Re: Offering simplistic solutions
. . . February 2 column.
Lara Meyer wrote that populism refers to leaders who use acts of cynicism and dishonesty to pit one group of citizens against another, and that such leaders offer simplistic solutions to very complex problems. That brought this response from Iain Boyle: “Many left-wing populists exist; two we could immediately identify with are Ardern and Trudeau. Latin America and Europe are littered with left-wing populists.”
Wikipedia: Left-wing populism is a political ideology that combines left-wing politics with populist rhetoric and themes . . . elements of anti-elitism . . . opposition to the Establishment, and speaking for the “common people”.
Wikipedia: Right-wing populism is a political ideology that has recurring themes of neo-nationalism, social conservatism, economic nationalism and fiscal conservatism.
Populist parties have been on the rise in recent years, and are increasingly engaging with climate issues.
Clear evidence of a link between people supporting right-wing political parties and climate-change scepticism has been identified in a new study from the University of Oxford and the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. The study finds several significant differences in attitudes towards climate change between supporters of populist parties and non-supporters; it did not find a link between support for left-wing populist parties and climate change denial, but did observe respondents with less interest in political issues were more likely to be climate-change sceptics.
This populism trend is worrying.
During his term as president, Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement and supported increased use of coal. Brazil’s populist president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) also had an anti-environmental agenda. Another climate change denier, he opened the Amazon rainforest to uncontrolled deforestation and delivered the strongest anti-science speech imaginable at the UN General Assembly in 2021. Also in South America, Argentina now has a populist, climate change-denying president Javier Milei who promises to slash research funding and shut down key science agencies.
Right-wing populism continues to shape the electoral landscape in Europe, East Asia and Latin America.
Thanks Lara.
Bob Hughes
