One of the most curious government announcements of late was UK Transport Secretary Mark Harper’s pledge to “stop the misuse of 15 minute cities” where “local councils can decide how often you go to the shops”.

15 minute cities – known in Scotland as ’20 minute neighbourhoods’ – are an urban planning approach intended to ensure that essential amenities are within walking distance of where people live. It’s a remarkably popular policy – 62% of people in Britain would support it in their neighbourhood, with only 23% opposed.

But it’s also become a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists who see it as part of a wider plot to prevent individual freedom.

The conspiracy theories around the term are so rife that the BBC, quite unusually, drew a direct line between the government announcement and online misinformation in a debunking article.

So what’s going on here?

The specifics of Harper’s policy have nothing to do with town planning, but instead seem to be a reaction to traffic management measures in Oxford that limit the use of private cars. Standing against the perceived excesses of local government is a well-worn tactic for the political right.

Oxford’s traffic management is irrelevant to most voters – but this should be understood as signalling, intended to portray the government as pro-driver. It’s also possible that announcements like this are designed to provoke a response from the opposition and open up a divide to be exploited in the General Election (which I suspect is the motivation for other slightly eccentric announcements such as on ‘the meat tax’).

The rise of the ‘super distruster’

While the 15 minute city conspiracy is firmly a fringe belief, the journey from Facebook-led paranoia to government announcement does point to the ability of extremist anti-environmental figures to toxify public debate.

Take August’s protest against London’s Ultra-Low Emissions Zone, for example – which received significant press coverage despite being attended by only 200 people. Organisers of the group behind the protest include climate change deniers who promote conspiracies around looming “climate lockdowns” and “open prisons”.

Some recent research by MHP Group and Cambridge University found that nearly 30% of adults can now be classed as ‘super distrusters’ – who are “distrustful of traditional authority, expertise and increasingly hostile to innovation and technology, which they see as having the potential to give more power to authoritarian elites. Protests against ULEZ cameras, 15 Minute Cities and digital cash are all manifestations of these fears.”

These attitudes are a minority position – but they do point to a potentially powerful political constituency if reactionary figures can successfully weave concerns over Net Zero with other concerns, such as migration. This is exactly the formula that has seen the rise of the far-right AfD in Germany, and research has found an overlap in climate scepticism with misogyny and authoritarian attitudes among US voters.

Of course, the Conservative pivot against Net Zero has done nothing to prevent historically bad results in two by-elections overnight…

What impact will this year’s extreme weather have on public opinion?

This morning we wake to scenes of extreme flooding in Brechin – the latest in a year of extreme weather that has seen climate twitter dominated by scary graphs with rising red lines across a range of metrics. So will this start to impact public attitudes to the environment?

As covered in the last newsletter, research in Germany has found a link between personal experience of extreme weather with electoral support for environmentalists if a clear link is drawn between the weather and climate change. And a 2022 US study found that both personal experience and hearing about others’ experiences can increase understanding of climate change.

There is evidence that this is already happening. In August, Ipsos found concern about climate change double in their Issues Index after coverage of wildfires and extreme heat. Diffley’s Understanding Scotland series found similar, with the proportion of Scots ranking the environment and climate as a top priority rising from 10% in May to 18% in August.

There is one caveat. There is evidence that while personal exposure to hot, dry days is associated with having experienced global warming, the same is not necessarily true of extreme rainfall or flooding. This is why it is vital that environmental communicators make the link between rising temperatures and other impacts as explicit as possible.