They don’t want to leave the EU like the UK, they want to keep Schengen open trading zone but remove or reform the not elected EU parliament which makes laws for all EU countries. The main argument is that they are going to far with the regulations and harming the member states and whole EU as a consequence.

They’re committed to making money and keeping power. The fossil fuel industry, and to a lesser extent the automobile industry, made enormous amounts of money by being allowed to ignore externalities and they would like it to continue.

There’s also a broader concern of feeling threatened by strong organizations which do not answer to them. For example, big tech companies may not oppose climate change mitigation but they do feel threatened by stronger regulatory frameworks and might support the same politicians for that reason.

As one example of how this can lead to some non-obvious relationships, in the late 2000s there was a smear campaign trying to argue that banning DDT had caused millions of deaths from malaria (this relied on dodgy math and studiously ignoring the pesticide resistance becoming common in the 1950s), arguing that environmentalists and public health agencies should be responsible for those deaths. This wasn’t funded by a company which made DDT, but apparently by the tobacco companies who were trying to discredit the public health agencies cutting into their sales in Africa. If you look at period discussion, some of the “experts” making these claims also work in climate change denial.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080517020543/http://www.prospe...

At least in the US, it seems rooted in religious extremism, seeking rapture or the second coming of Christ.

My theory: zero sum game mentality. Lowering the status of others increases your own.