Surprising political effects of Europe’s heat waves

0:00This message comes from Rinse. With Rinse, your laundry will come back fresh, folded, and ready to wear right on schedule. One tap or text is all it takes. No calling, no reminders. Same as always. Rinse. It's time to be great. More at rinse.com. Today on State of the World, the surprising political effects of Europe's heat waves.

0:25You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. It's summer, so warm weather is expected. But in Europe, this summer has been really, really hot. A fire emergency across southern Europe forcing 175 ,000 people to evacuate. Red heat alerts have been issued in parts of Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and the Balkans. Five heat waves so far have broken records and there's been drought and wildfires as well. Extreme weather is linked to human-made climate change. And political parties in Europe are capitalizing on the fact that heat is at the front of voters' minds.

1:08But as NPR's Ruth Sherlock tells us, they're probably not the political parties you're expecting. You might think that this extreme heat in Europe would drive public support to green parties and politicians pushing to solve the climate crisis. Right now, we're not really seeing this in the data. Tobias Gerhard Schmincke of Europe Elects, an organization that monitors political trends in Europe from Germany says, in fact, the opposite can be true. Extreme weather events in recent years have been one factor boosting far-right parties and populists. The radical right has been becoming stronger and stronger and stronger.

1:47And currently we're looking at about 30 % of voter support for radical right parties across the European Union. Immigration and a broader distrust in politics are key drivers for these parties' success. That's the core business, let's say, of populist radical right parties. But I think what they're doing is they're adding on the environmental layer. Catherine de Vries, a political scientist at IU University in Spain, says, having traditionally denied that climate change is human-made, many of these parties have quietly dropped that rhetoric. Instead, they attack climate action as, quote, woke policies, imposed by scientific elites who want to dictate, for example, how much meat you can eat or what car you can drive.

2:31They talk about the people versus the elite. There has been this normalisation of a discourse that it's us versus them. And that's a very, very explosive way for populist right parties to gain support and frame an issue in favourable terms for them. During extreme weather events like the heatwave Europe is experiencing, analysts say these parties capitalise on frustration and fear voters feel by offering short-term fixes.

3:00In France this summer, the president of the country's far-right national rally, the leading opposition party, Jordan Baldella, told local media the government was leaving citizens to suffer the suffocating heat and promised to install millions of air conditioners, despite experts questioning if the country has the energy capacity to cope.

3:26In Spain, a spokesperson for the far-right-wing Vox Party blamed the vast wildfires on what she called climate fanaticism, environmental rules restricting logging and grazing that she says left brush that worsened the fire. These right-wing strategies and critiques of governments can help win support. Nigel Farage's populist hard right reform party that advocates for drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea has been projected to win at the next election in parts of the UK most prone to flooding from weather linked to climate change. But, says Federica Genovese, a professor of political science at Oxford University, these approaches do little to solve the overall crisis.

4:10It's actually this paradoxical, OK, so we're going to do abundance, including abundance of air conditioning or abundance of money so that you can pay your bill by doubling down on exactly the cost of all of this. She says truly tackling climate change is far more complicated and often does require some sacrifice from voters. The challenge for parties who support green policies is how to win over those voters even as the climate crisis bites.

4:51That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.

4:59This message comes from Rinse. With Rinse, your laundry will come back fresh, folded, and ready to wear right on schedule. One tap or text is all it takes. No calling, no reminders. Same as always. Rinse. It's time to be great. More at Rinse.com. This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the Trump administration is taking credit for a major drop in violent crime. Murder, robbery, assault, all down in big cities and small towns. We're going to dig into the numbers and unpack whether this is really as simple as the president claims it is on the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

5:39At NPR, there's a little something for everyone. If you need advice for that big life change, try listening to Life Kit. If you want to know more about that new TV show, check out Pop Culture Happy Hour. And if you want to dive deeper into your favorite podcasts and enjoy perks like bonus episodes, archive access, and more, check out NPR+. Find out more and support the shows you love at plus.npr.org.