of empowerment—are increasingly functioning as mechanisms for exclusion, surveillance, and patriarchal reinforcement, particularly against women. Her ongoing research critically interrogates how the foundational elements of statehood—sovereignty, territory, and people—are being redefined by the digital age in ways that intersect with illiberal ideologies and gender-based exclusion.

Dr. Souto opened by historicizing the exclusion of women from the category of “the people,” a structural pattern dating back centuries, and argued that this exclusion is not alleviated but rather exacerbated in the digital era. Drawing from feminist critiques and Global South scholarship, she explored how data flows and digital infrastructures decouple sovereignty from territoriality, complicating legal protections for individuals across borders. The concept of “digital sovereignty,” she noted, allows powerful private actors—particularly US-based tech giants—to co-govern people’s lives without accountability or democratic oversight. This dynamic renders traditional state functions increasingly porous and contested, especially in terms of enforcing regulations like the EU’s GDPR against surveillance practices rooted in the US legal and security regime.

Central to Dr. Souto’s argument is the idea that digital fragmentation not only challenges state sovereignty but also disrupts the cohesion of the political subject—the “people.” This fragmentation is manifested in what she called “divisible individuals,” where digital identities are reduced to segmented data profiles, often shaped by discriminatory algorithms. Despite the proclaimed neutrality of data, these systems encode longstanding social biases, particularly around gender. Dr. Souto emphasized how digital infrastructures—designed predominantly by male, white technocrats—perpetuate sexist norms and deepen women’s exclusion from political recognition.

She devoted particular attention to FemTech (female technology), highlighting apps that track menstruation, ovulation, and sexual activity. While marketed as tools of empowerment, Dr. Souto argued these technologies facilitate new forms of surveillance and control over women’s bodies. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, data from such apps have reportedly been used in criminal investigations against women seeking abortions. Similar practices have emerged in the UK, where antiquated laws are invoked to justify digital searches of women’s phones. Beyond legal threats, FemTech data has also been exploited in employment contexts, where employers potentially use reproductive data to make discriminatory decisions about hiring or promotions.

Dr. Souto linked these practices to broader alliances between tech elites and anti-gender, illiberal movements. By promoting patriarchal values under the guise of neutrality and innovation, tech companies offer a platform for regressive gender ideologies to take root. This fusion of technological governance with far-right agendas—exemplified by calls for “masculine energy” in Silicon Valley—is not incidental but part of a broader effort to rebrand traditional hierarchies within supposedly apolitical spaces.

In conclusion, Dr. Souto called for a fundamental challenge to the presumed neutrality of digital technologies. She argued that reclaiming democratic space requires recognizing how digital infrastructures actively shape who is counted as part of “the people”—and who is excluded. Without such critical engagement, the digital revolution risks reinforcing the very forms of patriarchal and illiberal governance it once promised to transcend.

Matilde Bufano: The Role of AI in Shaping the People — Big Tech and the Broliarchy’s Influence on Modern Democracy

In a thought-provoking presentation, Matilde Bufano (MSc, International Security Studies, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies / University of Trento) explored the complex interplay between AI, social media infrastructures, and the weakening of democratic norms in the era of Big Tech.

In a sobering and richly analytical presentation, Matilde Bufano, MSc in International Security Studies at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and the University of Trento, examined the deeply intertwined relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), social media infrastructures, and the erosion of democratic norms in the age of Big Tech. Her paper, “The Role of AI in Shaping the People: Big Tech and the Broliarchy’s Influence on Modern Democracy,” offered a timely, practice-oriented reflection on how algorithmic technologies—far from being neutral tools—play a crucial role in shaping public consciousness, manipulating democratic engagement, and amplifying societal polarization. Drawing from her dual background in international law and digital politics, Bufano delivered a cross-disciplinary critique that challenged both policy complacency and academic detachment in the face of AI-driven democratic disruption.

At the heart of Bufano’s analysis lies a powerful assertion: democracy is not only threatened from outside by illiberal regimes or authoritarian populism, but also from within, through the algorithmic architecture of digital platforms that increasingly mediate how citizens engage with one another and with politics. The COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bufano, marked an inflection point. As physical interaction gave way to a digital public sphere, citizens became more dependent than ever on technology for information, identity, and even emotional validation. This shift coincided with an intensification of algorithmic curation, wherein AI systems selectively filter, promote, or suppress information based on user behavior and platform profitability.

Bufano focused on two key mechanisms underpinning this dynamic: algorithmic filtering and algorithmic moderation. Algorithmic filtering sorts through vast quantities of online content using coded preferences—ostensibly for user relevance, but in practice to optimize engagement and advertising revenue. This results in the formation of “filter bubbles,” echo chambers where users are continually exposed to like-minded content, reinforcing existing beliefs and psychological biases. Bufano distinguished between collaborative filtering—which groups users based on shared demographics or behavioral traits—and content-based filtering, which recommends material similar to what a user has previously interacted with. Both reinforce a feedback loop of ideological reinforcement, generating a form of identity-based gratification that discourages critical engagement and cross-cutting dialogue.

Crucially, this personalization is not politically neutral. Bufano demonstrated how algorithmic design often prioritizes sensationalist and polarizing content—particularly disinformation—because of its virality and ability to prolong user attention. Ninety percent of disinformation, she argued, is constructed around out-group hatred. In this context, algorithmically curated media environments deepen societal cleavages, producing a form of affective polarization that goes beyond ideological disagreement and encourages personal animosity and even dehumanization of political opponents. This is especially visible in contexts of crisis, such as during the pandemic, when scapegoating of Asian communities proliferated through local Facebook groups, or in the use of conspiracy theories and “phantom mastermind” narratives to channel social discontent toward imagined enemies.

The political consequences of this trend are severe. Filter bubbles inhibit democratic deliberation and increase susceptibility to manipulation by foreign and domestic actors. Bufano cited examples such as Russian disinformation campaigns in Romania, illustrating how AI-driven social media platforms can serve as conduits for election interference, especially when publics are already fragmented and mistrustful of institutions. These risks are magnified by a dramatic rollback in fact-checking infrastructures—most notably in the United States, where 80% of such systems were dismantled after Trump’s presidency, and mirrored in countries like Spain.

Bufano introduced the concept of the Broliarchy—a portmanteau of “bro” and “oligarchy”—to describe the growing political influence of a narrow cadre of male tech billionaires who control the infrastructure of digital discourse. No longer confined to private enterprise, these actors now exert direct influence on public policy and regulation, blurring the boundary between democratic governance and corporate interest. She illustrated this with the example of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X), which led to a 50% increase in hate speech within weeks due to weakened content moderation policies. Such developments, Bufano warned, compromise democratic accountability and entrench anti-democratic values under the guise of free expression and innovation.

While Bufano acknowledged the European Union’s recent steps toward regulation—especially the Digital Services Act (DSA), which seeks to promote transparency and safety in content recommendation systems—she emphasized the limitations of regional legislation in a global digital ecosystem. AI remains a “black box,” inaccessible to users and regulators alike. Without global accountability frameworks, national or regional efforts risk being outpaced by platform evolution and cross-border data flows.

In conclusion, Bufano made a dual appeal. First, for institutional and legal reforms capable of subjecting algorithmic systems to democratic oversight, including mandatory transparency in how recommender systems operate. Second, for renewed civic engagement and media literacy among citizens themselves. Democracy, she reminded the audience, cannot be fully outsourced to algorithms or regulators. It requires a culture of critical reflection and active participation—both online and offline. Reclaiming this space from the Broliarchy, she argued, means not only resisting disinformation and polarization, but reimagining democratic communication in ways that are inclusive, pluralistic, and resistant to both technological and ideological capture.

Bufano’s presentation, blending empirical insight with normative urgency, underscored the need for interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing one of the most urgent challenges of our time: how to ensure that digital technologies serve, rather than subvert, the democratic ideal.

Conclusion

Panel II of the ECPS Conference 2025, “The People in the Age of AI and Algorithms,” offered a powerful and urgent exploration of how digital infrastructures are reshaping the foundations of democratic life. As the presenters compellingly demonstrated, artificial intelligence, algorithmic governance, and platform capitalism are not passive tools but active agents that shape political subjectivities, influence public opinion, and determine who is included in or excluded from the category of “the people.” Across both presentations, a clear throughline emerged: digital technologies, while often framed in terms of neutrality and innovation, are in fact deeply embedded in structures of inequality, bias, and elite power.

Dr. Luana Mathias Souto illuminated how digital technologies intersect with patriarchal norms to undermine gender rights and state sovereignty, showing how the global tech ecosystem facilitates new forms of surveillance and control over women. Matilde Bufano, in turn, unpacked the algorithmic logic behind political polarization and democratic backsliding, naming the emergence of the “Broliarchy” as a key actor in this process. Together, their insights revealed a troubling paradox: while democracy should enable broad participation and dissent, the very platforms that now mediate political life often amplify exclusion and entrench concentrated power.

Rather than offering despair, the panel ended on a call to action. Both speakers urged the need for democratic oversight, global regulation, and enhanced digital literacy to reclaim public space and political agency in the algorithmic age. As AI technologies continue to evolve, so too must our frameworks for accountability, inclusion, and democratic resilience.

 

Note: To experience the panel’s dynamic and thought-provoking Q&A session, we encourage you to watch the full video recording above.

SummerSchool

ECPS Academy Summer School — Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders (July 7-11, 2025)

by Ecps AcademyECPS YouthPast Events

Case Competition Information Pack

Are you interested in global political affairs? Do you wish to learn how to draft policy recommendations for policymakers? Are you seeking to broaden your knowledge under the guidance of leading experts, looking for an opportunity to exchange views in a multicultural, multidisciplinary environment, or simply in need of a few extra ECTS credits for your studies? If so, consider applying to the ECPS Summer School. The European Centre for Populism Studies (ECPS) invites young individuals to participate in a unique opportunity to evaluate the relationship between populism and climate change during a five-day Summer School led by global experts from diverse backgrounds. The Summer School will be interactive, enabling participants to engage in discussions in small groups within a friendly atmosphere while sharing perspectives with the lecturers. You will also take part in a Case Competition on the same subject, providing a unique experience to develop problem-solving skills through collaboration with others under tight schedules. 

Overview

Climate change intersects with numerous issues, transforming it into more than just an environmental challenge; it has developed into a complex and multifaceted political issue with socio-economic and cultural dimensions. This intersection makes it an appealing topic for populist politicians to exploit in polarizing societies. Therefore, with the rise of populist politics globally, we have seen climate change increasingly become part of the populist discourse. 

Populist politics present additional barriers to equitable climate solutions, often framing global climate initiatives as elitist or detrimental to local autonomy. Thus, populism in recent years has had a profound impact on climate policy worldwide. This impact comprises a wide spectrum, from the climate skepticism and deregulation policies of leaders like Donald Trump to the often-contradictory stances of left-wing populist movements. 

We are convinced that this pressing issue not only requires an in-depth understanding but also deserves our combined effort to seek solutions. Against this backdrop, we are pleased to announce the ECPS Summer School on “Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders”, which will be held online from 7 to 11 July 2025. This interdisciplinary five-day program has two primary objectives: a) to explore how both right-wing and left-wing populist movements approach the issue of climate change and how they influence international cooperation efforts and local policies, and b) to propose policy suggestions for stakeholders to address the climate change crisis, independent of populist politics. 

We aim to critically examine the role of populism in shaping climate change narratives and policies; provide a platform for exploring diverse political ideologies and their implications for climate action; and foster a deeper understanding of the tension between economic, political, and environmental interests in both right and left-wing populist movements. Critically engaging with the key conclusions from the Baku Conference on climate justice and populism (2024), we will particularly look at the impact of authoritarian and populist politics in shaping climate governance. 

Methodology

The program will take place on Zoom, consisting of two sessions each day and will last five days. The lectures are complemented by small group discussions and Q&A sessions moderated by experts in the field. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with leading scholars in the field as well as with activists and policymakers working at the forefront of these issues.

Furthermore, this summer school aims to equip attendees with the skills necessary to craft policy suggestions. To this end, a Case Competition will be organized to identify solutions to issues related to climate change and the environment. Participants will be divided into small groups and will convene daily on Zoom to work on a specific problem related to the topic of populism and climate change. They are expected to digest available literature, enter in-depth discussions with group members and finally prepare an academic presentation which brings a solution to the problem they choose. Each group will present their policy suggestions on the final day of the programme to a panel of scholars, who will provide feedback on their work. The groups may transform their presentations into policy papers, which will be published on the ECPS website. 

Topics will include:

  • Climate justice: global dichotomy between developed and developing countries 
  • Local responses from the US, Europe, Asia and the Global South
  • Eco-colonialism, structural racism, discrimination and climate change
  • Populist narratives on sustainability, energy resources and climate change
  • Climate migration and populist politics
  • Climate, youth, gender and intergenerational justice
  • Eco-fascism, climate denial, economic protectionism and far-right populism
  • Left-wing populist discourse, climate activism and the Green New Deal
  • Technological advancement and corporate responsibility in climate action.

Program Schedule and Lecturers 

Monday, July 7, 2025

Lecture One: (15:00-16:30) — Far-right and Climate Change

Lecturer: Bernhard Forthchner (Associate Professor at the School of Art, Media and Communication, University of Leicester).  

Moderator: Sabine Volk (Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Research on Far-Right Extremism (IRex), Tübingen University).

Lecture Two: (17:30-19:00) — Climate Justice and Populism

Lecturer: John Meyer (Professor of Politics, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt).

Moderator: Manuela Caiani (Associate Professor in Political Science, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy).

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Lecture Three: (15:00-16:30) –– Climate Change, Food, Farmers, and Populism

Lecturer: Sandra Ricart (Assistant Professor at the Environmental Intelligence for Global Change Lab, at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy).

Moderator: Vlad Surdea-Hernea (Post-doctoral Researcher, Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna).

Lecture Four: (17:30-19:00) — Ideology Meets Interest Group Politics: The Trump Administration and Climate Mitigation

Lecturer: Daniel Fiorino (Professor of Politics and Director at the Centre for Environmental Policy, American University). 

Moderator: Azize Sargın (PhD., Director of External Relations, ECPS).

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Lecture Five: (15:00-16:30) — Art, Climate, and Populism

Lecturer: Heidi Hart (Arts Researcher, Nonresident Senior Fellow at ECPS).

Moderator: João Ferreira Dias (Researcher, Centre for International Studies, ISCTE) (TBC)

Lecture Six: (17:30-19:00) — Populist Discourses on Climate and Climate Change

Lecturer: Dr. Eric Swyngedouw (Professor of Geography, University of Manchester). 

Moderator: Jonathan White (Professor of Politics, LSE).

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Lecture Seven: (15:00-16:30) —Climate Change, Natural Resources and Conflicts

Lecturer: Philippe Le Billon (Professor of Political Geography at the University of British Columbia).

Moderator: Mehmet Soyer (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Utah State University).

Lecture Eight: (17:30-19:00) — Climate Change Misinformation: Supply, Demand, and the Challenges to Science in a “Post-Truth” World

Lecturer: Stephan Lewandowsky (Professor of Psychology, University of Bristol).

Moderator: Neo Sithole (Research Fellow, ECPS)

Friday, July 11, 2025

Lecture Nine: (17:30-19:00) — Populist Narratives on Sustainability, Energy Resources and Climate Change

Lecturer: Robert Huber (Professor of Political Science Methods, University of Salzburg).

Moderator: Susana Batel (Assistant Researcher and Invited Lecturer at University Institute of Lisbon, Center for Psychological Research and Social Intervention).

Who should apply?

This course is open to master’s and PhD level students and graduates, early career researchers and post-docs from any discipline.  The deadline for submitting applications is June 16, 2025. The applicants should send their CVs to the email address ecps@populismstudies.org with the subject line: ECPS Summer School Application.

We value the high level of diversity in our courses, welcoming applications from people of all backgrounds. 

As we can only accept a limited number of applicants, it is advisable to submit applications as early as possible rather than waiting for the deadline. 

Evaluation Criteria and Certificate of Attendance

Meeting the assessment criteria is required from all participants aiming to complete the program and receive a certificate of attendance. The evaluation criteria include full attendance and active participation in lectures.

Certificates of attendance will be awarded to participants who attend at least 80% of the sessions. Certificates are sent to students only by email.

Credit

This course is worth 5 ECTS in the European system. If you intend to transfer credit to your home institution, please check the requirements with them before you apply. We will be happy to assist you; however, please be aware that the decision to transfer credit rests with your home institution.

 

Brief Biographies and Abstracts

 

Day One: Monday, July 7, 2025

Far-right and Climate Change

Bernhard Forchtner is an associate professor at the School of Arts, Media, and Communication, University of Leicester (United Kingdom), and has previously worked as a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences at the Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany), where he conducted a project on far-right discourses on the environment (2013-2015, project number 327595). His research focuses on the far right and, in particular, the far right’s multimodal environmental communication. Publications include the two edited volumes The Far Right and the Environment (Routledge, 2019) and Visualising Far-Right Environments (Manchester University Press, 2023).

Abstract: This lecture will offer an overview of the current state of research on the far right and climate change (with a focus on Europe), considering both political parties and non-party actors. The lecture will discuss both general trends of and the dominant claims employed in climate communication by the far right. In so doing, it will furthermore highlight longitudinal (affective) changes and will discuss the far right’s visual climate communication (including its gendered and populist dimension).

Reading list

Ekberg, K., Forchtner, B., Hultman, M. and Jylhä, K. M. (2022). Climate Obstruction. How Denial, Delay and Inaction are Heating the Planet. Routledge. pp. 1-20 (Chapter 1: ‘Introduction’) and 69-94 (Chapter 4: ‘The far right and climate obstruction’).

– ‘The far right and climate obstruction’ offers a review of research on the far right and climate change, while ‘Introduction’ provides a general conceptual model of how to think about different modes of climate obstruction.

Forchtner, B. and Lubarda, B. (2022): Scepticisms and beyond? A comprehensive portrait of climate change communication by the far right in the European Parliament. Environmental Politics, 32(1): 43–68.

– The article analyses climate change communication by the far right in the European Parliament between 2004 and 2019, showing which claims have been raised by these parties and how they have shifted over time.

Schwörer, J. and Fernández-García, B. (2023): Climate sceptics or climate nationalists? Understanding and explaining populist radical right parties’ positions towards climate change (1990–2022). Political Studies, 72(3): 1178-1202.

The article offers an analysis of manifestos of Western European political parties, illustrating salience and positioning over three decades.

 

Climate Justice and Populism

John M. Meyer is Professor in the Departments of Politics and Environmental Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. As a political theorist, his work aims to help us understand how our social and political values and institutions shape our relationship with “the environment,” how these values and institutions are shaped by this relationship, and how we might use an understanding of both to pursue a more socially just and sustainable society. Meyer is the author or editor of seven books. These include the award-winning Engaging the Everyday: Environmental Social Criticism and the Resonance Dilemma (MIT, 2015) and The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory (Oxford, 2016). From 2020-2024, he served as editor-in-chief of the international journal, Environmental Politics.

Abstract: Many have argued that an exclusionary conception of “the people” and a politicized account of scientific knowledge and expertise make populism a fundamental threat to effective action to address climate change. While this threat is very real, I argue that it often contributes to a misguided call for a depolicitized, consensus-based “anti-populist” alternative. Climate Justice movements can point us toward a more compelling response. Rather than aiming to neutralize or circumvent the passions elicited by populism, it offers the possibility of counter-politicization that can help mobilize stronger climate change action. Here, an inclusive conception of “the people” may be manifest as horizontal forms of solidarity generated by an engagement with everyday material concerns.

Reading List

John M. Meyer. (2025).  “How (not) to politicise the climate crisis: Beyond the anti-populist imaginary,” with Sherilyn MacGregor. Politische Vierteljahresschrift.

John M. Meyer. (2024). “The People; and Climate Justice: Reconceptualising Populism and Pluralism within Climate Politics,” Polity.

John M. Meyer. (2024). Power and Truth in Science-Related Populism: Rethinking the Role of Knowledge and Expertise in Climate Politics, Political Studies.

Additional Recent Readings

Driscoll, Daniel. (2023). “Populism and Carbon Tax Justice: The Yellow Vest Movement in France.” Social Problems, 70 (1): 143–63. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spab036 

Lucas, Caroline, and Rupert Read. (2025). “It’s Time for Climate Populism.” New Statesman (blog). February 7, 2025. https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2025/02/its-time- for-climate-populism 

White, Jonathan. (2023). “What Makes Climate Change a Populist Issue?” Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment Working Paper, no. No. 401 (September). https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/working-paper-401-White.pdf.

 

Day Two: Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Delving into European’ Farmers Protests and Citizens’ Attitudes Towards Agriculture in a Climate Change Context: Insights from policy and populism

Sandra Ricart is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Intelligence Lab at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. She holds a PhD in Geography – Experimental Sciences and Sustainability by the University of Girona, Spain, in 2014 and performed postdoctoral stays at the University of Alicante (Spain), Università degli Studi di Milano and the Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (France), and Wageningen University and Research (Netherlands). She was an invited professor at the Landcare Research Centre in New Zealand and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. As a human-environment geographer, her research focuses on climate change narratives and behavior from farmers’ and stakeholders’ perspectives, delving into how social learning and behavior modelling can be combined to enhance adaptive capacity, robust decision-making processes and trusted policy co-design. Dr. Ricart co-authored more than sixty publications, attended several international conferences, and participated in a dozen international and national research projects. Sandra serves as Assistant Editor of the International Journal of Water Resources Development and PLOS One journal, and she is an expert evaluator by the European Commission and different national research councils.

Abstract: Though there are national differences, farmers across Europe are generally upset about dropping produce prices, rising fuel costs, and competition from foreign imports, but are also concerned by the painful impacts of the climate crisis and proposed environmental regulations under the new CAP and the European Green Deal. These common challenges motivated, in 2024, a series of protests from the Netherlands to Belgium, France, Spain, Germany and the UK, with convoys of tractors clogging roads and ports, farmer-led occupations of capital cities and even cows being herded into the offices of government ministers. Farmers have felt marginalised as they feel overburdened by rules and undervalued by city dwellers, who tend to eat the food they grow without being much interested in where it came from. In this context, farmers started to receive increasing support from a range of far-right and populist parties and groups, who aim to crystallise resentment and are bent on bringing down Green Deal environmental reforms. This talk will delve into the reasons behind farmers’ protests and the link with populism, providing examples, as well as an analysis of citizens’ perspectives on agriculture and climate change strategies, which will enrich the debate on the nexus between policy and populism.

Reading List

Special Eurobarometer 538 Climate Change – Report, 2023, Available here: https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2954 

Special Eurobarometer 556 Europeans, Agriculture, and the CAP – Report, 2025. https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3226

Zuk, P. (2025). “The European Green Deal and the peasant cause: class frustration, cultural backlash, and right-wing nationalist populism in farmers’ protests in Poland.” Journal of Rural Studies, 119:103708. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103708

Newspapers

What’s behind farmers’ protests returning to the streets of Brussels? https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/05/19/whats-behind-farmers-protests-returning-to-the-streets-of-brussels

Rural decline and farmers’ anger risks fuelling Europe’s populism. https://www.friendsofeurope.org/insights/frankly-speaking-rural-decline-and-farmers-anger-risks-fuelling-europes-populism/

From protests to policy: What is the future for EU agriculture in the green transition? https://www.epc.eu/publication/From-protests-to-policy-What-is-the-future-for-EU-agricultre-57f788/

Farmer Protests and the 2024 European Parliament Elections https://www.intereconomics.eu/contents/year/2024/number/2/article/farmer-protests-and-the-2024-european-parliament-elections.html

Neoliberal Limits – Farmer Protests, Elections and the Far Right. https://www.arc2020.eu/neoliberal-limits-farmer-protests-elections-and-the-far-right/

Green policies, grey areas: Farmers’ protests and the environmental policy dilemma in the European Union. http://conference.academos.ro/node/1467

How the far right aims to ride farmers’ outrage to power in Europe. https://www.politico.eu/article/france-far-right-farmers-outrage-power-europe-eu-election-agriculture/

 

Ideology Meets Interest Group Politics: The Trump Administration and Climate Mitigation

Daniel J. Fiorino teaches environmental and energy policy at the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, DC, and is the founding director of the Center for Environmental Policy. Before joining American University in 2009, he served in the policy office of the US Environmental Protection Agency, where he worked on various environmental issues. His recent books include Can Democracy Handle Climate Change? (Polity Press, 2018); A Good Life on a Finite Earth: The Political Economy of Green Growth (Oxford, 2018); and The Clean Energy Transition: Policies and Procedures for a Zero-Carbon World (Polity, 2022). He is currently writing a book about the US Environmental Protection Agency. 

Abstract: The rise of right-wing populism around the world constitutes one of the principal challenges to climate mitigation policies. The defining characteristics of right-wing populism are distrust of scientific expertise, resistance to multilateral problem-solving, and strong nationalism. Climate mitigation involves a reliance on scientific and economic expertise, an openness to multilateral problem-solving, and setting aside nationalist tendencies in favor of international cooperation. At the same time, the Republican Party in the United States maintains a strong affiliation with the interests of the fossil fuel industry. These two factors have led to a Trump administration that is hostile to climate mitigation and participation in global problem-solving. This presentation examines the policies of the Trump administration with respect to climate mitigation and the effects of a right-wing populist ideology when combined with the historical alliance of the Republican Party with the interests of the fossil fuel industry.

Reading List

Fiorino, D. J. (2022). “Climate change and right-wing populism in the United States.” Environmental Politics, 31(5), 801–819. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2021.2018854

Huber, R.A. (2020). “The role of populist attitudes in explaining climate scepticism and support for environmental protection.” Environmental Politics, 29 (6), 959–982. doi:10.1080/09644016.2019.1708186

Lockwood, M. (2018). “Right-wing populism and the climate change agenda: exploring the contradictions.” Environmental Politics, 27 (4), 712–732. doi:10.1080/09644016.2018.1458411

 

Day Three: Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Art Attacks: Museum Vandalism as a Populist Response to Climate Trauma?

Heidi Hart (Ph.D. Duke University 2016) is a Nonresident Senior Resident (Climate and Environment) with ECPS. She is also a guest instructor in environmental humanities at Linnaeus University in Sweden. Her books include studies of climate grief, sound and music in climate- crisis narrative, and the destruction of musical instruments in ecological context.

Abstract: This lecture explores activist vandalisation of museum artworks, acts that draw attention to the climate emergency as they both subjugate human-made artworks and create new layers of visual and performative aesthetics. “Art Attacks” describes examples of recent art vandalism and subsequent academic responses, most of which remain ambivalent about the effectiveness of art destruction for the sake of ecological awareness. Two questions arise when investigating these interventions: do the actors involved function as environmental populists, as Briji Jose and Renuka Shyamsundar Belamkar have postulated (2024), and are they driven by a sense of climate trauma, a question informed by Katharine Stiles’ work on trauma’s role in destructive forms of art-making (2016)? Answering the first question requires looking at arguments against the convergence of populism and environmentalism and finding places where they do in fact overlap “in unconventional, problematic, and surprising ways” (ECPS Dictionary of Populism). Answering the second question leads to an exploration of how the climate emergency is experienced and mediated as trauma (Kaplan 2016, Richardson 2018). This lecture argues that an embodied sense of present and future emergency can indeed lead to a creative-destructive nexus of climate action, useful even in its ambivalence, in what Bruno Latour has termed “iconoclash” (2002).

Reading List

Jose, Briji and Renuka Shyamsundar Belamkar. (2024). “Art of Vandalism: A Response by Environmental Populists.” In: J. Chacko Chennattuserry et al., Editors, Encyclopedia of New Populism and Responses in the 21st Century. Springer Singapore, 2024, DOI 10.1007/978-981-99-7802-1.

Richardson, Michael. (2018). “Climate Trauma, or the Affects of the Catastrophe to Come.” Environmental Humanities, 10:1 (May 2018), DOI 10.1215/22011919-4385444.

Teixeira da Silva, Jaime A. (2023). “Is the Destruction of Art a Desirable Form of Climate Activism?” Environmental Smoke 6:1 (2023), DOI 10.32435/envsmoke. 20236173-77.

 

The Climate Deadlock and The Unbearable Lightness of Climate Populism

Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Geography at The University of Manchester, UK and Senior Research Associate of the University of Johannesburg Centre for Social Change, South Africa. He holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Roskilde University and the University of Malmö. He works on political ecology, critical theory, environmental and emancipatory politics. He is the author of, among others, Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a Post-Democratic Environment (MIT Press), Liquid Power: Contested Hydro-Modernities in 20th Century Spain (MIT Press) and Social Power and the Urbanisation of Nature (Oxford University Press). He is currently completing a book (with Prof. Lucas Pohl) entitled Enjoying Climate Change (Verso).

Abstract: Over the past two decades or so, the environmental question has been mainstreamed, and climate change, in particular, has become the hard kernel of the problematic environmental condition the Earth is in. Nonetheless, despite the scientific concern and alarmist rhetoric, the climate parameters keep eroding further. We are in the paradoxical situation that ‘despite the fact we know the truth about climate change, we act as if we do not know’. This form of disavowal suggests that access to and presence of knowledge and facts do not guarantee effective intervention. This presentation will argue that the dominant depoliticised form of climate populism can help to account for the present climate deadlock, and will suggest ways of transgressing the deadlock.

My presentation focuses on what I refer to as Climate Populism. We argue that climate populism is not just the prerogative of right-winged, xenophobic, and autocratic elite and their supporters, but will insist on how climate populism also structures not only many radical climate movements but also the liberal climate consensus. I argue that the architecture of most mainstream as well as more radical climate discourses, practices, and policies is similar to that of populist discourses and should be understood as an integral part of a pervasive and deepening process of post-politicisation. Mobilising a process that psychoanalysts call ‘fetishistic disavowal’, the climate discourse produces a particular form of populism that obscures the power relations responsible for the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. I shall mobilise a broadly Lacanian-Marxist theoretical perspective that permits accounting for this apparently paradoxical condition of both acknowledging and denying the truth of the climate situation, and the discourses/practices that sustain this.

Reading List

Swyngedouw E. (2010) “Apocalypse Forever? Post-Political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change”, Theory, Culture, Society, 27(2-3): 213-232.

Swyngedouw E. (2022) “The Depoliticised Climate Change Consensus.” In: Pellizzoni L., Leonardi E., Asara V. (Eds.) Handbook of Critical Environmental Politics. E. Elgar, London, pp. 443-455.

Swyngedouw E. (2022) “The Unbearable Lightness of Climate Populism.” Environmental Politics, 31(5), pp. 904-925. DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2022.2090636

Jonathan White is Professor of Politics at the London School of Economics.  Books include In the Long Run: the Future as a Political Idea (Profile Books, 2024), Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union (Oxford University Press, 2019), and – with Lea Ypi – The Meaning of Partisanship (Oxford University Press, 2016).

 

Day Four: Thursday, July 10, 2025

Climate Change, Natural Resources and Conflicts

Philippe Le Billon is a professor of political geography and political ecology at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining UBC, he was a Research Associate with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and worked with environmental and human rights organisations. His work engages with linkages between environment, development and security, with a focus on extractive sectors. He currently works with environmental defenders, including on small-scale fisheries and the ‘green transition’.

 Abstract: This lecture examines how the rise of populist politics is reshaping the nexus between climate change, natural resources, and conflicts. As climate impacts intensify, populist leaders across the political spectrum have exploited environmental anxieties, fueling nationalist rhetoric, weakening environmental regulations, and framing green transitions as elite-driven agendas. This has deepened social divisions and contributed to violent responses to both fossil fuel extraction and climate mitigation projects. The lecture will explore how populist regimes often repress environmental defenders, delegitimise scientific consensus, and stoke resentment against marginalised groups, further aggravating conflict dynamics. Case studies will illustrate how populism can exacerbate resource-related tensions, undermine international cooperation, and stall urgent climate action. The session will conclude with policy recommendations to counteract these trends, including democratic safeguards, support for “leave-it-in-the-ground” campaigns, and stronger protections for environmental activists. Ultimately, this talk highlights the urgent need to confront populist narratives in the pursuit of climate justice and conflict prevention.

 

Climate Change Misinformation: Supply, Demand, and the Challenges to Science in a “Post-Truth” World

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol, whose main interest lies in the pressure points between the architecture of online information technologies and human cognition, and the consequences for democracy that arise from these pressure points.

He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including a Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council, a Wolfson Research Merit Fellowship from the Royal Society, and a Humboldt Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science (UK) and a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science. He was appointed a fellow of the Committee for Sceptical Inquiry for his commitment to science, rational inquiry and public education. He was elected to the Leopoldina (the German national academy of sciences) in 2022. Professor Lewandowsky also holds a Guest Professorship at the University of Potsdam in Germany. He was identified as a highly cited researcher in 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Clarivate, a distinction that is awarded to fewer than 0.1% of researchers worldwide.

His research examines the consequences of the clash between social media architectures and human cognition, for example, by researching countermeasures to the persistence of misinformation and spread of “fake news” in society, including conspiracy theories, and how platform algorithms may contribute to the prevalence of misinformation. He is also interested in the variables that determine whether or not people accept scientific evidence.
 He has published hundreds of scholarly articles, chapters, and books, with more than 200 peer-reviewed articles alone since 2000. His research regularly appears in journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Communications, and Psychological Review. (See www.lewan.uk for a complete list of scientific publications.)

His research is currently funded by the European Research Council, the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, the UK research agency (UKRI, through EU replacement funding), the Volkswagen Foundation, Google’s Jigsaw, and by the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) Mercury Project.

Professor Lewandowsky also frequently appears in print and broadcast media, having contributed approximately 100 opinion pieces to the global media. He has been working with policymakers at the European level for many years, and he was the first author of a report on Technology and Democracy in 2020 that has helped shape EU digital legislation.

Abstract: I examine both the “supply side” and “demand side” of climate denial and the associated “fake news”. On the supply side, I report the evidence for the organised dissemination of disinformation by political operatives and vested interests, and how the media respond to these distortions of the information landscape. On the demand side, I explore the variables that drive people’s rejection of climate science and lead them to accept denialist talking points, with a particular focus on the issue of political symmetry. The evidence seems to suggest that denial of science is primarily focused on the political right, across a number of domains, even though there is cognitive symmetry between left and right in many other situations. Why is there little evidence to date of any association between left-wing political views and rejection of scientific evidence or expertise? I focus on Merton’s (1942) analysis of the norms of science, such as communism and universalism, which continue to be internalised by the scientific community, but which are not readily reconciled with conservative values. Two large-scale studies (N > 2,000 altogether) show that people’s political and cultural worldviews are associated with their attitudes towards those scientific norms, and that those attitudes in turn predict people’s acceptance of scientific. The norms of science may thus be in latent conflict with a substantial segment of the public. Finally, I survey the options that are available to respond to this fraught information and attitude landscape, focusing on consensus communication and psychological inoculation.

Reading List

Cook, J., van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., & Lewandowsky, S. (2018). The Consensus Handbook. DOI:10.13021/G8MM6P.

Sinclair, A. H., Cosme, D., Lydic, K., Reinero, D. A., Carreras-Tartak, J., Mann, M., & Falk, E. B. (2024). Behavioural Interventions Motivate Action to Address Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/x3wsb

Lewandowsky, S. (2021). Climate Change Disinformation and How to Combat It. Annu Rev Public Health. 42:1-21. Doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-090419-102409. Epub 2021 Dec 23. PMID: 33355475

Hornsey, M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2022). “A toolkit for understanding and addressing climate scepticism.” Nature Human Behaviour, 6(11), 1454–1464. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01463-y

 

Day Five: Friday, July 11, 2025

Populist Narratives on Sustainability, Energy Resources and Climate Change

Robert A. Huber is a Professor of Political Science Methods at the Department of Political Science at the University of Salzburg. He earned his PhD from ETH Zurich in 2018. Prior to joining the University of Salzburg, Robert served as a lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. Additionally, he holds the position of co-editor-in-chief at the European Journal of Political Research and the Populism Seminar. Robert’s primary research focus revolves around examining how globalisation poses new challenges to liberal democracy. Utilising state-of-the-art methods, he investigates areas such as trade policy, climate and environmental politics, and populism. His work has been featured in journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, and Political Analysis.

Abstract: With climate change being a central challenge for humankind and far-reaching action being necessary, populists have decided to position themselves against climate change. But what is it about populists that makes them take this stance? And is it just a political show or rooted in their worldview? This lecture scrutinises how populism, thick ideological leaning and contextual factors lead to climate sceptic positions among populist parties. We also reflect on whether this translates to the citizen level.

Reading List

Forchtner, Bernhard, and Christoffer Kølvraa. (2015). “The Nature of Nationalism: Populist Radical Right Parties on Countryside and Climate.” Nature and Culture, 10 (2): 199–224. https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2015.100204.

Huber, Robert A., Tomas Maltby, Kacper Szulecki, and Stefan Ćetković. (2021). “Is Populism a Challenge to European Energy and Climate Policy? Empirical Evidence across Varieties of Populism.” Journal of European Public Policy, 28 (7): 998–1017. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1918214.

Lockwood, Matthew. (2018). “Right-Wing Populism and the Climate Change Agenda: Exploring the Linkages.” Environmental Politics, 27 (4): 712–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1458411.

Zulianello, Mattia, and Diego Ceccobelli. (2020). “Don’t Call It Climate Populism: On Greta Thunberg’s Technocratic Ecocentrism.” The Political Quarterly, 91 (3): 623–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12858.

Kamil Wyszkowski

ECPS Symposium 2025 / Keynote Speech II — Kamil Wyszkowski: The Role of the UN in Fighting for Human Rights in This Populist Age

by Environment & ClimateMultimediaVideos

Fourth Annual International Symposium on ‘Civilizational Populism: National and International Challenges’

May 22–23, 2025 | University of Warsaw

Keynote Speech

The Role of the UN in Fighting for Human Rights in This Populist Age,” by Kamil Wyszkowski (Director of UN Global Compact).

Kamil Wyszkowski has been working for the United Nations. He currently serves as the Representative and Executive Director of the UN Global Compact Network Poland and as the Representative of UNOPS in Poland. He is an expert on UN and EU policies, particularly in areas intersecting business and public administration.

From 2002 to 2009, he worked at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where he was responsible for international and multilateral cooperation and for developing programs across Europe and Asia. He has implemented development projects in dozens of countries, including Iraq, India, Thailand, and Romania, drawing on knowledge transfer from Poland. He has also worked at UNDP headquarters in New York and its regional center for Europe and the CIS in Bratislava. From 2009 to 2014, he was the Director of the UNDP Office in Poland. Since 2004, he has been the National Representative and Chair of the Board of the UN Global Compact Network Poland (GCNP), which coordinates cooperation between the UN and business, academia, cities, public administration, and NGOs in Poland. He has also led the Know How Hub (a UNDP Poland initiative, now under GCNP) since 2011.

He lectures at institutions including Central European University (Bucharest), Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv), Warsaw School of Economics, Kozminski University, Collegium Civitas, SWPS University, the Paderewski Institute of Diplomacy, and the University of Warsaw.

A distressed Black woman professional faces gender discrimination and workplace bullying, as male colleagues point fingers and place blame. The image highlights the emotional toll of inequality and harassment in professional environments. Photo: Dreamstime.

“No One Can Make You Feel Inferior Without Your Consent”: Is Eleanor Roosevelt Right?

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Can we truly choose not to feel inferior? In this thought-provoking commentary, Syed Yousha Haider critically examines Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous quote, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Blending insights from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and social theory, Haider explores the limits of agency in the face of trauma, social conditioning, and structural inequality. While celebrating resilience and self-determination, he also challenges oversimplified notions of empowerment. This essay invites readers to reflect on the complex dynamics of self-worth, consent, and resistance in a world where internal struggles are often shaped by forces far beyond the individual.

By Syed Yousha Haider*

Eleanor Roosevelt’s much-quoted maxim—”No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”—has traveled a long way from its origins as a personal empowerment mantra. The quote says that individual choice is more important than what other people think, based on ideas about agency, dignity, and self-concept. But beneath its catchy simplicity lies a philosophical paradox: is it ever in our choice to refuse consent to feelings of inferiority? Are these kinds of feelings, at least in part, caused by social, psychological, and even neurobiological processes that we can’t control? This essay argues that Roosevelt’s maxim, as inspiring as it is, is only partially true. Individual agency is essential to self-perception, but the action of structural forces, psychological conditioning, and automatic cognitive processes complicate the idea that one can simply choose not to feel inferior.

The Appeal of Personal Agency

People still use Roosevelt’s quote because it fits with the liberal humanist idea of the self-governing person. For example, Stoic philosophy heard Epictetus say, “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” It seems like there is strength inside despite what is going on outside. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is probably the most scientifically-based type of psychotherapy. It also believes that how we feel is based on how we think about things, not the events themselves. This view says that changing the way you talk to yourself can help you get over feelings of inferiority and move on.

Also, there are literally countless examples from history of people who have overcome feelings of inferiority even though the system tried to make them feel less important. Viktor E. Frankl, a survivor of the Holocaust, famously said in his book Man’s Search for Meaning that the last of the human freedoms is “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” Many people point to Frankl’s ability to survive extreme dehumanization as proof that accepting one’s inferiority is a choice..

After serving 27 years in prison for refusing to change his beliefs to suit apartheid’s demands, Nelson Mandela came out of prison with his dignity unharmed and guided South Africa through a peaceful transition. The strength of agency against humiliation is demonstrated by the fact that he was able to maintain his dignity despite institutional racism. After surviving a Taliban assassination attempt, Malala Yousafzai transformed personal hardship into a global movement for girls’ education. Her refusal to submit in the face of patriarchal violence is a brilliant illustration of how victims can become empowered..

The idea that people are powerless in the face of hardship is refuted by the resilience philosophy. The study of learned optimism by Dr. Martin Seligman emphasizes how our mental habits can influence how we react to criticism and failure. People can develop what Seligman refers to as “psychological immunity”—a defense against internalized inferiority—by confronting negative internal monologues and redefining failures as temporary and external. Roosevelt’s ideal can then be seen as psychologically realized through the development of optimism and internal locus of control.

Limits of Consent: Neuropsychological Constraints

However, this utopian vision is obscured by current psychological and neuroscientific research. Cognitive processes related to self-worth are not always under conscious control. The Default Mode Network (DMN) is primarily outside of conscious awareness and is active during self-referential cognition and daydreaming. In order to construct a cohesive sense of self, it is known to combine memories, emotions, and imagined situations, maintaining negative self-beliefs without conscious consent.

Furthermore, unconscious bias affects how we view ourselves from an early age. Implicit Association Tests demonstrate how years of exposure to social stereotypes can cause people to internalize group stereotype attitudes toward members of their own group, such as women being biased against women in positions of power. These are kept in the brain areas responsible for moral and emotional judgments, the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, demonstrating the neurobiological basis of negative self-perceptions.

Though unconscious, the trauma survivors feel ashamed and inferior. It has been observed that distorted self-perceptions, such as guilt and worthlessness, are more potent than logical thought in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These are neurophysiologic reactions rather than choices, and correcting them usually requires a lengthy therapeutic intervention. In these situations, inferiority is more neurologically motivated than widely accepted.

Additionally, early attachment orientations are crucial in determining self-esteem and vulnerability to feelings of inadequacy, according to affective neuroscience research. A child who experiences emotional abuse or neglect may grow up with a persistent internal schema of worthlessness. The internalized, which was solidified during brain-sensitive developmental stages, restricts the person’s capacity to “withdraw consent” from inferiority complexes as an adult.

Second, feelings of inferiority might have adaptive roots, according to evolutionary psychology. Humans were made to live in small communities where access to resources and partners depended heavily on status and belonging. One adaptation that might have developed in order to survive is hypersensitivity to social rejection. However, this evolutionary baggage now shows up as irrational and habitual feelings of inferiority, especially in hierarchical environments like online forums, workplaces, and schools.

Social and Structural Determinants of Inferiority

In addition to the psychology of the individual, social structures also produce and enforce inferiority. Language, the media, and institutions are all infused with heteronormativity, which tends to dictate who is capable, desirable, or deserving. Symbolic violence, as defined by Pierre Bourdieu, describes how dominant social groups impose meanings that are internalized as acceptable. For example, colonial education systems used to portray colonized people as intellectually inferior; this claim is still present in the disparities in academic accreditation around the world.

Erving Goffman studied how stigma, or the discrediting of people for supposedly deviating from the norm, contributes to feelings of shame and undesirableness. According to his theory, the stigmatized individual absorbs society’s scrutiny and agrees to being inferior out of social pressure rather than choice. This consent is not voluntary; it is coerced.

According to the “stereotype threat,” as defined by social psychologist Claude Steele, people perform less well when they are concerned about reinforcing unfavorable stereotypes about their identity category. For instance, when race is emphasized on tests, African American students do worse—not because they think they are less capable, but rather because the cultural script instills fear, which impairs performance. Such scripts can effectively short-circuit the will by altering behavior and thought.

Another sociocultural phenomenon is groupthink. People will repress contradictory self-concepts in order to preserve group harmony, embracing the flawed consensus. Conventional instances, like discouraging women’s aspirations for education or politics, demonstrate how social norms can force internalization of inferiority.

Furthermore, social media has given rise to new channels for the propagation of inferiority. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok propagate idealized beauty standards and manufactured lives, creating a culture of comparison that undermines self-worth. Younger generations, particularly teenage girls, are disproportionately targeted by algorithmic promotion of idealized imagery, which contributes to the rise in anxiety and depression. Here, inferiority is fostered by repeated exposure to distorted norms rather than being elected outright.

Such effects are amplified by intersectionality. The accumulation of marginalization experiences is demonstrated by Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectional matrix of oppressive systems, which includes racism, sexism, and classism. Black women who are economically marginalized may encounter overlapping social messages that portray them as inferior in multiple ways. These messages, which are delivered through cultural imagery and institutional norms, carry a cumulative psychological burden that is difficult to deny.

Resisting Inferiority: Possibility and Limits

Resistance is evident in opposition to these limits. The recovery of the imposed identity of inferiority has already been demanded by feminist and postcolonial theorists. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation,” as Audre Lorde insists, is a rejection of internalizing the condemnation of the world. Black Pride and LGBTQ+ affirmations are just two examples of grassroots movements that have successfully challenged hegemonic discourses and empowered people to reject internalized oppression.

The solution to this difficulty lies in education. According to Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the oppressed must be able to recognize internalized inferiority brought on by systemic injustice and recover their dignity via critical thinking, or conscientization. Only with time, resources, and support groups—things that not everyone has access to—can it be accomplished.

The ability to challenge hegemonic narratives and reinterpret value on their own terms has been made possible by cyberspace. Default inferiority narratives are countered by discourses like #BlackGirlMagic and #DisabledAndProud. In addition to being empowering in and of themselves, these claims also have a cumulative effect by changing the broader cultural environment.

However, not all attempts at resistance are successful. The enduring resilience of systemic powers is demonstrated by the continued existence of racial profiling, wage inequality, and underrepresentation in leadership positions. One’s identity is typically determined by societal approval, even if you fight valiantly against subordinating ideologies. The internal conflict gets harder to sustain when one lacks acceptance and a sense of belonging.

However, resilience-building programs enable psychological resistance. Education and mental health programs that promote self-advocacy, growth mindsets, and trauma-informed care are essential. Instead of opposing systemic forces, these empower individuals to challenge internalized narratives. Roosevelt’s assertion is interpreted by adults as an invitation to build internal strength in tandem with structural change, rather than as a rejection of putting up with oppression.

The Philosophical Implications of Consent

Roosevelt only used the word “consent” to refer to a deliberate action. However, in ethics and the law, consent must be given voluntarily and free from coercion. Consent to be in a subordinate position cannot be based on psychological conditioning, neurobiology, or societal power dynamics that reduce one’s agency and awareness.

Here, it’s important to distinguish between “responsibility” and “causality.” One can be held accountable for facing their own shortcomings over time, even if they were never the direct cause of them. This nuanced stance maintains the moral requirement of agency while rejecting the all-powerful forces that exist within our inner selves.

The “dialogical self” theory of philosopher Charles Taylor makes consent more difficult to understand. According to Taylor, identity is socially constructed through interactions with other people rather than something that is determined for oneself. Feelings of inferiority could be exogenously programmed rather than endogenously generated if selfhood is relational. Roosevelt’s statement may therefore be exaggerated in light of the extent to which an individual can create their own sense of self-worth.

Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist philosophers support radical freedom and self-creation. His theory that “existence precedes essence” holds that people must create their identities consciously since they are not born with predetermined natures. According to this viewpoint, willpower alone is sufficient to overcome inferiority complexes. But Sartre also introduced the idea of “bad faith,” which acknowledges the limitations of volition and refers to people lying to themselves in order to escape the responsibility that comes with freedom. In The Ethics of Belief, philosopher William Clifford makes the case that it is immoral to hold beliefs in the absence of adequate evidence. When used in this context, inferiority complexes that are based on erroneous social or psychological assumptions are illogical and ought to be disregarded. However, Thomas Nagel argues that human subjectivity cannot be avoided; irrational feelings, such as inferiority, are.

Conclusion

A powerful affirmation of human dignity and inner strength is the Eleanor Roosevelt maxim. However, it would be oversimplifying the combined influence of psychological, biological, and social factors on self-perception to claim that no one can ever make us feel inferior if we do not consent. Although agency still functions, it must be understood in the context of limitations. Since Roosevelt’s assertion that reassertion of value is as much a matter of will as it is of struggle against forces of inheritance, the reality is not so much a question of its complete cancellation or confirmation. Therefore, empowerment is more about knowing on what terms to give consent than it is about refusing it.

 

(*) Syed Yousha Haider is a student with a growing interest in understanding the human mind and behavior. In his own words, he has always been curious about what drives people to think, feel, and act the way they do. This curiosity, combined with his desire to understand himself and others better, naturally led him to explore the field of psychology. While he is still learning, he finds joy in asking questions, noticing patterns in emotions, and reflecting on the deeper reasons behind everyday choices. For him, psychology is more than a subject—it is a way to connect with people, understand their stories, and perhaps even help make sense of his own.