What next for the climate change culture wars?


 [Extract from Introduction] This perspective details how objects and technologies, like the gas stove, are becoming key sites where climate policy is located within broader politically-charged ‘culture wars’. Within this process, climate policies are inscribed with new meanings that position groups against one another. While concerns about gas stoves were linked to public health, they were presented by detractors as representative of climate action. One Fox News article argued that: “These Leftists don't give a damn about everyday Americans… Barking orders is their favorite indoor activity. And if total control buys them a holier spot in Climatarian Heaven, even better.” [2] Whilst gas stove emissions aren’t necessarily significant to fulfilling national emission reductions, any potential regulation will shift domestic energy use – due to the technology being used in close to 40% of US homes [3]. This episode illuminates an emergent shift in the narratives adopted by those opposing climate action. Rather than being primarily sceptical about climate change and mitigation and adaptation policies, political figures are working to link climate action to broader ideological battles about the economy, society, and identity. Within such battles, new objects will become key ‘artefacts’ in the climate change culture wars – becoming infused with new meanings as they emerge or are phased out. These must be understood further as failing to do so can open future environmental and climate policy to backlash, polarisation, and opposition.


Introduction
'Democrats are coming for your kitchen appliances. Their desire to control every aspect of your life knows no bounds-including how you make breakfast.' [1] In early 2023, Tom Cotton, a Republican Senator for Arkansas, tweeted the above in response to the publication of quotes from Richard Trumka Jr, a commissioner of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), who had hinted at the regulation of domestic gas stoves. Alexander Hoehn-Saric, the Chair of the CPSC quickly issued a public statement clarifying that no such ban was forthcoming. However, gas stoves now held political resonance: Fox News reported on a 'war on your kitchen' and a Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act was soon introduced to the US Congress.
This perspective details how objects and technologies, like the gas stove, are becoming key sites where climate policy is located within broader politically-charged 'culture wars' . Within this process, climate policies are inscribed with new meanings that position groups against one another. While concerns about gas stoves were linked to public health, they were presented by detractors as representative of climate action. One Fox News article argued that: 'These Leftists do not give a damn about everyday Americans… Barking orders is their favourite indoor activity. And if total control buys them a holier spot in Climatarian Heaven, even better.' [2] Whilst gas stove emissions are not necessarily significant to fulfilling national emission reductions, any potential regulation will shift domestic energy use-due to the technology being used in close to 40% of US homes [3]. This episode illuminates an emergent shift in the narratives adopted by those opposing climate action. Rather than being primarily sceptical about climate change and mitigation and adaptation policies, political figures are working to link climate action to broader ideological battles about the economy, society, and identity. Within such battles, new objects will become key 'artefacts' in the climate change culture wars-becoming infused with new meanings as they emerge or are phased out. These must be understood further as failing to do so can open future environmental and climate policy to backlash, polarisation, and opposition.

Climate change culture wars
Despite a lack of cohesive definition, the term 'culture war' has proliferated in recent years. The analysis of UK newspapers has shown an expansion of the use of the term between 1993 and 2020-incorporating the discussion of morally-charged issues and political identities [4]. These issues overlap with the political partisanship that has affected trust in government institutions and, in turn, altered perceptions of popular support for climate action [5,6].
Researchers have detailed how climate action has become enrolled within broader right-wing narratives and projects, and how right-wing figures and movements complicate climate politics [7,8]. This does not necessarily occur through denial. Far-right parties in the European Parliament have often accepted climate science but also sought to alter the policies responding to it or to make it central parts of their political messages and policies [9]. In France, the Rassemblement National (RN, National Rally) adopted a language of sustainability in its 2019 manifesto-tying environmentalism to a connection to a place or landscape, in which 'native' French populations took better care of local environments than migrants [10]. In this case, environmental policy became a proxy for Rassemblement National's broader political message linked to 'secure' borders and immigration controls.
A vocabulary of 'populism' helps us understand how climate action can become linked to wider political demands and grievances [11]. Populist politics has at its centre a logic that defines an in-group ('us') and an out-group ('them'). The former has been 'forgotten' or 'left behind' in policy, with the latter identified as an out-of-touch or uncaring elite that is holding back 'the will of the people' . Such a division of 'us' versus 'them' simplifies complex problems and narrows the available solutions. It can also victimise particular out-groups. In France, RN's division of 'native' populations (an 'in group') from migrants (a shared enemy) in an ecological sense allowed for the re-positioning of border controls as an environmental measure.
An 'us' versus 'them' narrative also allows criticism of climate policies. In 2022, UK politicians who had exercised influence over Brexit policies presented decarbonisation as unfair, undemocratic, and increasing energy costs. In March 2022, Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Brexit Party launched a new movement to campaign for a national referendum on net-zero, the policy goal of national carbon neutrality.
Farage's movement fizzled out. However, it is symbolic of a shift in which climate action in the UK became presented as incommensurate with addressing a cost-of-living crisis. In a newspaper editorial, Farage warned: 'If we are not careful, the only zero will be the amount in people's bank accounts as we send our jobs and money overseas' [12] This links climate action to the broader culture wars of national sovereignty, Brexit, and a cost-of-living crisis in the UK.

Demand-side interventions
The multi-scalar transformation necessitated by climate action represents a significant change in people's everyday lives and identities. Demand-side measures represent key moments in which centrally-devised climate policy interacts with everyday lives and identities. These interventions take form in potential regulations on energy sources, transport options, or other forms of consumption-such as gas stoves. It is here where the climate change culture wars can be found. As the gas stove debate in the USA has shown, even a minor discussion of changing how certain technologies are used can provide new terrain for polarisation. This is not a new process. In the UK in 2009, a European Commission directive to phase out incandescent light bulbs and replace them with LED products caused an outcry. Consumers panic-bought the traditional 100 W bulbs before they vanished from the high street while LED bulbs were linked to migraines and epilepsy [13]. In Tunbridge Wells in the south-east of England, a lighting shop made international news for continuing to stock luminescent bulbs. The owner told The New York Times: 'Let some government official come in and tell me I cannot sell these… I will find them wherever I can get them and sell them for whatever they cost.' [14] I grew up in Tunbridge Wells and was in my late-teens at the time of this 'lightbulb revolt' . Walking down the road, you would see signage outside the store reading: '100-WATT BULBS IN STOCK. (FOR HOW LONG WE DO NOT KNOW).' Energy efficiency policy and climate action came to symbolise bureaucratic overreach and stocking them was an act of rebellion. This characterisation retained resonance: 30% of Brexit voters in a 2017 poll said that they wanted incandescent light bulbs to return after the UK left the European Union [15]. In 2019, the administration of President Donald Trump announced that it would block new regulations to phase out incandescent bulbs in favour of more energy-efficiency alternatives.
Within the climate change culture wars, demand-side interventions can come to represent an intervention in people's lives that affects the 'in-group' and restricts them from living the lives that they want to lead. This is not purely about social acceptance of change. Household objects develop new political resonance when seemingly 'threatened' by climate policy because they are the point at which interventions become experienced in tangible, individual, and everyday terms. As Doug Heye, a strategist in the USA Republican Party, has stated: 'it is your stove, it is your lightbulb, and those are consumer issues and economic issues, they are also culture war issues… it is part of how Republicans feel that Democrats are targeting parts of Americans' everyday lives.' [16]

Challenges ahead
Despite its popularity in government policy, there is still limited clarity about what net-zero targets mean for many [17]. This ambiguity allows ground for future demand-side interventions to become positioned within these tensions of 'us' versus 'them' . In July 2023, London's ultra-low emission zone became a key political narrative: with a local election in the suburb of Uxbridge being fought (and the result later explained) as driven by opposition to the scheme. An inexhaustive list of interventions that might be enrolled into the climate change culture wars include: a. The internal combustion engine: future government regulation and taxation of fuel use and emissions representing an intervention in an entrenched way of life, primary means of transport, and form of identity and status for many. b. Low-traffic neighbourhoods: the pedestrianisation of space or implementation of new traffic measures has resulted in infrastructure being vandalised. The '15 Minute City' concept has become a key focus of protests and climate backlash in the UK in 2023, with it becoming linked to concerns about government surveillance. c. Carbon-heavy work: climate action requiring the closure of fossil fuel infrastructure will bring major changes in employment. In South Africa, the transition away from coal has prompted vocal concerns about its impacts on workers and how policy is being enacted in a top-down manner. d. Objects made using plastics derived from fossil fuels: these include clothing, electronics, and cosmetics-which are ubiquitous but without a full societal understanding of their links to the fossil fuel economy. This also includes the export of plastic waste from the Global North to the Global South and, with it, the shifting of impacts associated with its recycling or disposal.
All represent key points where a climate antipathy or backlash will soon take shape, with interventions vulnerable to being linked to entrenched conspiracy theories and populist political campaigns. These policy dilemmas will take diverse forms across different countries-and likely entail divergent experiences in the Global North and South due to important contextual factors. However, all show that the climate change culture war has any demand-side intervention in its sights, regardless of its potential benefits for emissions reductions. It is not too late to repurpose definitions of net-zero to include commitments to climate justice [18]. A failure to do so will leave open a space for future policies to be enrolled within broader climate change culture wars, due to a lack of what a 'net-zero future' might be.
There is fertile ground for these right-wing populist ecologies seeking to discredit climate action. Recent years have seen dramatic protests, which might, at first, appear to be against climate policies, such as the Boerenprotesten in the Netherlands (opposed to plans to cap the number of livestock) and the Gilets Jaunes in France (initially against high fuel prices and a rumoured fuel tax). Movements such as the Gilets Jaunes highlight a tension that is yet to be fully reconciled in climate action: whilst policy may be introduced to address anxieties about the 'end of the world' , its implementation will have impacts on the lives of those already struggling and worrying about making it to the 'end of the month' [19]. Further research is required to detect possible interventions and rebuttals of the climate change cultures wars: one starting point is Hornsey and Lewandowsky's work on climate scepticism, highlighting six interventions including using value-based frames, establishing new climate norms, and leveraging 'friendly' actors within conservative movements [20].
Any solutions or interventions require a reckoning with what is far from 'politics as normal' and has, instead, been transformed into an age of political antagonism. This has important consequences that necessitate the diversification of the methods and disciplines that contribute to climate science beyond purely ensuring the social acceptance of policies [21]. When advocating for climate action, we must also develop an understanding of how and why demand-side interventions become positioned along the lines of 'us' versus 'them' , as well as what grievances and worries these new narratives tap into, and how such processes can be countered.

Data availability statement
No new data were created or analysed in this study.