40 Britain The Economist October 30th 2021
SupergreenBoris
W
hen deciding which side to support in the Brexit referen
dum Boris Johnson famously wrote two columns—one for
and the other against—and chose the argument he found most
convincing. Over the years he has adopted a similar endorseboth
sides approach to greenery. As a student politician and as mayor of
London, he branded himself a “green Tory”; as a firebreathing
Daily Telegraphcolumnist, he denounced the green blob. In Janu
ary 2013, for instance, he wrote a column speculating that the
world was entering “a mini iceage”, quoting no less an authority
than the former labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s brother, Piers, an
eccentric weather forecaster and antivaxxer, and pointing to the
evidence that it was snowing outside. “If the climate can change”,
he now says in selfjustification, “I don’t see why my mind can’t.”
Since the general election in 2019 Mr Johnson has firmly come
down on the green side. In a speech to the United Nations in Sep
tember he urged global leaders to “grow up” and “recognise the
scale of the problems we face”. In a statement to the Middle East
Green Summit in Saudi Arabia this week he urged the world to go
“further and faster” to limit global warming. The government has
already made some solid green pledges—promising to cut carbon
emissions by 78% by 2035, to ban the sale of new petrol and die
selpowered cars by 2030 and to phase out gas boilers by 2035—
and will no doubt make more at the cop26 meeting in Glasgow.
Mr Johnson’s conversion to greenery not only brings a jolt of
energy to a lethargic international process. It also brings some
ideological diversity. The debate about greenery has been in dan
ger of becoming part of a proxy war between the right and the left,
with environmental activists calling for the end of the capitalist
system and populists such as Donald Trump dismissing environ
mentalism as cryptocommunism. Mr Johnson likes to point out
conservative heroes such as Edmund Burke embraced greenery
long before socialism was invented. Arriving by tunnel for a book
launch of a volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret
Thatcher, because Downing Street was blocked off by Extinction
Rebellion protesters, Mr Johnson told the audience that the “crus
ties” outside would do well to read the biography because the first
true green revolutionary was “not Greta Thunberg but Baroness
Thatcher”. Mr Johnson may possess a unique ability to build abridgebetweenconservativeclimate sceptics such as Brazil’s Jair
Bolsonaro and Australia’s Scott Morrison and establishment envi
ronmentalists such as America’s Joe Biden.
Why did Mr Johnson go green? And will his conversion stick
when the going gets tough? It is tempting to ascribe the shift to his
wife, Carrie Johnson, whose arrival on the scene certainly fits the
timing. Mrs Johnson, a former director of communications for the
Conservative Party, devotes much of her time to campaigning for
green causes, particularly marine life and animal rights. In her
first public statement after moving into Downing Street she said
that politicians have a “gigantic responsibility to make the right
decisions” over climate. But Mr Johnson is also much influenced
by both his father, Stanley, and his friend, Zac Goldsmith.
The older Mr Johnson has been campaigning for environmen
tal causes since he was at Oxford 60 years ago. He held green jobs
at the World Bank, the Ford Foundation and the European Com
mission. He also wrote a succession of books on green issues; fo
cusing, at first, on the danger of overpopulation. Mr Goldsmith is
at the heart of the green aristocracy. His father, James, combined
environmentalism with hatred of the eu; his uncle, Teddy, found
ed the Ecologist magazine and helped inspire the Green Party; his
close friends include a menagerie of ecotoffs, such as the social
ite and clubowner, Robin Birley, an animal lover who was disfig
ured by a tiger as a child. Mr Goldsmith has spent his life at the
heart of the green movement—as editor of theEcologist, a suppor
ter of rewilding, the owner of an organic farm and, after David
Cameron brought him into the Tory orbit, as the party’s most in
fluential green. Mrs Johnson has worked closely with Mr Gold
smith for years, starting as his parliamentary aide in 2010. Indeed,
the first couple recently spent a week relaxing at Mr Goldsmith’s
1,400 acre estate in Spain.
Trusting Mr Johnson is a fool’s game. But it is hard to see him
resurrecting his ancestral (Piers) Corbynism. Shrugging off
speeches to the un is more difficult than disavowing articles for
the Daily Telegraph. Moreover, Mr Johnson’s government has
made concrete promises which it will be hard to forget. The perti
nent question is whether he can take the rest of his party with him.
Mr Johnson’s greenery is laced with cakeism: confronted with the
problem that people might have to travel less to reduce carbondi
oxide emissions, the prime minister speculates that the problem
will be solved by the invention of carbonneutral aeroplanes. Come rain or shine?
Keeping his promises will require annoying Tory voters. Liz Truss,
the foreign secretary, distinguishes between Waitrose Tories and
Lidl Tories: that is middleclass Tories who have money to buy
fairtrade stuff and justaboutmanaging Tories who struggle to
make ends meet. When it comes to greenery, Mr Johnson has sur
rounded himself not so much with Waitrose Tories but with Peter
sham Nursery Tories: that is people who frequent the ecobranded
gardencentrecumdelicatessen chain where afternoon tea can
set you back £55 ($75) and a flower vase another £920.
Petersham Nursery Tories think nothing of spending £100,000
on a Tesla and £15,000 on a heat pump, not to mention more on ev
ery mouthful of organic crueltyfree food. But the Lidl Tories who
voted for Mr Johnson because they thought he was on their side
against meddling bureaucrats and their expensive regulations
will have a different view. If anythingcanbreak the seemingly ada
mantine link between Mr Johnson andhisTory faithful, it is the
longterm cost of his green conversion.nBagehot
The prime minister is gung-ho about climate change—perhaps too much so for his new voters