Why climate change has become a divisive wedge issue and how to fix it
In short: Climate change is increasingly treated as a polarizing identity issue, often fueled by technocratic policies that avoid open debate. To move forward, we must abandon the false promise of costless solutions and embrace a third way that builds broad electoral coalitions rather than pitting climate technologies against one another.
In a year of global elections, climate change has emerged as a divisive political issue, a shift driven partly by past reliance on stealth policies and technocratic institutions. Myles Allen, Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative, argues that this approach has failed to foster the necessary public debate. Instead, climate action has become an all-or-nothing identity struggle where proponents often promise that we can have our cake and eat it—suggesting that either costless decarbonization or costless delay is possible. Allen contends that we must move toward a third way, designing solutions that appeal to the broadest possible electoral coalition rather than alienating segments of the public.
A primary example of this friction is the ongoing debate over carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). Some campaigners and scientists have recently urged the U.K. government to pause CCS projects, arguing they are unproven or unsafe. Allen dismisses these concerns, noting that Norway has successfully injected carbon dioxide into the Utsira sandstone beneath the Sleipner platform for over 25 years. He argues that the resistance to CCS is often less about safety and more about competition; by blocking CCS, advocates hope to redirect state funding toward renewables and demand reduction. However, this ignores the reality that CCS is essential for managing grid intermittency and producing blue hydrogen until green alternatives scale up.
The necessity of CCS is underscored by the scale of the challenge: to meet climate goals, the world must permanently dispose of hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide this century. Even under optimistic assumptions about natural carbon sinks, we may have already exhausted the carbon budget for 1.5°C. Allen warns that if the U.K. pulls the plug on CCS projects—as it did in 2011 and 2015—it risks terminal damage to investor confidence. Rather than opting out, the U.K. should leverage its resources and geology to set global standards for safe carbon disposal, recognizing that while challenges like leakage exist, they are problems to be managed, not reasons to abandon essential technology.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: How to raise the Net Zero conversation - Myles Allen
- Also: Prof Myles Allen, Kaya Axelsson, Prof Sam Fankhauser & Dr Steve Smith…
- Also: Raising the Net Zero Conversation: How to Stop Climate Becoming a Wedge Political Issue
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