Elected Authoritarians Now Lead Anti-green Push, Backed by Fossil Fuel Interests

Three political ecology specialists argue in a Le Monde op-ed that the rejection of environmentalism is now promoted by democratically elected, authoritarian, and even fascist-leaning governments, backed by fossil fuel business interests. They write that the summer of 2026 in Europe is marked not only by repeated heatwaves, megafires, and droughts devastating agriculture and biodiversity, but also by a surge of attacks against a largely imagined ecology, whose defenders — activists, politicians, scientists, and civil servants alike — are accused of causing the very ills they warned about, or of participating in an "elites" conspiracy using climate to enslave the people. The authors trace this dynamic to trends underway since the 1980s, amplified since the Covid-19 pandemic and now global in scope. Paradoxically, they see it as a consequence of governments' failure to halt global warming despite the ambitions of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.