Greenlash: Understanding Climate Change Opposition
Fiona, Luke, Alex and Sam at the Octopus offices
February 2026
Featuring: Luke Shore, Founder, Project Tempo; Sam Hall, Director Conservative Environment Network; and Alex Hall, Deputy Director, Industrial Innovation Europe, Clean Air Task Force. Moderator: Fiona Howarth.
February’s event - the first in a new partnership with Clean Air Task Force (CATF) - focused on “Greenlash”, the growing political resistance to climate action. The discussion was not about whether climate change is real, or whether decarbonisation technologies work. That debate is largely settled, at least amongst most UK voters. The question under examination was more uncomfortable: why political consent for the transition is fracturing, and what that means for policy, investment and delivery over the next decade.
Public belief is holding; political consent is not
Luke Shore opened with data from Project Tempo that challenges a common assumption. Across the UK - including among Conservative and Reform voters - belief in climate change, support for government action, and backing for core technologies such as renewables and nuclear remain broadly intact.
What has shifted is salience. Cost of living pressures now dominate voter priorities, while climate has slipped down the list. This creates a political asymmetry: voters still broadly support action, but are not actively mobilised around it, while opposition, often framed around cost, fairness and legitimacy, is louder, more organised and more politically useful.
In that context, climate policy becomes vulnerable not because people reject it, but because it is no longer protected by urgency.
“Net zero” as political shorthand - and liability
One recurring theme was language. “Net zero” remains a necessary scientific and accounting concept. Politically, however, it has become overloaded, shorthand for cost, compulsion, inconvenience and elite imposition, and a lightning rod for media hostility.
This matters because policy is now being judged less on outcomes than on what it is perceived to symbolise. Measures that might once have been debated on technical or economic grounds are instead absorbed into a broader cultural and political narrative. Whether or not “net zero” deserves that baggage is largely beside the point; the baggage exists.
Climate policy has become industrial and security policy
The conversation repeatedly returned to energy prices, industrial competitiveness and security. Climate action is no longer framed, by supporters or opponents, as environmental policy alone. It is now inseparable from industrial strategy, trade exposure and national resilience.
Until a cleaner energy system is experienced as a cheaper and more reliable one, not just modelled in theory, resistance will continue to find traction. Abstract claims about long-term cost reduction struggle to compete with short-term bill shocks and visible industrial decline.
The conservative critique is substantive, not nihilistic
Sam Hall provided one of the clearest articulations of where resistance on the political right is now coming from. The shift is not primarily about rejecting climate science. It rests on three substantive critiques:
First, cost. The UK’s high industrial and household electricity prices are seen as economically damaging and socially corrosive, regardless of their underlying causes.
Second, security. In a more unstable geopolitical environment, climate policy is increasingly weighed against defence spending, supply chain resilience and national self-interest.
Third, governance. There is growing resistance to what is perceived as a technocratic, top-down model of delivery - involving statutory targets, quasi-independent institutions and judicial enforcement - which some see as constraining democratic choice and ministerial control, whether this is fair analysis or not.
These arguments may be contested, but they are not frivolous. Ignoring them simply allows them to harden into opposition.
Industrial reality constrains political ambition
Alex Carr grounded the discussion in the realities of industrial transition. From CATF’s perspective, climate policy now sits squarely inside industrial and trade policy. Europe is attempting to decarbonise heavy industry while facing some of the highest industrial energy prices in the world, a combination that risks accelerating deindustrialisation and carbon leakage.
Clean energy systems must therefore deliver not just emissions reductions, but firm power, resilience and long-term cost stability. Technology optionality, including clean firm power, matters more in this context than ideological preference. The question is not which technologies are “pure”, but which combinations can sustain industrial activity while reducing emissions.
A demand for honesty without self-sabotage
One of the strongest dynamics in the room was the appetite for a more adult conversation. The audience pushed hard on trade-offs, market design, and whether it is possible to acknowledge what isn’t working without handing ammunition to opponents.
There was no appetite for denial, but also little tolerance for oversimplification. Participants repeatedly returned to the tension between internal honesty and external credibility: how to debate policy failure, inefficiency or mis-design without reinforcing hostile narratives.
This is a real dilemma, and one that climate advocates have not yet resolved.
Moving beyond defence
There was also a clear desire to move past defensiveness. Not “how do we rebut greenlash?”, but “how do we rebuild momentum?”.
The answers that surfaced were notably practical: jobs, local benefit, innovation, energy security, and visible improvements in household finances. Not abstract targets, but tangible outcomes people can see and feel.
What this leaves unresolved
The discussion did not produce neat conclusions, and that was a strength, not a failure. What emerged instead was a clearer diagnosis:
Public belief in climate action remains robust.
Political consent for delivery is fragile.
Cost, security and governance now dominate the debate.
Industrial realities constrain rhetoric.
Communication failures compound policy weaknesses.
For policymakers, investors and operators, the implication is uncomfortable but unavoidable: the next phase of the transition will be shaped less by technological feasibility than by political economy. Ignoring that shift will not make it go away.
We’re grateful to Clean Air Task Force for supporting this discussion - and for backing a series of Earth Set events and podcasts this year that aim to engage seriously with the political, industrial and economic realities of the transition.
