Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. This week, Europe's answer to the Green backlash.

Five years ago, Green Party celebrated their best ever results in European elections.

The headlines called it a quiet revolution.

It ushered in a new era in the European Parliament, one where green issues got a real hearing.

As a result, the European Green Deal was approved in 2020 and big policies followed.

That work to put all of it in place is still going.

But today, it's not easy being green anymore.

With just a month until European Parliamentary elections, the Greens appeared to be polling far behind where they were in 2019.

Farmers' protests are stalling the Green Deal.

The cost-of-living crisis is making the populist argument more attractive.

And younger voters, who Greens could count on previously, are turning to the far right in growing numbers.

You could argue this is how politics goes. It's a pendulum. But the climate crisis is not.

It only continues to get worse. One person trying to fight the anti-green tide is Basse Icaut.

He's been a Dutch member of European Parliament since 2009.

In February, the European Green Party picked him to be the party's lead candidate

alongside Terry Reintke, Germany's Green MEP.

Their job now is to sell voters on the party's vision of a more equal and ecological Europe.

I caught up with bars in Brussels at the European Parliament.

He told me that despite the backlash, the message that the Greens have about the long term

is even more important today than it was five years ago.

So we talked about how exactly it is that he can make a convincing case

in a much-changed political environment. Welcome to the show, Buzz.

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