For a long time the science has been accepted by those on the right - aided, as the article notes, by Thatcher’s scientific background and the legacy of her championing environmental measures towards the end of her premiership.

I think several things have probably happened here to change this. First, the Tories are very far behind in the polls and desperate, and their unexpected narrow defence at the Uxbridge by-election (which they attributed to a campaign against the expansion of London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone) gave them a glimmer of a wedge issue that they are happy to sink low enough to exploit. Second, it’s clear to most voters (as widely demonstrated in polling) that Brexit isn’t working, and so there’s an added desperation for the Tories to deregulate and ‘dash for growth’ to try to prove otherwise - their party’s whole identity is now built around Brexit and it could end being an anchor on their political fortunes for a very long time if the current accepted view becomes entrenched. And third, there has definitely been an influx of US alt-right ideology and money into British politics over the last decade - weird think-tanks and conferences popping up with US Republican connections that have increasingly influenced Tory thinking. The Conservative Party of today is unrecognisable from the one David Cameron led into government in 2010 - particularly the influx of ideologically extreme new MPs that they saw in 2015 and 2019. Rishi himself is a very extreme figure and should be thought of as part of that far-right ecosystem - on balance, he’s probably the extremist PM Britain has had in the post-war era (Truss was probably a bit more extreme on the economy but Rishi’s social and political conservatism stands out relative to Truss’s relative social liberalism).

The silver lining to all this is that there’s little polling evidence to support this climate denialism benefiting the Tories - a poll today showed that just 22% trust him on the environment. Electorally, the next election was always going to involve the Tories losing a lot of working-class conservative seats in the North and Midlands back to Labour, so their main hope is in defending the relatively liberal middle-class seats they hold in the South against the resurgent Lib Dems - but these are the voters with whom an anti-environment stance may particularly harm the Tory brand. So I’m hopefully that a year or so from now we can turf them out and start to undo the damage.