The rise of overt racism in the era of climate crisis is no coincidence

When Sonja Pietiläinen began her doctoral research four years ago, she wrote in the Nessling Foundation’s blog how the far-right opposes climate politics and weaponises environmentalism in its anti-immigration agenda. If the topic then was relatively marginal, today, four years later, it is more relevant than ever. The rise of the far right in the era of the climate crisis is no coincidence but reflects broader climate-political struggles. Pietiläinen has now completed her dissertation and returns to the subject in a new blog post.

Text: Sonja Pietiläinen

Climate policy debates have traditionally emphasized humanity’s collective responsibility for climate change. Yet while the effects of climate change are transboundary and global, scholars and activists stressing climate justice argue that the climate crisis is also deeply tied to structural racism. Its heaviest impacts fall on racialized people and communities—the very groups that have contributed the least to causing the crisis.

Paraphrasing Ruth Wilson Gilmore, racism is a social process that makes people, communities, and places more vulnerable to poverty, disease, environmental harm, and thus premature death. Racism refers not only to politics, laws, and practices but also to economic and cultural structures that unevenly distribute life chances.

One example of the racialized dimensions of the climate crisis is the decades-long inadequate climate action. Scientific consensus has long underlined the urgency of addressing climate change, yet mitigation remains insufficient and emissions continue to rise. Protecting the economy is prioritized—even when this comes at the expense of various ecosystems and communities.

Climate obstruction is a structural phenomenon

Researchers identify climate obstruction as one reason behind delayed climate action. The term refers to political narratives, practices, and cultural beliefs that question, downplay, or delay necessary climate measures. It can manifest in outright denial of human-caused climate change or in appeals to economic costs.

Climate obstruction is not a result of lack of knowledge but should be understood as a structural phenomenon tied to the protection of prevailing power relations, material interests, and privileged lifestyles. Through obstructive politics, economic and political actors—such as the fossil fuel industry—have sought to safeguard high-consumption, resource-intensive social orders at a time when climate demands threaten them.

Wealthy Western countries, and particularly their elites, have historically benefitted from the fossil economy. According to Aaron M. McCright and Riley E. Dunlap, this also explains why conservative white men have historically been the loudest opponents of climate action and the most significant defenders of the fossil fuel industry.

Reducing the suffering and death caused by the climate crisis requires respecting planetary boundaries, dismantling structural racism, committing to climate justice, and redistributing power and wealth. Yet the last decade has seen the global rise of a racist far right. The far-right has mainstreamed overt racism while simultaneously also becoming one of the loudest and most influential actors to oppose climate politics.

The far-right groups hold a shared ideology, but divergent strategies

In line with current scholarship, I use “far right” as an umbrella term. It encompasses both the radical right—for example, populist anti-immigrant parties—and the extremist right, such as neo-fascist extra-parliamentary groups.

The term is analytically useful because both radical and extremist factions share core ideological foundations: ethnic nationalism and authoritarianism—that is, belief in rigid social hierarchies and the reduction of political freedoms.

This does not mean, however, that far-right actors share the same strategies. The radical right operates within democratic institutions, while the extreme right opposes liberal democracy altogether. As Tero Toivanen writes: “Parliamentary restrictions on immigration policy are not enough for extreme forces pursuing the immediate ethnic purity of the national body. The radical right, by contrast, publicly distances itself from both its extremist elements and its own past.”

Whereas four years ago I wrote in the Nessling blog about the far right as a relatively marginal phenomenon, in recent years parliamentary climate obstruction has become a new norm in many Western countries—including those traditionally portrayed as ambitious climate leaders, such as Finland and Sweden.

Shifting political responsibility is the Finns Party’s strategy for delaying climate actions

In my dissertation, I show that in Finland’s far-right climate politics, alongside outright climate denial, the most common strategies of climate delay are shifting political responsibility and emphasizing the supposed benefits of climate change.

In the interviews I conducted, MPs, municipal politicians, and activists from the Finns Party shifted responsibility for the climate crisis away from wealthy Western nations onto poorer regions of the world. Through racialized framings, Finns were depicted as “civilized” and “environmentally aware,” while the Global South and racialized migrants were labeled “uncivilized,” “polluting,” and “recklessly reproducing.” This denied Finland’s—and the broader Global North’s—responsibility as major emitters, while depicting the Global South and racialized migrants as solely responsible for today’s environmental problems.

Another strategy that emerged was framing carbon dioxide as a “source of life” and of economic growth. Harmfulness of emissions was denied as harmful, and instead climate warming was described as a blessing for Finland: improving harvests, strengthening self-sufficiency, and making the country a food exporter. The marginalized—those most affected of climate change—were disregarded, while racialized groups and places were depicted as deserving their fate due to “ecological backwardness” and “destructive environmental behavior.”

My research demonstrates how climate obstruction intertwines with racist ecology—the attempt to frame environmental problems as the political responsibility of racialized groups by mobilizing stereotypes, derogatory generalizations, and misanthropic ideas. Racist ecology explains environmental injustices through racial differences, obscuring their political-economic roots. In this framing, Finns’ supposedly genetic and exceptional relationship with nature became a key justification for shifting political and moral responsibility. Finland, as an “environmentally more advanced” nation, would thrive through market-driven and industrial solutions, while “polluting” places and people were deemed to have earned their fate in the climate crisis due to their lack of such a special connection to nature.

These racist framings are examples of how the parliamentary far-right seeks to legitimize and reproduce racist categories and hierarchies at a time when civil society and researchers increasingly call for stronger climate policy and social justice. Far-right climate obstruction reframes unequal climate impacts as “natural” consequences of racial differences. Through such framings, obstruction is made to appear acceptable, while proposed solutions lean toward market-driven, authoritarian, and population-control measures such as one-child policies for the Global South.

At the same time, obstructive politics glorify and romanticize high energy use, meat consumption, and overconsumption—cultural norms that sustain (often unintentional) inaction. While these are often linked to identity politics, it is important to remember that overconsumption and high energy use are white privileges made possible by a racist system. In far-right politics, their romanticization intertwines with misanthropic policies.

Racism and climate obstruction are intertwined

The deepening global ecological crisis and its unequal impacts have generated political conflicts over power and wealth distribution. The intertwining of obstructive and racist politics I observed in my dissertation is one such example.

The demands of the climate movement and climate science—for urgent climate action and social justice—threaten existing societal conditions based on high energy and resource use and on racial hierarchies. The far right seeks to legitimize racist social processes in an era of growing climate mobilization, defending, even by authoritarian means, societies reliant on high energy consumption and white privilege.

Fighting the climate catastrophe and reducing suffering requires that we operate within planetary boundaries and promote climate justice. Far-right climate obstruction, however, attempts to reproduce racist structures by redefining the meaning of “race,” undermining climate justice, and increasing human vulnerability in the age of ecological crises.