A study co-authored by CSSN Scholar Bernhard Forchtner investigates the environmental communication shared by the European Parliament’s far-right through an analysis of the ideology’s acceptance and skepticism of climate change.

Abstract:

Amid the existing scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change (ACC), research on political ideologies and climate change indicates varying degrees of scepticism amongst conservatives and, especially, the far right, the latter ranging from the anti-liberal radical right to the anti-democratic extreme right. We contribute to this emerging literature by drawing a comprehensive portrait of far-right articulations of climate change to date through an analysis of contributions to plenary debates and explanations of vote delivered by far-right Members of the European Parliament (parliamentary terms 6–8, 2004–19). We illustrate the need for a differentiated understanding of far-right climate-change communication, as most arguments are sceptical not towards the existence of ACC, but the ways in which it is addressed. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that extreme-right actors are slightly more ‘climate-friendly’ than radical-right ones. Therefore, this article contributes to our knowledge of and analytical framework for examining far-right climate-change communication.