Back to the Stone Age: Europe's Mainstream Right and Climate Change

Abstract While populist radical right parties’ stances on climate change are well‐researched, accounts of Europe's mainstream right parties’ actions in this policy area are less common. This article provides a survey of the approach of four European centre‐right parties—the Christian Democratic Union in Germany, the Moderate Party in Sweden, the People's Party in Spain and the Austrian People's Party—to climate change in recent years. It examines some of the key strategic challenges that mainstream right parties are facing and their implications for climate policy, finding evidence of common approaches among this party family to climate policy.