During the last decades, a huge effort has been made to increase environmental attitudes
and behaviors all over the world. Governmental initiatives and educational programs
have promoted more sustainable lifestyles and a higher environmental awareness.
However, in the last years, we have witnessed the growth of persons who do not believe
climate change to be real (e.g., White, 2018), at the same time that the scientific
consensus overwhelmingly supports the reality of climate change. In this paper we
explore the relationship between perception of climate change and populism. We
wanted to test the resentment hypothesis to populism (Fukuyama, 2018) and understand
the contribution of climate change denial in this process. An online study was conducted
(N=414, 50% below 35 years old), including the short version of the perception of
climate change scale (van Valkengoed, Steg & Perlaviciute, 2021), a populist attitudes
scale (Akkerman et al. 2024), the lack of group recognition scale (Babst et al., 2024), as
well as indicators of perceived socioeconomic status. As expected, we found a negative
association between socio-economic status and populism, that was mediated by the
perception of lack of recognition. However, the denial of climate change increased the
explanation of populism, over and above lack of group recognition. The implication of
these results for environmental interventions are analyzed.