The climate backlash is coming! Welcome it.

It's a sign we're all growing up, and an opportunity.

Run for the hills! The climate backlash is coming! To read about the rollback of climate action measures in countries from Sweden to Britain you’d think it was a fourth volume in the Lord of the Rings saga, where those that are virtuous are pitted against the forces of evil, orcs, goblins and all.

The anti-climate backlash is certainly coming, but that is no bad thing. Here’s why.

A fistful of years ago you could rely upon figures like Trump to rail against green measures. They were expensive, intrusive, and – perhaps most importantly – they were a key front in the culture war. Those preachy urban greens are loading up their Toyota Prius and coming for your truck, your burger your way of life.

This made sense. The world was still being convinced about the reality and the future impact of man-made climate change. Those who shouted loudest from the green corner were often as preachy and annoying as their counterparts described. Opposition to this was as much about identity as the intricacies of any future energy transition.

But things are different now.

For a start, the science is pretty much settled and accepted, and governments and companies are mostly on board with setting out their targets and their contributions to the low carbon shift. As I’ve described it before this is the phase where why turns to what.

And now we’re firmly in how. How on earth do we shift modern post-industrial economies and societies away from carbon-based energy? As I’ve said before it’s complex and ripe with opportunities as well as costs.

In short it’s something that has shifted from the domain of technocrats to the domain of politics, of the people. Advanced democracies should be debating this, contesting specific measures and tone and pace. They should be weighing up costs and identifying opportunities. They should be talking about jobs – losses as well as gains – and a raft of intertwined issues from skills bases and supply chains to infrastructure and security.

This means two things.

First, welcome the ‘backlash’ rather than treat it like an ideological outrage. The backlash means it’s political, it’s an issue. It’s a debate, so debate it. Bring in the arguments that convince you, the research and the data and the vision of a new, more prosperous future. Think about aspiration, look at technologies. Don’t present a future light on burgers but heavy on insects. Give examples that fire the imagination and illustrate how it all makes sense. Make them positive, but at the same time think heavily about costs and those who will struggle with such changes. Generate excitement but remember where such big historical changes fit in with the lives of people struggling with 1001 mundane daily challenges. As the Economist argued this last week:

“climate policies should be designed to inflict as little hassle and cost on households as is practical. To reduce hassle, governments should remember that voters’ time is valuable and many green chores are dull.”  

Second – and forgive me for sounding like a broken record here – get rid of the anger, the bleakness, the despair. The preachiness. Those idiots who infuriate the very people you are trying to convince, by glueing themselves to infrastructure and vandalising beautiful buildings with paint. The idiots who argue that you can only save the world by ending economic growth. This not only obscures all those other important arguments, but hands ammunition to those who want an identity politics fight.

Welcome the backlash. It’s inevitable, it’s an opportunity, and it’s a sign that the world is growing up.