What Is It Good For?
About war, voting, and whether we can battle apathy and rising populism around both issues
War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
These lyrics have been a constant echo in my head for the past few years. They first surfaced when my country plunged into full-scale conflict following the military’s illegal seizure of power in February 2021. They persisted as Russia invaded Ukraine a year later.
Then they resurfaced with full force as news broke of “imminent” famine in Gaza and after Israel killed aid workers belonging to World Central Kitchen (WCK) who were trying to prevent that famine becoming “immediate”.
Celebrity chef José Andres who founded WCK told Reuters that Israel targeted his staff “systematically, car by car”. The president of Refugees International made a similar point on social media. WaPo has a good overview if you want to read more.
When will this war end? When will others? How many others working to feed hungry people in conflict zones have faced the same fate? Will we ever transcend our basest instincts?
As an apology for leaving you with unanswerable questions, I’m focusing this week’s issue on two studies that offer glimmers of hope amid predictions that Europe will veer hard-right and anti-environmentalism later this year.
Voting. What is it good for?
2024, as we have repeatedly been told, is the year of elections. According to Time, about 49% of the world’s population will be casting their ballots in at least 64 countries (plus the European Union) at some point this year.
We’ve already seen elections in Taiwan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Russia with varying degrees of freedom or vote rigging. South Korea and India are next.
But the ones I want to talk about this week are the EU parliamentary elections slated for June 6 - 9. This is a chance for European citizens to elect folks who will represent their concerns and desires and help shape the EU’s future direction accordingly.
However, these elections, held every five years, have often been plagued by low turnout and voter apathy. There were celebrations during the last elections in May 2019 when turnout was 50.7%, the highest in over two decades, said Politico.
It doesn’t help that they are often seen as an afterthought, or that the results don’t matter. Before the Brits left the bloc in a huff over their own internal malaise (but which was conveniently blamed on the EU bogeyman), they turned up their noses at these elections and/or voted for some truly awful politicians.
It’s worth remembering, though, that this is the only EU institution where citizens of the 27-member bloc can elect their representatives directly. That amounts to more than 400 million eligible voters choosing 720 MEPs (members of European parliament).
Sure, there are plenty of things to improve - see Qatargate, a recent scandal - but voting is a civic duty. I’m sure my view are coloured by the fact that I was born and raised in a dictatorship that has held only three free and fair elections in my lifetime.
This year’s EU elections are particularly important, especially for those of us who care about building a livable future. I don’t want to frame the debate as between “environment” and “social/economic” because it is not. There won’t be any economic or social order when climate catastrophes pile up. So the fight is for a liveable future. Full stop.
Opinion polls and studies have repeatedly said this year’s elections could usher in populist and radical right-wing parties while centre-left and green parties lose votes and seats, mainly because voters struggling with the spiralling cost of living are fed up with a focus on climate policies.
“A populist right coalition of Christian democrats, conservatives, and radical right MEPs could emerge with a majority for the first time,” the European Council on Foreign Relations warned in January.
“This ‘sharp right turn’ is likely to have significant consequences for European-level policies, which will affect the foreign policy choices that the EU can make, particularly on environmental issues, where the new majority is likely to oppose ambitious EU action to tackle climate change.”
“The results of our analysis should serve as a wake-up call for European policymakers about what is at stake in the 2024 European Parliament elections.”
Climate Fatigue Overblown?
Well, two new pieces of research published in March are giving me hope.
Debunking the Backlash - Uncovering European Voters‘ Climate Preferences, a policy brief based on a survey of more than 15,000 respondents in Germany, France, and Poland, found the notion of a broad green backlash as “largely overblown”.
This narrative that voters will turn towards politicians who “promise to scale down EU climate ambitions, pause green regulation, or pivot to different topics altogether” might seem “plausible” given the farmers’ protests and the latest political developments at both national and EU levels, the brief said.
“However, what we see in our data doesn’t really bear this out,” wrote the authors from Jacques Delors Centre, Humboldt University, and University of Oxford.
For those who want to dig deep into the raw data (I haven’t had the time), they have very generously published an interactive online dashboard.
Their findings have three key strands:
1. There is no widespread backlash against climate policy. A majority of voters in these three countries are concerned about climate change, do not think climate regulation will cost them their jobs, and still wish for more ambitious climate policy.
What the graphic above shows is that the majority of respondents think policymakers should do more to fight climate change. In addition, this majority is not limited only to supporters of green and left parties.
“In Germany and Poland around 60% of those surveyed state that they are already negatively affected by climate change or expect to be so in the next five to ten years. In France this proportion even reaches as high as 80%.”
Yes, there is a sizeable group who are against more ambitious climate policies, but this is mainly linked to ideology and not concerns over whether climate policies have gone too far.
2. Policy design matters, especially for voters in the middle who support liberal and conservative parties. This group supports ambitious climate policy in general but is “sceptical about a raft of concrete measures that would impose direct costs on them as individuals”.
What does this mean? Focus on strategies that will decarbonise dirty industries or encourage clean tech (carrots) and a bit less on things like banning gas-powered cars, carbon pricing and raising taxes (sticks).
There are situations where voters are more supportive of carbon prices - when they don’t affect them directly!
“Raising the costs of emissions in industry or aviation is more popular than raising emission prices for the transport sector, gas and heating oil, or environmentally harmful groceries like meat.”
This creates a dilemma because housing, transport, and livestock are heavy polluters. So how do we get public support for important but popular policies? By compensating pretty much everyone using a progressive scale of needs, the researchers said.
Still, there are folks who just prefer the status quo and this is “especially true for supporters of the AfD in Germany”, said the brief, which I think is interesting given how many politicians are trying to pander to this crowd. How do you do that to a group that just does not believe in change or moving forward?
3. There is political scope for joint investment at EU level.
Most voters prefer to keep national subsidies to their own countries but “are surprisingly open to establishing a new EU-wide investment instrument” especially if it combines climate goals with economic security.
Jannik Jansen, policy fellow at Jacques Delors Centre and one of the authors of the report, said they saw how far-right parties have capitalised on the farmers’ protests and portrayed climate policies as overly burdensome to ordinary citizens and farmers.
This narrative “has increasingly gained traction among liberal and conservative politicians which have become more and more reluctant to support European Green Deal initiatives in the European Parliament, instead calling for a pause on climate legislation,” he told me via e-mail.
“In view of this political U-turn, we wanted to see whether the notion of a widespread green backlash is truly reflected in how people feel on the ground.”
Germany, France, and Poland were selected because they represent more than 40% of the EU’s total population and experienced heated debates around the implementation of more stringent climate policies, he added.
He also has some advice for democratic parties who might resort to knee-jerk reactions over the deluge of media coverage predicting a right-wing/anti-green parliament.
“Democratic parties should avoid to blindly mainstream the far-right parties’ narrative of a broad green backlash. On the one hand, it is questionable whether this strategy will court many supporters of far-right parties. On the other hand, this approach would simply misdiagnose where most voters stand on the issue.”
“Importantly, our survey results show that partisanship plays a great role in the formation of climate policy preferences. That also means that voters’ positions on the issue may well be malleable. If parties, therefore, decide to call for a roll-back of existing climate legislation, they could end up creating the very climate fatigue they are trying to cater to.”
He also has advice for voters and civil society groups who care about creating a liveable future.
“When young people took to the streets in the run-up to the last European elections in 2019, demanding more ambitious climate policies, it had a significant impact on the agenda under Ursula Von der Leyen’s Commission, culminating in the announcement of the European Green Deal. This time, there is a real threat that a narrow but loud minority could have a significant negative impact on the EU’s climate ambition in the next legislative term.”
“Our survey findings should reassure voters who care about the negative impacts of climate change that there is a majority of citizens who still do so as well. In the run-up to the European elections, it will be important that this majority becomes more visible.”
Common Threads
The second piece of research comes from non-profit More in Common, based on a poll of 8,250 people in France, Germany, Poland, and Spain to understand voter sentiments ahead of the elections.
I have to admit I have mixed emotions on this one, because on the one hand respondents clearly showed that the climate agenda is far from dead, but they also show that people are in a bad mood, dissatisfied with the current government (except in Poland) and think their countries are more divided than ever.
This usually opens the door to radical, far-right populists who offer easy solutions, although as history has repeatedly shown us, electing such figures or parties often end up exacerbating the divisions, not heal them.
The results on climate change are clearer cut (start from Slide 18).
A majority of people in Germany, Spain, and France believe EU must lead efforts against climate change even if other global players like the U.S. and China make less effort, and even in Poland, that figure is 42%, a tie with people who think EU should only engage at the same level as others.
Climate action is also a source of pride for a majority of respondents in all four nations, but only a small amount of people actually are aware of the Green Deal, the EU’s flagship climate policy.
Some common themes also emerged - respondents say they want climate policies that are “common sense” and fear that policies may make their lives worse or not benefit them.
Interestingly, the French think EU standards and directives are worsening their farmers’ situation. I’d like to understand how this perception came about particularly since France seems to have been the biggest beneficiary of EU’s agricultural subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
According to figures from the European Parliament, France received 17.1% of total CAP expenditure in 2021 (see second table) and 17.3% in 2019 (see Table V). No other countries come close - Spain is at a distant second, receiving less than 13%.
French farmers also get a lot more per person - 23,670 Euros on average per beneficiary versus 6,710 Euros across Europe in 2021.
I realise CAP is just *one* of the many policies the EU has around food and farming, but it is the biggest item (31%) in the EU budget, and if those receiving the most money from the EU perceive the EU as the enemy of French agriculture, I think it is worth finding out why.
I also think the survey results provide lessons for many of us in the media, policymaking and advocacy worlds on how to communicate better when it comes to tackling climate change, particularly from a food system perspective.
Above all, remember this.
Thin’s Pickings
Over 80% of the EU’s farming subsidies support emissions-intensive animal products - new study - The Conversation
This is an op-ed from the authors of a new study which found that “the vast majority of the EU’s agricultural subsidies are supporting meat and dairy farming rather than sustainable plant alternatives”. Yes, these are the same CAP subsidies I was harping on about above (and in previous issues).
This is apparently the first study to fully account for crops and other plants grown to feed animals.
Of the €57 billion annual CAP budget, €46 billion was directed towards animal-based products, mostly foods like beef, pork, chicken, dairy and eggs that “overwhelmingly drive the EU’s food-related greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, water consumption, air pollution, water pollution and more”, the authors said.
They explained how this came about: “For example, a French farmer growing wheat for pig or chicken feed will receive a subsidy for that wheat on top of the subsidy received by a livestock farmer in Denmark who imports that feed. On this basis, we show that CAP support roughly doubles for animal-based foods. For example, beef CAP subsidies increase from €0.71/kg to €1.42/kg once feed is included.”
These additional subsidies have kept meat prices artificially low, they argued.
A caveat here - these estimates are based on data from 2013 because that’s the latest year for which there is data on food flows. But one of the authors said on LinkedIn that they will look again once the 2020 data becomes available but added that they expect similar results.
You can find the original scientific paper in Nature but it’s behind a paywall.
Schools close and crops wither as ‘historic’ heatwave hits south-east Asia - The Guardian
We’ve been warned of what could happen when human-induced climate change and El Niño meet, and now Southeast Asians are living it.
“Thousands of schools in the Philippines have stopped in-person classes due to unbearable heat. In Indonesia, prolonged dry weather has caused rice prices to soar. In Thailand’s waters, temperatures are so high that scientists fear coral could be destroyed,” wrote Rebecca Ratcliffe.
A town in central Myanmar - my birthplace - recorded 44C, “the first time in south-east Asia’s climatic history that such high temperatures had been reached so early in the month”.
As always, have a good weekend, and please feel free to share this post and send tips and thoughts on mastodon @ThinInk@journa.host, my LinkedIn page, twitter @thinink, or via e-mail thin@thin-ink.net.