Can climate change upend politics in authoritarian settings? We analyse protests over environmental degradation as an overlooked threat to authoritarian rulers. We propose that protests over worsening environmental conditions have the potential to bolster dissatisfaction toward the authorities in ways that protests advancing political grievances are unable to do. To some extent, this is because environmental grievances tangibly affect people's well-being in ways that state propaganda cannot discount, are shared by people across the political spectrum, and can be framed in patriotic terms. We test expectations using two sets of survey experiments fielded in Russia. The first experiment shows that, holding constant the activities of demonstrators and of the police, demonstrators advancing environmental, as opposed to political, grievances are more likely to be described as law-abiding and as acting in the interests of ordinary people. Their arrests, both in the context of peaceful and violent protests, are also perceived as less justified. Complementing these findings is a second experiment that explores whether citizens are more likely to support demands for greater political accountability when these are articulated in the context of environmental, as opposed to political, protests. Findings suggest that controlling for protesters' political affiliation and tactics, citizens are more likely to approve of demands for the resignation of regional officials when articulated in the context of environmental, as opposed to political, protests. Our findings have implications for studies of authoritarian politics and protests at a time of climate change.