Moderate Climate Policy: Why the Future of the Planet Matters to Us and What We Will Do About It
Together with our partner Baltijos Lizdas, we present the study “Moderate Climate Policy: Why the Future of the Planet Matters to Us and What We Will Do About It”. The study grew out of the “Environmental Dialogues” series held this spring, in which we discussed local environmental challenges in different regions of Lithuania. It proposes a different approach to Lithuania’s climate policy: practical, well founded and able to win lasting public support.
Foreword
Climate policy today needs not less ambition but more realism. In pursuing shared climate goals, we must look for solutions that work in Lithuania’s own context: solutions that strengthen our security and competitiveness, respond to the interests of people and communities, and unite rather than divide society.
People support change when they see its meaning in their own lives. That is why we must talk about climate policy in a way that allows a much broader part of society to recognise themselves and their interests in it.
This document is an invitation to broaden this discussion and to offer a different view of what Lithuania’s climate policy could be: practical, well founded and enjoying lasting public support.
Teresė Škutaitė, Director of Baltijos Lizdas
The environment around us also defines who we are. For a civilised person, it matters what surroundings they live in. After all, we want to live well and in good health.
Today’s climate crisis stems from insufficient care for our environment. Yet it is the result not of individual indifference but of long-term economic and social processes that today cause droughts, heat waves, floods and hurricanes.
Although the existence of the climate crisis is beyond doubt, it is especially difficult to find broadly acceptable ways to halt climate change. The search for solutions reaches a deadlock because the arguments fail to convince most people, both in Lithuania and across the Western world.
This study proposes a change of emphasis: to leave behind explaining directives on meeting global climate targets down to the decimal point, and to start instead with people and their relationship with their immediate surroundings. Solutions should grow out of the understanding that we must protect our homes, our meadows, forests and lakes.
Paradoxically, a problem as large and global as climate change calls for as much moderation as possible. That is exactly the approach this study proposes.
Teodoras Žukas, Director of the Institute of European Right
Contents of the study
- Why is the current climate policy narrative problematic?
- The moral foundations of conservative climate policy
- An analysis of Lithuania’s situation
- Polarisation resilient designing of climate policy reforms, and a model for communicating them
- Policy directions
The appendix assesses Lithuania’s prosumer policy using the seven-question depolarisation test.
The document was prepared by Andrius Vyšniauskas. The full study is available for download in PDF format.
