It’s time for a new climate populism, to show how the super rich got us – and the planet – into this mess | Andy Beckett

From air-purified penthouses and private jets, a wealthy anti-green lobby feigns common cause with ordinary people'. Let's expose that

In Britain and far beyond, anti-environmentalists have a new favourite argument. No longer able to claim the climate crisis isn't happening, they have switched from denial to class warfare. They argue that green policies and innovations from electric cars to heat pumps, low emission zones to eco-taxes and levies, are all unaffordable for working-class and many middle-class people, yet are being imposed regardless by an out-of-touch elite of politicians, bureaucrats and wealthy woke capitalists".

Most of the people making these arguments in the rightwing media were never previously much troubled by the financial struggles of what they now piously call ordinary people". But shamelessly shifting position is a familiar activity for the modern right. Meanwhile the cost of living crisis has given its anti-green message more force.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist