Germany is among the most studied countries in environmental and climate politics due to the distinct features of its political system and some pioneering policy decisions made in the past, such as the feed-in electricity tariffs to encourage the use of new renewable energy technologies. One of the most outstanding features of the German political system is the sustained electoral strength of its green political party, Alliance ’90/The Greens (henceforth: the Greens) since the 1980s. The Greens served as a junior coalition partner in two federal governments between 1998 and 2005 and are members of the current federal government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Since 2011, the Minister-President of the State of Baden-Württemberg has been the Green politician Winfried Kretschmann, and in many other states the Greens have participated in government as junior coalition partners since the mid 1980s.

As the Greens “own” the issue of environmental protection (Abou-Chadi Reference Abou-Chadi2016), they are the obvious electoral preference of Germans who are concerned about the environment. The other political parties are not against environmental protection, but they give less priority to it than the Greens (Carter Reference Carter2013). Since all German governments, regardless of their ideological composition, have adopted public policies addressing environmental degradation, environmental issues have been of mostly moderate-level salience: Citizens were aware of policy activity and this was enough for most of them.

However, this changed in two ways in 2018. First, the salience (i.e. the awareness of the citizens) of environmental issues increased dramatically; second, the public’s attention shifted away from environmental protection to tackling climate change, which until then had been perceived as a mere aspect of environmental protection and consequently had received little attention as a stand-alone issue, including from political parties (Farstad Reference Farstad2018).

What resulted in this shift in the German public’s awareness of climate change? In August 2018, the then teenager Greta Thunberg boycotted school and instead protested in front of the Swedish parliament to call for more urgent and effective climate action. The protest rapidly attracted followers, giving birth to the Fridays for Future (FFF) movement, which borrowed its name from the corresponding social media hashtag (Venghaus, Henseleit, and Belka Reference Venghaus, Henseleit and Belka2022). As in other countries, and despite the fact that Germany has an electorally successful Green party, FFF succeeded in mobilizing a large number of individuals, of whom most were newcomers to social movements, such as pupils (Moor et al. Reference Moor, de Vydt, Uba and Wahlström2021). Given the mobilization of young people in particular, FFF credibly made a case for the generational aspect of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the need for urgent climate action in order to protect the interests of current young and future generations (Tosun, Geese, and Lorenzoni Reference Tosun, Geese and Lorenzoni2023).

The mobilization of this group was unprecedented, even in Germany, and resulted in solidarity and the launch of spin-off movements. The involvement of these groups in climate activism has helped to draw even broader attention to the issue of climate change and resulted in an increased salience of climate change.

In this chapter, we hypothesize increased salience to have resulted in a politicization of the issue and affected climate politics in general and party competition more specifically. In the remainder, we assess this argument empirically and show that Germany has embarked on a journey to reduce carbon emissions from burning coal and is in the process of changing the status quo of its climate policy.

2.1 Is Climate Change Salient and Politicized?

Politicization, defined in different ways (see Paterson, Tobin, and VanDeveer, Chapter 1, this volume), has long been a research interest of political science and has been studied in relation to electoral campaigns, voting behavior, and parliamentary representation. An increasing number of empirical studies have applied this notion to European Union (EU) politics following a rise in the number of legal competences transferred to EU institutions (Grande and Hutter Reference Grande and Hutter2016; Wilde and Zürn Reference Wilde and Zürn2012). Recently, politicization has also entered policy studies. In this context, Feindt, Schwindenhammer, and Tosun (Reference Feindt, Schwindenhammer and Tosun2021), for instance, contend that political action can be conducive to policy change as long as it does not surpass a “critical” level.

In the literature, the conceptualization of politicization by Wilde (Reference Wilde2011) has received considerable attention. Wilde argues that politicization is observable in rising salience, mobilization, and polarization. Consequently, salience is only one of three indicators and does not alone account for politicization. Mobilization, the second indicator, refers to an increase in the number of political actors engaged in an issue and the resources they spend on their engagement. The third indicator, polarization, denotes the emergence of (extremely) opposing demands in addressing the issue concerned (Wilde and Zürn Reference Wilde and Zürn2012).

As stated in the opening section of this chapter and argued consistently in the literature, the emergence of FFF has increased the salience of climate change. The data from the 2022 Politbarometer survey confirm this assessment. The Politbarometer has been conducted since 1977 on an almost monthly basis by the Research Group for Elections. The survey focuses on the opinions and attitudes of the German voting population on current political topics, parties, and politicians, and it screens the voting intention of the respondents. It also provides an apt database for learning about the salience of climate and energy issues and how they have developed over time. The survey item capturing an issue’s salience is the problem which the survey participants consider to be of the highest importance in Germany. Figure 2.1 illustrates the salience of energy and climate issues, which were treated as one joint category, between 2000 and 2022.

Figure 2.1 Percentage share of individuals indicating climate and energy policy as the most important problem in Germany, 2000–2022.

Note: Own elaboration based on data from the Research Group for Elections, www.forschungsgruppe.de (the full data are available from Forschungsgruppe Wahlen E.V. 2024).

Figure 2.1 long description.

Figure 2.1Long description

Line graph the percentage share of individuals indicating climate and energy policy, migration and refugees, and COVID-19 as the most important problem in Germany from 2000 to 2022. The graph includes three data series: solid line for climate/energy, dotted line for migration/refugees, and dashed line for COVID-19. Notable peaks are observed around 2015 for migration/refugees, in 2019 for climate/energy, and from 2020 to 2022 for COVID-19. Data source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen E.V. 2024.

The data show that there was some concern throughout the 2000s and 2010s over climate and energy issues, but it was volatile. A well-known event that drove up public concern among Germans regarding climate and energy was the accident that occurred on March 11, 2011, at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. This event marked a turning point for nuclear power production in particular and the energy policy of the federal government in general (see, e.g., Jahn and Korolczuk Reference Jahn and Korolczuk2012). Attention to climate and energy issues went down in the second half of the 2010s because of the massive influx of refugees to Germany and the EU in 2015 and 2016, which became the dominant concern among Germans. However, in 2019 climate concern skyrocketed, which coincides with the emergence of FFF. The outbreak of COVID-19 then became the main concern in 2020. In 2021 and 2022, both issues competed against each other for attention. The last data point captured by Figure 2.1 for the year 2022 shows that climate change was on the rise again, whereas COVID-19 was of minimal concern to Germans, which is plausible given the wide availability of vaccines and the emergence of milder virus variants.

The second indicator of politicization, mobilization, is given because of the emergence and institutionalization of FFF, though it should be noted that FFF was not the only social movement targeting climate change which emerged around the same time. A second emblematic group is Extinction Rebellion, which has equally mobilized large numbers of people, particularly young people, since it was founded in 2018. Predating the founding of these two groups, mobilization for climate action had increased in 2015 following the high-profile Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Paris, where the post-Kyoto international climate regime was negotiated (Moor et al. Reference Moor, de Vydt, Uba and Wahlström2021). Thus, overall, the degree of mobilization was high in 2018 and 2019.

However, for a complete assessment of the politicization of climate change, the third indicator, polarization, is paramount. To assess the degree of polarization, the analysis by Berker and Pollex (Reference Berker and Pollex2023) is helpful since it offers insights into how the German political parties have reacted to FFF. The German party system comprises the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) as the right-leaning parties, in particular on environmental issues. The left-leaning parties are the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, and the socialist Left. In addition, the German party system comprises the far-right populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which was first represented in the Federal Parliament in 2017. Berker and Pollex (Reference Berker and Pollex2023) show that the Greens were the most supportive of FFF and the AfD the least supportive – a finding that resonates with the prevailing view in the literature, namely that right-wing populist parties tend to be dismissive of the anthropogenic origins of climate change (see, e.g., Lockwood Reference Lockwood2018).

The AfD’s stance on climate change aligns with the corresponding attitudes of the party’s voters. Figure 2.2 presents survey data from the collaborative research project Digitalization in Dialogue. The data were collected in October 2021 and cover information on the attitudes and preferences of 1,075 respondents who, as a whole, are representative of the German population in terms of age, gender, and education. The survey shows the share of survey participants who believe climate change is mostly or exclusively manmade. The responses are broken down by the political parties for which the participants intended to vote. The figure reveals that with almost 85 percent, the share of individuals agreeing that climate change is mostly or exclusively manmade is highest among supporters of the Greens and lowest among supporters of the AfD, where the agreement rate is 19 percent.

Figure 2.2 Percentage share of individuals indicating that climate change is mostly or only manmade, 2022.

Note: Own elaboration based on data from the Digitalization in Dialogue (https://digilog-bw.de/) collaborative project.

Figure 2.2 long description.

Figure 2.2Long description

Bar chart the percentage of individuals who believe climate change is mostly or only manmade in 2022. The chart includes data for political parties: AfD, FDP, CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, and Left. The Greens have the highest percentage, followed by the Left, SPD, CDU/CSU, FDP, and AfD. Data sourced from the Digitalization in Dialogue project.

The AfD is the most vocal against climate action; while the other parties agree on the need for climate action, they differ in their preferred types of policy instruments or their levels of ambition. As the past electoral campaigns have witnessed, the mainstream parties agree on a set of issues, which results in a constellation in which they compete against each other, but jointly against the AfD. From this, the following situation emerges for polarization. In terms of whether climate action should be taken at all, the polarization concerns the AfD and its supporters on the one side and all the other mainstream parties and their supporters on the other. In relation to the level of ambition of climate policy, the Greens represent one extreme and the FDP the other. Altogether, the issue is polarized but not excessively so, since the main question for most parties and their supporters is not whether climate action is necessary but what kind of climate action they consider necessary or desirable.

Overall, the emergence of FFF helped to mobilize action for climate change and increased the salience of this issue among young people, which resulted in rising issue salience within the broader population. At the time when FFF began, the issue became polarized but not excessively so, since all of Germany’s mainstream political parties agreed on the need for policy action, thereby distinguishing themselves from the AfD. Consequently, all three criteria for politicization as put forth by Wilde (Reference Wilde2011) were met in Germany in the period between 2018 and 2021.

In line with Feindt, Schwindenhammer, and Tosun (Reference Feindt, Schwindenhammer and Tosun2021), we hypothesize that this high, though not excessive, level of politicization resulted in an opportunity to adopt more ambitious policies addressing climate change. The impact of politicization on climate politics lends itself to more refined expectations because politicization has been widely applied in comparative politics already. Given the increased politicization of climate change vote-seeking, responsive political parties should not only integrate energy and climate policy issues into their election manifestos and basic policy programs but also develop a distinct policy position on them that resonates with the policy preferences of their (likely) voters. Furthermore, and given the support of a clear majority of German citizens and likely voters for increasing climate action (Bohdanowicz Reference Bohdanowicz2021), we postulate that all mainstream parties – CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, and FDP – will converge in their positions on climate change over time, so that they promote more political activities to fight climate change. In line with its character as a right-wing populist party, the AfD should, conversely, adopt an opposite stance on climate policy compared to the center-right and center-left parties and should thus favor less state activity in fighting climate change, which is, according to the AfD 2016 party program, not caused by human activities. Because the socialist Left party also incorporates populist elements in their program, we expect them to be less in favor of more state activities to fight climate change, too.

2.2 Issue Politicization as a Driver of Policy Change

Because of its large industrial sector, Germany is one of the EU member states with above-average GHG emissions relative to its population. Between 2005 and 2019, the country’s carbon emissions fell by 18 percent, indicating that some moderate-level climate action had been taken by the various governments of Chancellor Angela Merkel (2005–2021). However, Germany’s performance lagged behind the EU-wide reduction of carbon emissions of 19 percent for the same period. The reduction in carbon emissions mostly resulted from an increase in the share of renewable energy, the switch from coal to gas, and the conversion of its coal-fired power plants into gas-fired ones, as well as from the implementation of the EU Emissions Trading System (European Parliamentary Research Service 2021).

The most challenging aspect of German climate policy has concerned the role of hard coal and lignite (Markard, Rinscheid, and Widdel Reference Markard, Rinscheid and Widdel2021). The coal sector has been the backbone of the German industry and an important generator of jobs, so the regions that will be affected by the phaseout will need to undergo fundamental transformations and receive financial support in order to reduce the social impact. However, it is worth noting that the coal industry was also contested because of its adverse effects on the environment, but protests against it were mostly local. Compared to coal, nuclear power had been more contested in Germany, and the Greens have predominantly been anti-nuclear power since the formation of their West German predecessor in 1980. Therefore, nationwide environmental organizations had focused on mobilizing against nuclear power, paying limited attention to coal (Brauers, Oei, and Walk Reference Brauers, Oei and Walk2020).

However, the EU’s announcement in 2017 that it would adopt stricter emission standards for large combustion plants (i.e. combustion installations with a rated thermal input exceeding 50 MW) burning coal and lignite as a fuel put pressure on the German federal government to take action. Therefore, even before FFF emerged, the ruling parties of the CDU/CSU and the SPD agreed in the coalition contract of March 2018 to phase out coal-fired power plants, which must be regarded as a radical shift from the previously existing policy regime.

To this end, the government launched, as stated in the coalition agreement, a “Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment” (known as the Coal Commission), which consisted of four chairs and twenty-four representatives from industry, unions, environmental NGOs, the German states, and selected scientists. Multistakeholder commissions are a typical feature of the German political system; as an instrument for incorporating expertise and interests from different groups, they have been informing policymaking in Germany since the 1960s (Müller-Hansen et al. Reference Müller-Hansen, Lee, Callaghan, Jankin and Minx2022).

The Coal Commission was launched on June 6, 2018, and presented its policy recommendations on January 26, 2019. Most importantly, it recommended the gradual phaseout of coal-fired power generation, ending completely no later than the end of 2038. To achieve this goal, the proposal recommended that by 2022, the power generated from anthracite and lignite (two types of coal) should be reduced to around 15 GW. By 2030, this figure would be reduced further, to an output of about 8 GW for anthracite-fired power stations and 9 GW for lignite-fired power stations, respectively. By 2038 at the latest, the use of coal-fired power stations is to be completely ended (Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment 2019).

Some groups regarded the recommendations of the Coal Commission as a success, whereas scientists, climate experts, and social movements such as FFF criticized it for not being ambitious enough (Brauers, Oei, and Walk Reference Brauers, Oei and Walk2020). Analyzing the debate on the social media platform then known as Twitter, Müller-Hansen et al. (Reference Müller-Hansen, Lee, Callaghan, Jankin and Minx2022) show a negative trend of average sentiment scores throughout the entire period of study – from January 2017 to February 2020 – as well as a polarization of sentiments on the work of the Coal Commission over time. While the online debate on the coal phaseout was strongly affected by events related to the working of the Coal Commission, FFF and their online activities were also important for stimulating discussion among Twitter users. FFF held a negative view on both the recommendations of the Coal Commission and the Phaseout of Coal-Fired Power Plants Act adopted on July 3, 2020, which directly translated into law the recommendations made by the Coal Commission.

In addition to setting the wheels in motion for phasing out coal-fired power plants and banning the deployment of new coal-fired plants after August 14, 2020, with the exception of those that received their operation licenses before January 29, 2020, this act promised financial compensation to operators of coal-fired plants. This clause has been criticized by environmental and climate groups as being too generous (Gearino Reference Gearino2020) and reflects the Coal Commission’s attention to the notion of a just transition and to transition assistance policies that target potential losers in the process (Bang, Rosendahl, and Böhringer Reference Bang, Rosendahl and Böhringer2022).

In addition to the Phaseout of Coal-Fired Power Plants Act, the federal government amended the German Renewable Energy Sources Act to codify the goal of raising the percentage of renewables to 65 percent by 2030. And through the Fuel Emissions Trading Act of January 2021, the federal government introduced a price of EUR 25 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted from the transport and heat generation sectors. The prices will increase in 2025, and from the following year onward emissions certificates will be auctioned (European Parliamentary Research Service 2021).

According to Brauers, Oei, and Walk (Reference Brauers, Oei and Walk2020: 244), “rising civil society pressure, as well as from the coal regions demanding financial support, pushed the government to introduce a ‘Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment’ in 2018.” While we agree with this statement, we contend that it is important to add that the German federal government was also under pressure to address the issue because of the EU. In fact, we are inclined to argue that it was above all the pressure from the EU that induced the Bundestag to make reforms and that it was the level of politicization, as it unfolded from the end of 2018 and throughout 2019, which affected the government’s work on the Coal Commission and the level of ambition inherent in its recommendations.

Reflecting on the theoretical argument put forth by Feindt, Schwindenhammer, and Tosun (Reference Feindt, Schwindenhammer and Tosun2021), we can state that politicization did not trigger policy change but facilitated and shaped the outcome of the corresponding process, while pressure exerted by FFF and other climate policy advocates resulted in a modification of the coal phaseout trajectory after the Greens became a junior partner in the coalition government of Olaf Scholz. In response to ongoing criticism that the phaseout would take too long, the Federal Parliament adopted on December 1, 2021, an act in order to bring forward to 2030 the phaseout of coal in the Rhenish lignite area in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most important coal-producing state.

2.3 Issue Politicization as a Driver of Electoral Competition

We now take a closer look at the positions the political parties’ candidates adopted on climate change between 2017 and 2021, a period that covers the year 2018 when climate change became the most important problem in Germany as viewed by the public (see Figure 2.1). The focus on the candidate level allows for a more conservative test of our expectation that parties respond to the politicization of issues. The conservativeness of the approach results from the fact that candidates nominated by the respective political party normally follow the party line when positioning themselves on issues; however, they may choose not to, since the characteristics of the electoral districts in which the candidates compete for votes can set incentives to deviate from the party’s position (Bäck and Debus Reference Bäck and Debus2019; Baumann, Debus, and Müller Reference Baumann, Debus and Müller2015). If the parties’ candidates shifted their position on climate change between 2017 and 2021 in a decisive manner, then we can assume that the respective party changed its position not only at the leadership level but also at the candidate level.

A further advantage of focusing on the candidate level instead of the party leadership level is the availability of data that cover the positions of the parliamentary candidates on fighting climate change. We make use of the German Candidate Studies for the 2017 and 2021 Bundestag elections (GLES 2018, 2022). This dataset covers attitudes, policy preferences, and individual characteristics of the candidates for the 2017 and 2021 Federal Parliament elections and is part of both the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) research network. The data were collected using a survey on the candidates of the six parliamentary party groups that were represented in the federal parliaments elected in 2017 and 2021. Participants of the candidate study were asked about their position on climate change by means of the following question: “Some believe that much more needs to be done in politics to combat climate change. Others believe that policies to combat climate change have already gone far too far. What is your opinion on combating climate change?”

All candidates were asked to participate in the study by mail or email; they included candidates from CDU and the CSU (the CSU only competes for votes in the state of Bavaria and is therefore considered in the following as a separate party), the SPD, the AfD, the FDP, the Left, and the Greens. In the case of the 2017 candidate study, 803 of the 2,516 candidates participated in the survey and completed it; in the 2021 candidate study, 735 partial and full interviews were carried out during the data collection process, which took place in the four months after the respective election.

Figures 2.3 and 2.4 show the distribution and median position of the candidates on climate change policy after the 2017 and 2021 elections. The candidates were asked about their position on a policy dimension differentiating between preferences for more climate action or less. In the case of the 2017 federal election, when migration and integration were the most important problems for the voters and climate change was not so salient among the population (see Figure 2.1), the candidates clearly differed – on average – in their positions on the issue of change. While candidates of the right-wing AfD and of the center-right parties the CDU, CSU, and FDP stated on average that existing climate policy was sufficient, left-leaning parties, and here in particular the Greens, called for more climate action (see Figure 2.3). There is, furthermore, a high level of intraparty diversity, in particular within the CDU and the FDP, indicating that the candidates of these parties varied a lot in their position on fighting climate change, possibly because their respective party leadership did not adopt a clear and consistent policy position on that very issue.

Figure 2.3 Climate policy positions of candidates of the major German parties for the 2017 Bundestag election.

Note: Own elaboration and calculation based on GLES (2018). The presented boxplots provide information on the distribution of the climate policy positions within the respective party. The line within the box shows the median position; the box provides information on the 25th and 75th percentile of the distribution of climate policy positions among the candidates of the parties. Dots indicate candidates that have climate policy positions outside the 1.5 interquartile range, which are indicates by the whiskers.

Figure 2.3 long description.

Figure 2.3Long description

Boxplot chart displaying climate policy positions of major German parties candidates for the 2017 Bundestag election. The chart includes data for CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Alliance 90/The Greens, The Left, and AfD. Each boxplot shows the median, 25th and 75th percentiles, and outliers beyond the 1.5 interquartile range. The x-axis represents the scale from 1 (favors) to 11 (against) more activities to fight climate change.

Figure 2.4 Climate policy positions of candidates of the major German parties for the 2021 Bundestag election.

Note: Own elaboration and calculation based on GLES (2022). See also the notes for Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.4 long description.

Figure 2.4Long description

Box plot chart displaying climate policy positions of major German parties for the 2021 Bundestag election. The x-axis represents a scale from 1 to 11 indicating favorability towards activities to fight climate change, while the y-axis lists the parties: CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Alliance 90/The Greens, The Left, and AfD. Each box plot shows the distribution of positions within each party, including median, quartiles, and outliers.

In 2021, when climate change became a politicized issue, the intraparty heterogeneity on fighting climate change decreased and the positions of the candidates converged clearly toward one that is more in favor of more ambitious climate action. The only exception regarding the latter is the AfD: The candidates of this party moved to the opposite side of this dimension and preferred, on average, significantly less climate action. In contrast to our expectation, the Left and its candidates did not change their position on climate change and preferred more climate action; however, there are, as the boxplot in Figure 2.4 indicates, a number of candidates of the Left who differed from this position and preferred less climate action. No such variation existed in the AfD. This indicates that the position of the candidates from the Left is less cohesive than it is for those of the AfD when it comes to climate action.

The positions of the two largest German parties – the “catch-all” parties the CDU/CSU and the SPD – were, in contrast to 2017, very similar on climate change in 2021, and even the market-liberal FDP showed a position similar to that of the CDU/CSU and the SPD with regard to support for climate action.

These findings not only align with our expectations but also support the reasoning of the studies by Kriesi and their coauthors (Kriesi et al. Reference Kriesi, Grande and Lachat2006, Reference Kriesi, Grande and Lachat2008), who regard environmental issues and related policy areas such as climate change as part of a broader societal cleavage that differentiates between left-libertarian parties, such as the Greens, on the one side, and right-wing populist parties, such as the AfD, on the other. These two parties form the extreme ends of the climate policy dimension we are studying here, which indicates that an increase in the salience and politicization of climate policy can result in greater support for the parties that formulate the clearest and most extreme positions on how to deal with climate change.

The convergence of the climate policy positions of the mainstream parties provides an opportunity for more ambitious climate action. This interpretation is supported, inter alia, by the fact that the 2022 act on the accelerated coal phaseout in the industrial Rhenish lignite area was supported by 523 Members of Parliament (MPs) and rejected by only 92, indicating cross-parliamentary support, including from factions affiliated with the opposition. Indeed, the oppositional Christian Democrats voted in favor of the bill initiated by the traffic light coalition (the FDP, the SPD, and the Greens), while the AfD and the Left voted against it (for details on this vote in the Bundestag, see Deutscher Bundestag 2022).

It will be interesting to see how this new political constellation acts in future climate policy proposals. What is already apparent is that the MPs of the different factions agree on the need to decarbonize the energy sector, though they hold differing views on the other sectors.

Most importantly, the decarbonization of the traffic sector is likely to spark more controversy than the measures targeting the energy sector. In fact, one of the main demands of FFF, as well as of more radical spin-off movements such as the Last Generation, is to introduce a general speed limit on the Autobahn (motorway), on which the views among Germans are heavily polarized. The polarization is also reflected in the parties’ positions on this policy demand: The right-leaning parties – the CDU/CSU, the FDP, and the AfD – oppose a general speed limit, whereas the left-leaning parties support it. The introduction of general speed limit would mean a fundamental shift in Germany’s identity as a “car state.”

2.4 Discussion and Conclusion

In this chapter, we assessed the extent to which the emergence of FFF resulted in a politicization of climate change and how this affected climate policy and politics from 2018 to 2022. While the emergence of FFF itself is a manifestation of the issue of politicization, that is, of societal mobilization, it has been accompanied by an increase in the salience of climate change and a polarization of how political parties and their electoral candidates have positioned themselves on it. Thus, from 2018 onward, climate change underwent strong politicization; while this then decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, it increased again afterward. In Germany, in late 2023, climate change was widely regarded as an important issue and one that requires policy action.

The politicization resulted in a situation in which the former federal government of Angela Merkel, after years of hesitation, took an important yet painful step to curb the country’s carbon emissions: the gradual phaseout of coal-fired power plants. In light of the importance of industry and the coal sector to the country, this decision was of a transformative nature. A transformative policy approach is what Germany needs in order to reduce its carbon emissions to such a degree that they are proportionate to its population size and in line with the EU’s reduction targets. However, the phaseout of coal-fired power plants also came at a price. The government granted the energy producers compensation payments which many criticized as being too high and benefiting loss-making power plants through the creation of windfall profits (Tiedemann and Müller-Hansen Reference Tiedemann and Müller-Hansen2023).

As the analysis of the positions of the political parties and their electoral candidates has shown, the mainstream political parties have converged in their positions on climate change and the need for climate action. The only exceptions have and continue to be the AfD, which holds a dismissive stance on climate action, and some intraparty factions within the socialist Left. However, this convergence referred to climate policy in abstract terms and not to the specific policy measures supported by the individual parties. The current federal government is ideologically heterogeneous as it comprises two center-left parties – the SPD and the Greens – and the fiscally conservative FDP. Since they entered into office in December 2021, the policy positions of the Greens and the FDP in particular have diverged. In line with their ideology, the Greens have pushed for more ambitious climate action, which the FDP, also in line with its market-liberal ideology, has opposed. The best-known case is the FDP’s opposition to the Building Energy law proposed by the federal minister of the economy, Robert Habeck (the Greens), to phase out gas and oil heating. The liberal FDP delayed the introduction of the bill to the Federal Parliament as it disapproved of its stipulations, which led to an increase in the number of intragovernmental conflicts.

The present situation – in which the Greens are a member of the federal government and actually propose climate policies while the issue is politicized – is different from the one before they entered government. Now the politicization rather results in parties diverging on the corresponding policy positions and in a more contentious climate politics. In the longer run, the politicization of the issue in combination with the stock of climate policies that entail not only benefits but also costs to certain groups may require strategies that ensure the stability of climate policies, for example by depoliticizing the issue. Otherwise, depending on the preferences of the electorate and of future governments, it might be strategically reasonable to dismantle climate policy.

Despite Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the implications for Germany’s energy mix, which used to rely heavily on Russian gas, the coal phaseout was not questioned while the shutdown of the last three operating nuclear power stations in April 2023 was. However, in November 2023 the federal minister of finance, Christian Lindner, of the FDP cast doubts on the country’s ability to phase out coal-fired power plants by 2030. It remains to be seen how the politics around the coal phaseout will evolve given that in addition to Russia’s war on Ukraine there now exists a conflict in the Middle East which could affect oil prices.

In their introduction to this volume, Paterson, Tobin, and VanDeveer state that the literature treats politicization and policy change as one strategy and depoliticization and policy stability as another. Based on the analysis of the German case between 2017 and 2021, we can confirm that politicization can change climate policy and politics. However, by drawing on the situation after 2021 especially, when more policy action took place thanks to the government participation of the Greens, the case can also offer a caveat that politicization cannot be the only mechanism for the long-term implementation of a transformative policy agenda. Politicization can entail an expansion in the density and the level of ambition of climate policy, but it can also make climate policy prone to dismantling and ultimately reduce the level of ambition. We know from the literature that dismantling is more difficult to achieve than expansion, but we equally know that it happens, even if less directly or less visibly (Burns and Tobin Reference Burns and Tobin2020).

We invite future research to pay more attention to the relationship between politicization, policy change, and changes in the political dynamics. What extensive literature otherwise seems to have neglected until now is how a changing stock of public policy adopted in response to politicization affects the degree of the politicization of the future political process. We suggest studying this aspect particularly for climate change governance, given that it will require sustained policy action for a long period of time.

California has provided a test case over the last twenty years, showing other governments how disparate interest groups – environmental justice activists, lobbyists, industry, labor unions, policymakers, and scientists – can collaborate and stabilize comprehensive climate action policies (Méndez Reference Méndez2020; Rabe Reference Rabe, Goldsmith and Kettl2009).Footnote ¹ Such negotiations can be contentious, in part because participants’ ideas of what climate change solutions should entail are often shaped by unspoken worldviews (the social, political, and cultural attitudes toward the world that orient people’s actions). These differences in worldview, if unacknowledged, can lead to the breakdown of trust among groups that are nominally working toward the same goal: reducing the harm that climate change will do to human societies and our planet (Ballew et al. Reference Ballew, Goldberg, Rosenthal, Cutler and Leiserowitz2019: 3; Hoffman Reference Hoffman2015). Nonetheless, confrontations and collaborations between groups with differing worldviews have the potential to reshape environmental governance and power relations in society. During my senior policy roles in California (2003–2023), I witnessed and analyzed the effects of incompatible worldviews, as they played out in the conduct of climate change politics.Footnote ² This chapter outlines the two most salient worldviews, arguing that the gulf between them could only be bridged when action was repoliticized to include multiple scales, ensuring climate change solutions tackle both the global problem and local needs.Footnote ³

According to the political scientist Michael Lind (Reference Lind2011),

Lind argues that this is why politicians often seem to speak past one another or ascribe different meanings to the same events. In this sense, a worldview can include ideas about nature, values, emotions, and ethics (Ballew et al. Reference Ballew, Goldberg, Rosenthal, Cutler and Leiserowitz2019). Climate change worldviews can be placed on a spectrum between two opposing positions, which I refer to as “carbon reductionism” and “climate change from the streets.” What follows is a generalization of the dynamics I observed during the initial years (2006–2012) of implementation of California’s climate change policies. While the perspectives of particular people and organizations were always more complex than these categories may suggest, they are nonetheless useful in developing a sense of the sources of misunderstanding, disagreement, and fracture that can hamper public discussion of such policies, as well as some of the strategies that allow differing worldviews to be brought into creative tension and stabilized (Hulme Reference Hulme2007, Reference Hulme2010).

The case of California is particularly productive in this regard. As the world’s fourth-largest economy and the only US state to implement a comprehensive program of regulatory and market-based mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, California has consistently been at the forefront of broader national and global environmental experimentation (Stone Reference Stone2012). The state’s cap-and-trade program – a central, market-based mechanism for ensuring emissions reductions – is the third largest in the world, after those of the European Union and China (CARB 2018). This program has been especially contentious in debates within California; supporters emphasize its global reach and cost-effectiveness, and detractors criticize its inequitable effects on specific local communities and demographic groups. California’s prominence in climate change policy makes it an ideal place to investigate the dynamics of such disputes, and their roots in differing climate change worldviews (London et al. Reference London, Karner and Sze2013).

What I refer to as carbon reductionism was broadly based on utilitarianism – efforts to develop climate change policy that would deliver the “greatest good for the greatest number.” Utilitarianism is an ethical theory which states that the best action is the one that maximizes utility for the greatest number of people in society (Bentham Reference Bentham2007). This worldview tends to be associated with regulators, traditional environmentalists, climate scientists, multinational corporations, and global bodies such as the United Nations. Carbon reductionism reflects an adherence to cost-effectiveness and market-based solutions (i.e. cap-and-trade), focused on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. It is argued that although emissions of greenhouse gases and local pollutants may be correlated, greenhouse gas mitigation efforts should not be required to reduce local pollution. These are seen as fundamentally different problems that are best addressed separately. “Carbon reductionism” thus literally refers to stakeholders’ desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (the most prevalent greenhouse gas) while simultaneously emphasizing the reductive logic embedded in this approach. Under this perspective, climate change policies are judged on whether they are economically advantageous and benefit the majority. While traditional environmentalists use a market logic in hopes of creating climate policy that can be replicated elsewhere, many businesses are in favor of a limited focus because it minimizes government intervention and supports risk management and corporate strategies that lessen the financial burden of mitigation efforts (Cushing et al. Reference Cushing, Blaustein-Rejto and Wander2018). In this respect, carbon reductionism is similar to the pursuit of “stability” in the climate policymaking process, which often seeks the durability of programs, ultimately to the benefit of powerful interest groups.

Environmental justice groups, in contrast, generally emphasize moral rights, which leads them to a critical reevaluation of both the practice and the politics of reducing carbon emissions. One result is a refusal to uncouple the global effects of greenhouse gases from the local health effects of other pollutants that are emitted with them. The environmental justice movement originated in civil rights campaigns that worked to expose the socially uneven impacts of industrialization on low-income communities of color, and its focus remains on race, class, and the distribution of environmental hazards (London et al. Reference London, Karner and Sze2013). Shaped by this history of activism, the worldview I refer to as “climate change from the streets” prioritizes equity and justice; from this perspective, the utilitarian approach often ignores distinctions between people and the disproportionate impacts of climate change on low-income communities of color. Climate change solutions are evaluated on their ability to address environmental disparities and prioritize communities living near polluting sources (Bullard Reference Bullard2000; Méndez Reference Méndez2020).

Environmental justice groups that support climate change from the streets legitimize knowledge based on lived experience within their communities and promote participatory, embodied, and experimental methods in the development of climate change policy. In contrast to carbon reductionism’s focus on incremental greenhouse gas reductions within an existing economic framework, they are more willing to consider aggressive policies to reduce emissions and transition away from a fossil fuel economy. In climate change policy debates, environmental justice advocates are apprehensive about market-based solutions because they see them as serving those with wealth and power, rather than the disadvantaged (Kaswan Reference Kaswan2018: 492; Schlosberg and Collins Reference Schlosberg and Collins2014: 364). For them, the main threat (their risk perception) from climate change is the disproportionate harm that it causes to health in their communities, including increased illnesses, injuries, and deaths from extreme events such as hurricanes and wildfires, or respiratory illnesses caused by degraded air quality that is further worsened by prolonged droughts and wildfires (Méndez Reference Méndez2020). This insight leads them to view climate change as an embodied phenomenon that affects people’s daily lives in multiple ways. Therefore, the main argument of activists is that environmental protection and improving human health are inextricably linked, and maintaining that link is key to advancing future climate action policies (Krieger Reference Krieger2005). In essence, activists seek the repoliticization of climate policymaking to bring processes back into explicitly political arenas, as a method to expose existing power relations, and to make conflicts of power and interest apparent.

In what follows, I describe the general characteristics that distinguish carbon reductionism and climate change from the streets, pointing out the sources of tension between the two. Through this synthesis, we can see that responses to climate change are components of larger social, political, and environmental dynamics that combine to shape individuals’ ideas about fairness and justice, and the role the government should play in enacting solutions. Understanding this larger picture, and examining often unspoken assumptions, allows us to reflect on how common ground can be deliberately negotiated between these positions – in particular, how environmental justice and public health can meaningfully be integrated into climate change policy. Practices that bridge between the scales that these two worldviews prioritize – the global and the local – can generate solutions that are truly innovative and work toward both climate change goals and social equity.

3.1 Carbon Reductionism

As public concern over the changing climate grows, governments and scientists are focusing more on its chief cause: global greenhouse gas emissions. This focus results in climate change policy with the specific goal of reducing seven emissions, rather than parallel policy goals. The seven gases have been identified by the Kyoto Protocol and California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 – the state’s main enabling legislation for its suite of regulatory programs (CARB 2008; IPCC 2014). Greenhouse gas emissions have “no direct public health impacts” since they are global pollutants that mix uniformly in the atmosphere; they do not have localized effects like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides (CARB 2008). Evidence of observed climate change impacts, moreover, is reported as strongest and most comprehensive for natural systems, a finding that is often used to justify a focus on biophysical rather than social systems (IPCC 2014).

Greenhouse gases and local air pollutants such as particulate matter and nitrogen oxides (precursors of smog) are often emitted concurrently from processes such as fossil fuel burning. But within the carbon reductionist framework, the most scientifically rigorous and cost-effective method to address climate change is understood to require a strict delineation between global and local scales (Cushing et al. Reference Cushing, Blaustein-Rejto and Wander2018). Carbon dioxide (CO₂) holds a privileged position, since it is the most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming and persists in the atmosphere for many years. To quantify and monitor greenhouse gases, climate analysts convert the gas levels to a “CO₂ equivalent.” The CO₂ equivalency of any given gas is calculated by multiplying its mass by the “global warming potential,” which indicates the equivalent greenhouse effect of a pound, or metric ton, of the gas as compared to a pound, or metric ton, of CO₂ (CARB 2008).

Calculations centered on CO₂ equivalency and global warming potential are often linked with a view of nature that focuses on ideas such as biodiversity, ecological integrity, and natural systems. The ambitions of this type of climate change governance are often stated in quantitative terms, such as achieving carbon reduction targets, preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, and limiting the average global surface temperature increase. Given the assumption that climate change should be understood and addressed at the global scale, these ideas provide crucial tools for detecting its progress, measuring its causes and effects, and quantifying the changes necessary to human behavior to avoid catastrophe for our species and planet. Nonetheless, if used exclusively in public discourse, they can create an abstraction of nature and limit other types of knowledge about the changing climate, including environmental justice perspectives (Hull Reference Hull2006: 4–5). These conceptual structures, moreover, narrow the focus of climate change measures to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of place or scale. Since climate change is a global issue, and greenhouse gases are global pollutants, it is argued, specific locations for reducing emissions do not matter, as long as reduction targets are achieved. However, if greenhouse gas reductions are coupled with reductions in other associated pollutants, location becomes significant for communities near major polluting sources like oil refineries. As these associated pollutants have direct and immediate health effects, focusing on the distribution of health benefits from local air quality improvements could increase public support for climate change policy (Cushing et al. Reference Cushing, Blaustein-Rejto and Wander2018).

Second, carbon reductionism requires that climate change policy be supported by a community of scientific experts, whose knowledge is considered to be definitive. Under such an approach, dispassionate experts advise policymakers of objective truths, after which policymakers factor in social or political considerations. This process implies a linear approach in which scientific facts inform policy, and scientific inquiry is understood to be independent of society, politics, and values. This separation of science from politics results in policymaking that is seen as evidence-based and rational but can also be perceived as exclusionary, since only experts’ knowledge and perspectives are valued (Ezrahi Reference Ezrahi1990; Jasanoff Reference Jasanoff2005). For example, when the scoping plan (a proposed framework for achieving greenhouse gas reduction targets) was adopted in 2008, the entire membership of the California Air Resources Board and its executive staff was white – and presumably did not share similar histories of environmental racism as activists. By 2011, when cap-and-trade was approved, the board’s racial composition included one African American board member and one Asian American on its executive staff. Through the Global Warming Solutions Act’s implementation, we see how leadership in climate change policy can be highly homogeneous in terms of race, gender, and class.

The third characteristic of carbon reductionism is the assertion that appropriate action on climate change requires an array of measures to capture the maximum technologically feasible and “cost-effective” emissions reduction opportunities wherever possible. The Global Warming Solutions Act defines the measure of cost-effectiveness as the “cost per unit of reduced emissions of greenhouse gases adjusted for its global warming potential” (California Health and Safety Code, §38505(d), §38560, §38561). The concept of cost-effectiveness, as applied to the reduction of carbon emissions, requires policymakers to judge the distribution of costs associated with implementing a climate change policy and account for any trade-offs. Attaining cost-effectiveness, however, does not fully allow the specification of where emissions abatement will take place. This raises broad questions: How do different climate policies affect the distribution of costs, benefits, and consequences? And how are these effects experienced across scales and demographic groups? Therefore, what seems like cost-effective policy from a carbon reductionist standpoint could appear to reproduce long-term injustices when viewed from the streets, since it might ignore, reinforce, or potentially worsen existing environmental and health disparities (Parks Reference Park2009).

Fourth, cost-effectiveness is often achieved through market-based mechanisms (such as cap-and-trade). This approach is utilized for large industrial emitters, such as electrical generation, manufacturing, cement production, and oil and gas production and supply. According to carbon reductionist logic, incentivizing mitigation and allowing regulated entities flexibility in deciding how and where best to meet reductions targets spurs market innovation and drives new technologies to higher volumes and lower prices (CARB 2014: 104). The cap-and-trade program accounts for less than one-third of the state’s total mitigation measures, but it remains a central concern for environmental justice groups. The industrial sector’s obligations to greenhouse gas reductions are achieved mainly through its compliance under the program, rather than reducing emissions directly, which activists argue would improve local air quality around polluting industrial facilities (Nachbaur et al. Reference Nachbaur and Roberts2012).

The fifth characteristic of carbon reductionism is the geographic neutrality of its policy interventions. In shaping California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, policymakers narrowed climate change measures to directly address greenhouse gas reductions across polluting sources, regardless of place or scale. State policymakers view California as a member of the global community and envision its policies to be part of a larger domestic and international system. The state has strategically chosen to move away from a “parochial” or neighborhood-level scale – even if attention to local conditions would result in the direct reduction of associated, harmful pollutants (CARB 2008).

The last defining characteristic of carbon reductionism is its main focus on mitigation. California’s mitigation measures are intended to slow the emissions rate for human-caused greenhouse gases to avoid further disruptions to the earth’s atmosphere. As adopted in 2006, the Global Warming Solutions Act did not initially include local adaptation measures. The goal of adaptation measures is to protect lives, health, property, and ecosystems from actual or anticipated climate change impacts, such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and flooding. Put another way, mitigation can be viewed as activities that protect “nature from society,” whereas adaptation involves ways of “protecting society from nature” (ICELI 2009; Park Reference Park2009). Although robust adaptation strategies were developed in later years, early strategies were directed toward protecting hard assets such as vital infrastructure or ecological systems – not neighborhoods and socially vulnerable populations (Figure 3.1; Méndez Reference Méndez2015, Reference Méndez, Wendel and Samuels2016).

Figure 3.1 Tension between California’s climate change worldviews.

Figure 3.1 long description.

Figure 3.1Long description

Diagram compares two California climate change worldviews (2006-2012). Carbon Reductionism (left) focuses on GHG reduction potential, measured in tons of CO2 equivalent, using scientific expertise, cost-effectiveness, market-based solutions, a geographically neutral approach, and emphasis on mitigation. Climate Change from the Streets (right) highlights co-benefits, addresses co-pollutants and public health as well as greenhouse gases, using local expertise, cost-effectiveness through social equity, community-based solutions, a multi-scalar approach, and combines adaptation and mitigation.

3.2 Climate Change from the Streets

Carbon reductionism may be the dominant climate change policy paradigm, but California environmental justice advocates are pushing forward an alternative. “Climate change from the streets” is a form of repoliticization that challenges the established policy practices of carbon reductionism by embedding justice and public health goals within climate change science and solutions. It shifts the focus of policies from the degradation of “nature” to address the simultaneous degradation of communities and asymmetries in the policymaking process. Environmental justice advocates know and analyze the effects of climate change through people’s histories, culture, and embodied knowledge rather than solely through data gathered by experts and policy implemented by regulatory agencies (Park Reference Park2009).

In an effort to challenge the prevalence of carbon reductionism in climate change policy and action, environmental justice advocates have developed a community-based framework for addressing local and global environmental health impacts. Through this framework, they are demanding a greater role in the decision-making processes that impact their lives. They are debating not only the relationship between political power and climate expertise but also the efficacy of solutions to produce positive social change (Corburn Reference Corburn2005). This approach acknowledges how climate change is connected with other types of knowledge about the environment and enables different ways of knowing to play a valid part in framing policy responses. In climate change from the streets, individuals and groups with a range of competing interests work together to develop climate change policy and enact environmental justice (Méndez Reference Méndez2020).

The first characteristic that I attribute to climate change from the streets is that it emphasizes the need for climate change policies that yield substantial health benefits through the reduction of other pollutants that are commonly emitted alongside carbon dioxide. Environmental justice groups reference valuation studies that suggest that the value of such health benefits may be comparable in magnitude to that of reduced carbon emissions. They recommend that policymakers directly compare the cost of climate change actions with the economic value of their benefits, in terms of avoided damage to human health and the environment. For this reason, activists argue that cost-effective and efficient policy design should seek greater emissions reductions where health benefits would be highest and are most needed (Méndez Reference Méndez2020). Climate change policy that ignores such benefits is considered inefficient in two ways: It would choose suboptimal emissions reductions targets overall and it would fail to account for differences in abatement benefits across emission sources (Boyce and Pastor Reference Boyce and Pastor2013: 803; Cushing et al. Reference Cushing, Blaustein-Rejto and Wander2018; Méndez Reference Méndez2020).

Second, environmental justice groups center their work on issues of embodiment and ask, “What are the connections that their bodies make and manifest daily between the changing climate, pollution, and health?” (Krieger Reference Krieger2005: 2). This entails a holistic understanding of the multiple harms that pollution and a changing climate have on human bodies in specific local settings. These types of questions and forms of embodied knowledge, when engaged in truly collaborative settings, are a crucial supplement to solutions developed by policy experts. They confront uneven power dynamics in environmental governance and can alleviate problems that can be caused by introducing one-size-fits-all policy into various local contexts. Environmental justice groups, moreover, debate with experts over issues of truth and method, specifically challenging the political use and control of expertise by claiming to speak credibly as experts in their own right (Corburn Reference Corburn2005).

A third point is that environmental justice groups conceptualize climate change policy in a multifaceted way, calling out unequal impacts while advocating solutions focused on social and health equity. Health equity is achieved when every person has the opportunity to “attain his or her full health potential” and no one is “disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances” (Braverman et al. Reference Braveman2003: 181). In the context of climate change, this approach involves exploring how programs, practices, and policies affect the health of individuals, families, and communities. It establishes common goals and ongoing constructive relationships between the health sector, climate science, urban planning, and other fields at multiple scales (London et al. Reference London, Karner and Sze2013).

Fourth, in promoting climate action from the streets, environmental justice groups seek to empower individuals and groups with the skills they need to effect change within their communities. They advocate for partnerships with residents, governments, and other entities as a means to harness policy processes that support community-defined goals. Hence, their solutions to climate change involve diverse stakeholders in the strategic and management activities of climate planning and policy (Corburn Reference Corburn2005). These approaches, such as transit-oriented development, renewable energy, and urban forestry projects, are aimed at reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and the risk of asthma and respiratory diseases. Advocates also seek to generate career-track jobs in the green economy for workers from disadvantaged communities. These solutions seek to target policy investments and resources to the neighborhoods most in need.

The fifth defining characteristic of climate change from the streets is that its practitioners make concerted efforts toward neighborhood-scale adaptation planning, in addition to mitigation measures. Such integration can be difficult because of important differences in policy objectives. Mitigation deals with the causes of climate change (accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere), whereas adaptation seeks to prepare society for the impacts of a changing climate. The policies are also defined in different spatial and temporal scales. For example, the benefits of adaptation are local and short-term, whereas mitigation benefits are global and long-term (Locatelli Reference Locatelli, Fedele, Fayolle and Baglee2016: 1). Nonetheless, environmental justice groups contend that synergies between mitigation and adaptation can be developed in a cost-effective and equitable way. This type of policy integration is important because it acknowledges that certain irreversible and significant impacts from climate change are already underway and are inevitable, even if governments succeed in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental justice advocates argue that some groups are more socially vulnerable and will need additional safeguards from the immediate and anticipated effects of climate change (Stehr and Storch Reference Stehr and von Storch2005).

Finally, climate change from the streets takes environmental justice advocates, whose concerns are often rooted in local conditions, beyond a single site and links them with the global scale of climate change, traversing local, regional, statewide, national, and international settings. How to take interconnected action across scales has become a central concern for these groups. Doing so creates opportunities (through repoliticization processes) to rethink the relationships among places, people, projects, and sources of knowledge, and opens up spaces that are often rendered invisible from the point of view of a single location or scale. The source of this challenge, and this potential, lies in the nature of a movement with local roots seeking to address a global crisis. Strategies for bridging between scales are crucial for bringing opposing climate change worldviews into dialogue and stabilizing climate-related regulatory program.

3.3 Conclusion

Through an analysis of climate change worldviews, we can better understand the culturally contingent nature of climate policy – the assumptions and values that often create conflict between community understandings of local environmental conditions and the prevailing top-down regulatory culture of climate change (Knox-Hayes Reference Knox-Hayes2016). In California, tensions between worldviews, moreover, are often centered on the politics of scale, markets, race, and class. The role of scale, in particular, can be difficult to grasp, since its subjective and political nature often goes unrecognized. Seeing a problem at any given scale involves decisions – conscious or not – about which of its aspects to disregard, and which to act upon (Williamson Reference Williamson, Castles, Ozkul and Arias Cubas2015: 19).Footnote ⁴ Scale is not objective. It is constructed through human relationships and is an important factor in political strategies and contests over power and authority. Changing the scale at which a problem is addressed can alter the power relationships that surround it – associations that determine unequal access to resources and institutions, and the ability to choose and act despite resistance from others (Osofsky Reference Osofsky, Burns and Osofsky2009).

Any account of climate change policy that focuses on a single scale thus can only be partial and undermine the stability of climate change programs. It is undeniable that no single locality, acting alone, can hope to address the problem. But analysis at the global scale will inevitably gloss over the question of how public definitions of climate change can reinforce existing local inequalities in power, resources, and health. If climate change is seen solely as a global phenomenon, then it will seem self-evident that only “global actors” – national governments, the United Nations, multinational corporations, the international community of scientists – are empowered to address it. By seeking to understand the effects of climate change and climate policy at multiple scales (and through the processes of repoliticization), we can promote more egalitarian forms of public decision-making about this critical issue (Barrett Reference Barrett2013).

Activists’ advocacy work shows how climate change policy is an ongoing cultural creation, made and remade through the daily practices of diverse people. Through a reoccurring process of conflict and collaboration, a broad range of individuals and organizations are co-constituting what climate change means. The geographer Mike Hulme (Reference Hulme2007) argues that the tension between worldviews can have a balancing – even creative – impact, yielding stronger, more robust approaches to resolving climate change. Furthermore, worldviews are not fixed and can transform over time. Scientific ideas and beliefs about climate change evolve together with the representations, identities, debates, and institutions that give practical effect and meaning to policies. In other words, the ways in which we conceptualize climate change don’t just happen. People are behind our government, policies, and environmental values – and they can change their minds (Jasanoff Reference Jasanoff2005).

Beginning in 2012, California has moved away from a strict adherence to carbon reductionism by adopting a wave of legislation inserting and stabilizing environmental justice and public health elements into the state’s climate change policies. The California Air Resources Board (charged with overseeing the state’s climate programs) now has an environmental justice-focused senior officer and two board positions dedicated to environmental justice representatives. The state expanded its climate adaptation strategies to include robust local programs in disadvantaged communities. In addition, due to activists’ campaigns, more than 50 percent of the state’s cap-and-trade revenue must benefit disadvantaged communities – this has resulted in billions of dollars in investments (CARB 2018).

These successes have been underpinned in part by repoliticization processes at the city scale, where open-ended consultation and collaboration between activists, regulators, and elected officials brought different worldviews – and concerns of varying scales – into dialogue (Méndez Reference Méndez2015, Reference Méndez2020). They also reflect the innovative networked strategies that marginalized communities in California and beyond have used to narrate the effects of international carbon trading at a global scale, without reducing their local experiences to a single story (London et al. Reference London, Karner and Sze2013). The science of climate change may be certain, but policy decisions about how to respond to its effects engage with complex social, cultural, and political realities. Understanding the power relations and worldviews of interested parties in this new policy arena must be a central focus of theory and practice as climate change laws, policies, and programs continue to develop.

The pursuit of significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions is an urgent governance problem, necessitating transformative action. This volume contributes to understandings of a discord between two distinct and often antagonistic, yet not opposite, strategies and worldviews that underpin transformation efforts: those focused on stability and those on politicization. Here, we focus on two forms of stability and two of politicization. We suggest that in both schools of thought – those favoring stability and those for politicization – greater engagement is needed to understand and acknowledge existing patterns of structural inequality. In our chapter, we analyze the lived experiences of communities grappling with this discord, by learning from minoritized faith communities in the UK,Footnote ¹ namely Muslim individuals pursuing greater climate action (see Hancock Reference Hancock, Peucker and Kayikci2020; Koehrsen Reference Koehrsen2021; Tobin et al. Reference Tobin, Ali, MacGregor and Ahmad2023). Research to date on Muslim climate action has explored Muslim communities’ climate initiatives within a variety of arenas yet has rarely found instances of strategic climate leadership from Muslim communities within “mainstream” fora (see DeHanas Reference DeHanas2009; Gilliat-Ray and Bryant Reference Gilliat-Ray and Bryant2011; Koehrsen Reference Koehrsen2021; Nita Reference Nita, Veldman, Szasz and Haluza-DeLay2014).Footnote ²

In the UK, Canada, Germany, and many other Global North countries, Muslims are the largest religious group after Christians and atheists. Thus, the effective involvement of Muslim communities in the pursuit of countries’ national climate goals, such as net zero plans, is paramount. Yet, despite this importance, scholarship must acknowledge the important role Muslim communities can play without othering (i.e. treating as different or not belonging in some way) or instrumentalizing that participation (see Tobin et al. Reference Tobin, Ali, MacGregor and Ahmad2023). Muslims face multiple axes of inequality when participating in the climate policy process (Hancock Reference Hancock and Peace2015, Reference Hancock, Peucker and Kayikci2020): Acknowledging intersectional inequalities (see Hill Collins Reference Hill Collins, Hankivsky and Jordan-Zachery2019; Wilson Reference Wilson2013) is vital for understanding the realities of participation for Muslim communities. Islamophobia intersects with the impacts of racism (Meer and Modood Reference Meer, Modood, Zempi and Awan2019; Muslim Council of Britain 2016), economic inequality (Ali and Whitham Reference Ali and Whitham2021), and gendered discrimination (Zempi Reference Zempi2020) to affect Muslim communities’ climate activities. In turn, these intersecting structures ensure that Muslim communities should not be considered a monolithic group. Hence, these intersecting inequalities have led to calls for intersectional climate justice that facilitates climate action while tackling the surrounding structures of injustice (Amorim-Maia et al. Reference Amorim-Maia, Anguelovski, Chu and Connolly2022; Mikulewicz et al. Reference Mikulewicz, Caretta, Sultana and Crawford2023).

What are the obstacles to the achievement of long-term, effective climate action via stability and politicization for Muslim communities in the UK? To inform our research, we conducted twenty-one semi-structured interviews between May 2021 and February 2022 with individuals based throughout the UK (listed in the chapter’s Appendix).Footnote ³ Interviewees included nineteen Muslims who engaged in climate action from a wide variety of professions and roles and two non-Muslims who were involved in interfaith activities with Muslim communities. We deliberately interviewed a wide range of individuals to glean as broad an understanding as possible of the realities of Muslim experiences in climate action within the UK. Consistent with our intersectional approach to the analysis, we reflect on our own positionality as researchers who have designed the project and interpret the findings. We note the potential influence of the positionality of interviewers during the data collection process (see Fisher Reference Fisher2015; Merriam et al. Reference Merriam, Johnson-Bailey and Lee2001), which may shape our interpretations of the data, as well as the topics and scope of the conversations in the first place.Footnote ⁴

Our analysis explores how the existing inequalities faced by Muslim communities mean that both stability and politicization alike pose challenges, meaning that it is only through a lens of climate justice that transformative climate action can be achieved. In doing so, we highlight that pursuit of long-term climate action for Muslim communities bears resemblance to being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Our findings are best encapsulated by a point made by one Muslim climate campaigner we interviewed: “we want political influence, but not necessarily through civil disobedience” (9B), yet such political protests have been one of the most high-profile means for climate campaigners to draw awareness to their cause.

In our short section on stability, we focus on two understandings of the concept as outlined in Chapter 1 of this volume. First, we analyze stability as the status quo by examining the impacts of structural inequalities and racism on Muslim communities’ involvement in the UK climate movement (and beyond), and hence, the pursuit of stability as lock-in threatens to lock in these structural obstacles in the long term. This argument will be unsurprising considering the volume of work that already exists on inequalities within environmental action (Bell and Bevan Reference Bell and Bevan2021; Kaijser and Kronsell Reference Kaijser and Kronsell2014; MacGregor Reference MacGregor2009; Stephens Reference Stephens2020). However, politicization is not a straightforward solution. We analyze how the pursuit of politicization is, in itself, a complex and potentially dangerous process for Muslim communities due to the presence of, among other issues, harsher penalties in the justice system. By listening to the experiences of the Muslims interviewed for this project, we also aspire to represent a second form of politicization, namely politicization as scholarly praxis, as we wish for this chapter to represent some small form of intervention regarding existing inequalities. Hence, we draw explicitly from our interviewee data to center Muslim voices at the heart of our analysis. Reflecting on being between a rock and a hard place regarding stability and politicization outlined here, we argue that it is only through an overarching pursuit of intersectional climate justice that the benefits of the two schools of thought may be achieved. In short, as our title highlights, “when you think about climate change, it is a social justice issue” (10B).

Our chapter is structured as follows. First, we begin by outlining the existing research literature on Muslim communities as environmental actors, noting a dearth of studies that can identify Muslim climate actors being able to shape “mainstream” climate activities, despite environmentalism being a core concern of many Muslims. Second, we explore stability, by analyzing two manifestations of the strategy for Muslim communities in the UK. Third, we turn our focus to pursuing re/politicization. While we note that the goals of repoliticization are key to efforts to subvert existing power hierarchies, we emphasize the need for closer consideration of the realities of “othered” experiences to make these efforts effective. Fourth, we look beyond the stability/politicization discord to detail how considerations of intersectional climate justice must be at the heart of climate strategies. Fifth, we discuss “where next” for developing a more inclusive long-term response to climate change and conclude, highlighting three areas for future research.

4.1 Muslim Communities as Environmental Actors

Most people working in the “mainstream” environmental and climate sectors in the UK are white (Bell and Bevan Reference Bell and Bevan2021); there is little to zero data on the extent to which Muslim communities work in these sectors. In 2011, though, 92.2 percent of UK Muslims were People of Color (ONS 2011). As such, research on predominantly Muslim communities in the city of Manchester, UK, has shown that they face repeated injustice when liaising with white policymakers (MacGregor et al. Reference MacGregor, Ali and Ahmad2022). Many Muslims see Islam as an explicitly environmental faith, in line with the sentiments favoring sustainability that feature within the hadith (discourses). Koehrsen (Reference Koehrsen2021) summarizes the research to date on Muslims and climate action, noting that the UK and Indonesia predominate in the existing literature, but with different foci, as Islam is the majority religion in Indonesia but not in the UK. Minority faith groups’ participation in climate policymaking – and indeed, wider policymaking – reflects different political dynamics to those of Christian communities, which are the largest faith group in much of the Global North and may even be formally affiliated to the institutions of the state, as is the case in the UK. In contrast, minority groups may have been “othered” within such societies (Modood Reference Modood2019), which in turn affects their political participation.

Regarding Muslims in the UK, research has found that their minoritized status influences the extent to which communities can exert political influence, focusing on local rather than broader leadership or strategic roles. Gilliat-Ray and Bryant (Reference Gilliat-Ray and Bryant2011) found in 2009–2010 that Muslims engaged in a variety of environmental conservation and sustainable horticulture initiatives, albeit in small numbers. Relatedly, DeHanas (Reference DeHanas2009) analyzed a radio show during Ramadan in 2007, exploring how guest presenters integrated their faith, environmental protection, and women’s political representation into their hosting of the show. Nita’s (Reference Nita, Veldman, Szasz and Haluza-DeLay2014) study of Christian and Muslim groups in the Transition Towns Movement during 2007–2010 found Muslims and Christians alike felt marginalized from environmental groups because of their faiths but also from their faith communities for engaging in explicitly green behaviors and activities. Finally, in a comprehensive volume examining the United States and the UK, Hancock (Reference Hancock2018) analyzed Islamic environmentalism between May 2012 and July 2013, finding that at that time in the UK, campaigners engaged “in moderate forms of action that effect mostly individual change, not the radical systemic change necessary to realize their vision of the future” (Hancock Reference Hancock2018: 137).

There has been relatively sparse research on Muslim climate actors since those of the late 2000s and early 2010s, yet the years following have been marked by significant, high-profile activity on the part of the climate movement, necessitating further research into this area. Hence, research on Muslim communities in the UK has shown that they are environmentally active. Yet this research is increasingly out of date and does not explore the experiences of Muslim communities in seeking to play strategic roles in “mainstream” organizations, or how these experiences will shape the pathways employed to secure long-term climate action. Responding to these gaps, we examined the “between-the-scenes” roles of Muslims as “climate intermediaries” in the UK, finding that they were commonly invisibilized (i.e. treated as and made to feel invisible) and instrumentalized by “mainstream” environmental actors, and hence often collaborated through either interfaith work or within Muslim communities (Tobin et al. Reference Tobin, Ali, MacGregor and Ahmad2023). This chapter seeks to develop those arguments further, by examining the strategic dilemma in which UK Muslims find themselves because of widespread intersectional inequalities.

4.2 Stability

We focus on two forms of stability: stability of the status quo and, in turn, the dangers of “locking-in” policy solutions that would create a path-dependent route to entrenching these existing inequalities. As noted at the start of this chapter, the following section is shorter than that on politicization, as our findings align with existing research on structural inequalities within environmental action. Nevertheless, it is pertinent to explore these ideas further through the voices of members of Muslim communities, as different marginalized communities face unique structural barriers, and also in the context of considering a conceptual discord between the pursuits of stability and politicization.

4.3 Re/politicization

Having briefly established the challenges posed by two forms of stability for Muslim climate actors, re/politicization offers a means of bringing critical perspectives into climate strategies. Re/politicization of climate action holds the potential for Muslim communities to shape the assumptions of policymakers behind the scenes, generating more effective policy outputs that may address intersecting inequalities. However, re/politicization efforts in the UK must also consider the lived realities of Muslims as othered communities, and the complex power inequalities therein. In this section, we begin by exploring the most high-profile politicizing strategies employed by the “mainstream” climate movement, namely protests and civil disobedience, finding that many Muslims are also reluctant to engage in activities that entail political conflict, due to their already marginalized positions. Yet, of course, the diversity within Muslim communities in the UK means that this sentiment is not universal. We then examine less politically charged means for Muslims to participate in climate change politics, finding that obstacles also exist in these arenas, too.

4.4 Next Steps: The Pursuit of Intersectional Climate Justice

Many of our interviewees brought up the concept of justice without it having been suggested by the interviewer (2B, 3B, 7B, 9B, 10B, 11B, 12B, 13B). A Muslim leader of a not-for-profit climate organization noted that climate change is only one part of a broader conversation: “I see my work on climate as sitting within this larger, package of progressive social justice causes” (7B); for another, “I don’t think about climate change as an environmental issue anymore” (10B). Interviewees discussed the need to bring in climate justice together with wider issues such as inequality toward LGBTQ+ communities (7B), gender inequality (7B, 9B, 10B, 11B), and racism (2B, 3B, 5B, 10B, 11B). These areas of injustice were understood to be differing manifestations of the same coloniality and oppression (3B, 5B, 7B, 9B). Indeed, this oppression is arguably the root cause of the obstacles to participation in climate action.

That is, by encompassing climate action within wider justice issues and tackling those at the same time, subsequent changes can then be made that facilitate, for example, protests, which in turn makes more high-profile disobedience tactics for politicization available to Muslim communities.

Of course, as with each of the areas discussed, there is diversity of opinion within Muslim communities regarding the role for justice and how to manifest its importance. “Even within the Muslim climate sphere there might be those of us [where] the model is conservation and nature, and for some of us the model is justice” (7B). Indeed, this distinction in priorities brings its own disagreements and discord. One campaigner noted that for their organization, it became very difficult to strategize for environmental campaigns because some wished to stick to the science-based nature of climate change while others wished to focus on oppression and justice (9B). Lastly, there was also frustration that when white and non-Muslim allies in the climate movement did shift their attention to climate change as a justice issue, there was obliviousness regarding their complicity in these structural dynamics (11B). As such, even efforts toward championing greater engagement with justice issues as a means of bridging any divide between stability and politicization bring their own delicate areas for reflection, engagement, and action.

4.5 Conclusion: Where Next for Muslim Climate Actors and for Research?

Our chapter has shown how the pursuit of stability may perpetuate existing inequalities and encourage the locking-in of climate strategies that Muslim communities are excluded from shaping, resulting in effectual policy design. However, in pursuing repoliticization strategies, many interviewees highlighted experiencing similar such inequalities. Engaging in political activities as a Muslim citizen/individual in the UK is rife with difficulty. In the case of political protest, institutionalized discrimination ensures that any civil disobedience activities by Muslims result in a higher probability of arrest, and worse conditions following such an arrest. Due to these lived experiences, the appeal of political conflict must be weighed against a more vulnerable strategic position. Our findings support the argument that wider consideration of justice issues is needed within climate policy design; as leadership (slowly) diversifies from the current status quo, policy structures that support increasing critical engagement from invisibilized communities will enable more representative and effective policies to be designed. Without this expectation, policy design emphasizing “policy stability” may lock in the predominant assumptions around engagement and representation, which currently marginalize large numbers of people. We thus bring the realities of depoliticized climate politics as faced by invisibilized communities into conversation with one another and analyze the impacts of minoritization in shaping Muslim communities’ strategies for climate action.

Despite these obstacles to participation, our research with Muslim communities also highlighted myriad instances of climate action. These activities included national-level strategic oversight that had rarely been identified by the existing literature that was mostly carried out in the late 2000s and early 2010s. We suggest three research questions for future investigations that may build on our work. First, to what extent are activism and advocacy around climate change in Muslim-majority contexts relevant or motivating for Muslims in the UK? Second, which initiatives have been especially successful in encouraging Muslim individuals to design policy, and how can such strategies be adapted and applied in other contexts? Finally, to what extent have these initiatives involved deliberate and official anti-racism or decolonizing strategies on the part of white-dominated institutions?

Appendix: Descriptions of Interviewees

• 1A: June 22, 2021, Muslim councillor.

• 2A: June 18, 2021, Muslim resident and local campaigner (climate volunteer).

• 3A: July 13, 2021, Muslim climate organization movement builder.

• 4A: June 18, 2021, Muslim mosque trustee, solicitor, and chair for local council of mosques.

• 5A: October 12, 2021, Muslim councillor and executive member.

• 6A: July 5, 2021, Muslim councillor.

• 1B: May 18–19, 2021, city-level not-for-profit employee.

• 2B: October 21, 2021, Christian faith leader and city-level interfaith board member.

• 3B: November 1, 2021, Muslim business leader.

• 4B: November 2, 2021, Muslim faith representative leader.

• 5B: November 10, 2021, Muslim local organizer.

• 6B: November 18, 2021, Muslim local organizer.

• 7B: December 1, 2021, Muslim not-for-profit climate organization leader.

• 8B: December 1–13, 2021, Muslim business leader in the environmental sector.

• 9B: December 13, 2021, Muslim climate campaigner.

• 10B: January 14, 2022, Muslim climate campaigner and organization leader.

• 11B: January 14, 2022, Muslim community activist and enabler.

• 12B: January 19, 2022, Muslim community leader.

• 13B: January 19, 2022, Muslim faith representative and climate spokesperson.

• 14B: January 31, 2022, Muslim climate volunteer.

• 15B: February 2, 2022, Muslim civil servant.