Analysis: How UK newspapers changed their minds about climate change

Which UK newspapers have opposed climate action?

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For the first part of the analysis, 711 editorials that dealt explicitly with climate change between 2011-2021 were identified from Carbon Brief’s larger database.

These articles were not divided up equally between newspapers. The Guardian published the most climate-relevant editorials across this period, 189 in total, and traditional tabloid newspapers generally published the least.

Overall, there have been far more editorials supporting climate action over the past decade than opposing it. However, newspapers’ attitudes have followed a clear ideological split.

According to Carbon Brief’s analysis, left-leaning publications did not publish a single editorial explicitly opposing climate action across this period. In fact, nearly every negative editorial featured in a cluster of right-leaning titles composed of the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph and some of their Sunday equivalents.

These are the same publications that have often promoted climate-sceptic columnists, published climate misinformation and worked to undermine climate scientists.

While the actual number of editorials opposing climate action is small – only 9% of the total – their placement is significant.

Right-leaning newspapers dominate the UK media landscape, with more titles available and far more readers. For example, the Sun and the Daily Mail each have print circulations roughly 10 times higher than the Guardian’s.

(Some newspapers, notably the Guardian, have a far broader “reach” online than in print. However, not all newspapers publish their editorials online.)

The Guardian and the Daily Mirror – and their Sunday equivalents, the Observer and the Sunday Mirror – are the only UK newspapers regarded as left-leaning, while the Financial Times has been described as centrist. The Independent was launched in 1986 as a non-partisan, centrist publication, but today is regarded as leaning more to the left.

For all of these publications, their favourable editorial stances broadly match their news coverage, which has tended to prioritise climate change.

The Times is a firmly conservative publication. It has been criticised over the years for giving undue attention to climate-sceptic views, such as those of the lobby group known as the Global Warming Policy Foundation, or the newspaper’s former columnist Matt Ridley.

Nevertheless, according to the Carbon Brief analysis, the newspaper has had a broadly positive editorial stance towards climate action over the past decade. It is worth noting that of the 77 Times editorials analysed, more than two-thirds have been written in the past three years, indicating the topic’s relatively recent rise up the publication’s agenda.

Overall, Carbon Brief’s assessment of the breakdown of viewpoints among the UK’s newspapers matches previous work that has been undertaken in this area, as Dr James Painter at the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism explains. In the video interview, he says:

"Historically, there’s been a very sharp division between left-leaning and right-leaning media in the UK, particularly in the degree of scepticism or denialism that’s found in both the coverage and particularly in the editorials or opinion pieces."

The following charts outline how a surge in positive sentiment towards climate action has largely drowned out scepticism about climate action in the UK media landscape.

How have attitudes to climate change shifted over the past decade?

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At the start of the decade, the new Conservative prime minister David Cameron was leading what he promised would be the “greenest government ever”. However, climate change remained relatively low on the news agenda and this was reflected by the number of related editorials.

In 2011, just 32 climate-related editorials were published in UK newspapers. By 2021, this number had increased to 185, a boost driven almost entirely by an increase in articles calling for more climate action.

The number of editorials overtly opposing climate action has always been low. However, in the early 2000s such editorials still made up a sizable proportion of the total, whereas in recent years their share has gradually fallen.

The shift that has taken place is clearer to see when the almost uniformly positive left-leaning and centrist titles are removed from the analysis.

This chart shows how a clear switch takes place in the second half of the decade across right-leaning titles, with the publications apparently embracing climate action. By the end of 2021, as the UK hosted the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, 79% of editorials in these newspapers supported climate action, up from 13% in 2011.

In earlier years, right-leaning tabloid newspapers warned of “huge doubts surrounding climate change science”, accused ministers of “throwing money away” in pursuit of climate policies, and mocked “doom-laden warnings about global warming”. Editorials in the right-leaning press were highly critical of “ludicrous green taxes” that they said were harming the UK’s “hard-pressed families”.

Since 2016, negative sentiments in UK newspaper editorials have remained low while positive sentiments have shot up, mirroring rising concerns among the British public.

In 2018, the Daily Mail assured readers it was “far from blind to the potential threat posed by climate change” and in 2019 the Sun hailed the UK as “a world leader in the green movement”, acknowledging its own readers’ concerns.

Notably, this was the first Sun editorial to speak approvingly of climate change action in the dataset analysed. The Daily Express followed with its first positive editorial in 2020.

But these newspapers’ newfound eagerness to show off their environmental values was accompanied by scepticism about the kind of climate action being undertaken.

A surge of negativity in 2019 – which led to the highest annual number of editorials opposing climate action across the period analysed – can be attributed almost entirely to tabloid anger about the disruptive tactics of activists, such as Extinction Rebellion.

There were also mounting concerns about the “cost” of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, a target that had been approved by prime minister Theresa May that summer.

Why have newspapers supported or opposed climate action?

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One of the most notable shifts over the past decade is the disappearance of newspaper editorials questioning the existence of climate change, or the science behind it.

Carbon Brief’s analysis shows that no publication has published such a piece since December 2018, when the Daily Telegraph told its readers that:

Sceptical editorials were rare even in 2011, but they could still be found in right-leaning titles, with references to “huge” and “serious” doubts over climate science in the Daily Mail and Daily Express.

In June 2013, the historically sceptical Daily Telegraph stated that “the vast majority of scientists are persuaded that climate change is real”, while adding that “there is plenty of scope for disagreement…over its extent”. Later that year, the Sun bemoaned the apparent shifting attitudes towards climate scepticism.

Why does the PM treat anyone who questions global warming as if they had claimed to have seen Elvis in Tesco?

The scientific community is NOT unanimous in its support of the climate change doomsayers.

Meanwhile, after 2014 was declared the hottest year on record, the Daily Mirror denounced the “ostrich brains who still deny global warming”.

Editorials in sympathetic left-leaning and centrist titles have frequently been used to make it clear that those publications understand and appreciate the significance of climate science.

However, Carbon Brief’s analysis finds that as climate scepticism has receded, editorials pushing back against sceptical narratives and emphasising the “settled science” of climate change have also become rarer. This may be because leader writers feel it is no longer necessary to emphasise that human-caused climate change exists.

Although outright denial has disappeared from editorial pages, other narratives have become more common.

The analysis shows that the perceived “fairness” of climate action – and how the UK’s efforts compare to the rest of the world – has been a growing area of concern for right-leaning titles.

However, the most common criticisms over the past decade have been levelled either at the politicians, scientists and activists promoting climate action, or most of all at what editorial writers perceive to be the high costs of such action. (As the chart shows, “positive” themes that make the case for climate action – particularly highlighting the threat climate change poses – were far more common than “negative” themes.)

Newspapers point to the sacrifices that they say will be needed and what they see as the prohibitive costs of reaching net-zero. Some also argue that the UK, accounting for just 1% of global emissions, cannot be expected to solve climate change alone.

An early example of this type of argument came in the Daily Express in September 2013.

Man-made climate change may well be happening, but if it is then it is happening very slowly and Britain is not one of the countries suffering as a result…

There is no justification for Britain going above and beyond what other developed nations are prepared to do when it comes to hugely expensive carbon reduction measures.

In the lead up to COP26 editorials frequently took aim at other countries that they saw as not pulling their weight compared to the UK. China – currently the world’s largest emitter – is the nation that is most frequently singled out, as the Sunday Times did in March 2021.

China is like a giant cuckoo in the nest when it comes to climate change. Persuading people in the rest of the world, including the UK, to make sacrifices when the great emitter carries on regardless is hard.

Another argument used to push for less action on climate change targets the legitimacy of the people involved in such action. Editorials might question their credibility, frame them as radicals or describe their ideas as unrealistic.

In earlier years such arguments were aimed broadly at climate “zealots” and “alarmists”, sometimes alluding generally to campaigners, politicians or scientists. However, the more recent spike in this kind of narrative can be attributed almost entirely to the media’s focus on Extinction Rebellion and, in 2021, Insulate Britain.

One Daily Telegraph editorial from April 2021 captured all of these narratives in a single passage.

This rhetoric increasingly goes hand-in-hand with reassurances that the newspapers in question support (unspecified) climate action.

However, it also aligns with a concept academics have dubbed “discourses of climate delay”. These are “statements that exploit discussions on how we should reduce emissions, with the purpose, or effect, of limiting action on climate change”.

Emphasising the high costs of action and corresponding impact on ordinary people, as well as diverting attention to other nations, are both examples of these discourses.

Dr James Painter, whose work has also explored these themes, has seen similar trends emerge in his studies of UK media attitudes to climate change. He tells Carbon Brief:

“The type of scepticism has changed. Whereas previously in the right-leaning media there would be criticism of the science, there is now what we call contestation or criticism of the need to take radical action.”

Which newspapers have supported or opposed renewables, fracking and nuclear?

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The second part of the analysis focuses on the UK’s energy supply, a topic that is intrinsically linked with climate change and which remains a consistent focus for newspaper editorials.

To analyse editorial attitudes regarding the energy sector, Carbon Brief returned to the larger editorials database and identified the three most frequently discussed energy sources from the past decade.

Renewable power was the most popular topic, with mentions in 327 editorials, followed by fracking for shale gas with 164 and nuclear power with 162. In total, 507 energy editorials were analysed, with many mentioning more than one of these topics.

Other issues, such as the wider oil-and-gas industry or coal power, while important, were less common talking points over the past decade, with dedicated editorials appearing in the database just 52 and 18 times, respectively.

Renewables have been a highly contested topic in the UK press. While there have been a handful of editorials about technologies such as solar power, the main target has invariably been wind turbines, which have often been dismissed in leading articles as expensive, ineffective and ugly. (The British public, by contrast, has consistently been supportive of wind power.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, editorial attitudes to renewables largely mirror attitudes towards climate change, with nearly all of the negative coverage found in right-leaning publications.

Fracking, by contrast, shows the complete opposite trend. Exploiting the UK’s shale gas reserves using this technology has long been proposed as a means of developing a new industry in the UK and providing domestic energy security.

The Sun, the Times and the Daily Telegraph have led the charge, mainly in the first half of the decade, in supporting this technology.

Meanwhile, the Guardian and the Independent have consistently opposed fracking, pointing to its potential impact on the environment and the emissions from burning shale gas.

Nuclear power has been the least partisan of the three technologies, with publications expressing far more “mixed” views on the subject

While nuclear power is a near-zero carbon form of electricity generation, it has drawn criticism from both left- and right-leaning editorials for being too expensive. Editorials have pointed to projects such as Hinkley Point C exceeding their budgets and relying on investment from foreign powers.

The next section outlines how attitudes to these energy sources have altered over the past decade – and how this has mirrored wider societal shifts and attitudes towards climate change.

How have attitudes to these energy sources shifted over the past decade?

Renewables

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At the start of the decade, wind power – especially onshore wind – was a highly unpopular topic in sections of the national press, blamed for high energy bills and “devastating” the British countryside.

Right-leaning newspaper editorials routinely criticised politicians for placing their faith in renewables, in what they perceived as misguided attempts to show off their “green credentials”. These publications warned of blackouts as the UK shut down fossil-fuel infrastructure and replaced it with wind power.

Other newspapers had a more positive outlook on this technology, noting its importance for tackling climate change, but they also acknowledged that a political divide was emerging as many Conservative MPs resisted the installation of wind turbines.

However, even as the government made it harder to build new onshore wind farms and solar panels, opinions in the UK press were beginning to shift around the middle of the decade.

After years of plummeting costs and rapid growth, particularly for offshore wind, support for renewables across the political spectrum caught up with broadly supportive public attitudes, and this has been reflected in newspaper editorials.

The shift in editorial attitudes to renewables is illustrated by the shift in their economic framing. In 2011, editorials were more likely to describe this technology as too expensive, but in the latter half of the decade this argument had largely been flipped on its head, with editorials increasingly hailing the economic benefits of investing in renewables.

A notable spike in positive economic sentiments came in 2017, when the government awarded offshore wind contracts at record-low prices and a Times editorial welcomed the “winds of change”.

The Daily Express, which began the decade by describing wind farms as a “craze blighting countryside and economy”, ended it by welcoming a “green industrial revolution” in the UK.

After prime minister Boris Johnson announced his intention to make the UK the “Saudi Arabia of wind”, an editorial in the Daily Telegraph in October 2020 conceded that:

(If the UK meets its targets for wind power capacity, the proportion of electricity demand it could supply by then is likely to be closer to half.)

Criticisms of the local impacts of wind turbines and on wildlife have faded away over the decade. However, arguments about their critical role in addressing the global environmental challenge of climate change now appear in most editorials about renewables.

Fracking

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Fracking for shale gas has been a highly controversial topic in the UK press over the years.

Initially touted as a way to significantly expand the nation’s domestic gas supplies, government efforts to support its development in the UK received a largely positive reception in UK newspapers. But, despite this, public support for fracking was never high and it fell lower and lower as the decade progressed.

Fracking has consistently faced pushback not only from those worried about climate change, but also people with concerns around everything from water pollution to the minor earthquakes linked to drilling activities.

These reached a head in 2018 when, after years of debate and false starts, the energy firm Cuadrilla began extracting shale gas at a site in Lancashire. After strong public opposition that was mirrored by a spike in critical newspaper editorials, the government ended support for fracking in England the following year.

With fracking moratoria now in place across the UK, newspaper editorials focusing on this activity had essentially vanished by 2021. (There has since been a small resurgence in fracking discussions in the UK press amid the on-going energy price crisis, although it remains an unpopular technology among the public).

The main arguments for fracking have been that shale gas would help meet the UK’s energy demand and provide an economic boost to the nation. These ideas were summarised in a July 2014 editorial from the Daily Telegraph.

While there were consistent concerns about the local environmental impacts of fracking operations, towards the end of the decade the main argument cited to oppose fracking was that the development of this new industry did not fit with the UK’s climate targets. A February 2019 Guardian editorial stated:

Fracking was always a bad idea, because of climate change. Cutting carbon emissions means reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. To develop a new gas industry is to do the opposite.

However, it is noteworthy that over the course of the decade there are just as many editorials arguing that fracking is a climate solution, with publications such as the Daily Telegraph highlighting that shale gas is a “far cleaner fuel than either coal or oil”.

Nuclear

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Nuclear accounts for around 15% of the UK’s electricity supply, but the approaching closure of older plants and disputes around the construction of replacement facilities have been frequent topics of discussion in newspaper editorials.

The decade began with one of the most severe nuclear accidents that has ever taken place – the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

While there were some negative responses to this in the UK press, with one Guardian editorial referring to the “undisputed nastiness of nuclear”, for the most part newspapers’ criticism of nuclear power in the UK has centred around its cost, rather than perceived environmental or health risks.

In the first half of the decade, newspapers welcomed plans for more nuclear power in the UK and investment plans from Japanese energy giant Hitachi, which the Independent said would help usher in “Britain's fledgling nuclear renaissance”.

However, there was a spike of negativity in 2016 due to concerns about the rising costs of the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, as well as national security risks due to the involvement of the Chinese state in its financing.

These concerns are revealed by Carbon Brief’s analysis, which shows that by far the most common grievances expressed by editorials are economic ones. There is a notable increase in these sentiments in 2016 amid concerns about Hinkley Point C.

Meanwhile, the main reason given for supporting new nuclear power is the need to provide an on-going, reliable electricity supply for the UK. Arguments for and against were summarised by the Sun in July 2016 when it declared:

“Britain faces a struggle to keep the lights on. But the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant still looks like the most crazily expensive and least efficient solution"

According to the Times in July 2016:

Hinkley Point needs to be scrapped...

The evidence suggests that Britain and France are pressing ahead with Hinkley Point C to save the blushes of successive governments that put their faith in it without paying enough attention to its many flaws. Shame on them.

As the government once again raised the prospect of new nuclear plants with its energy white paper in December 2020, the Financial Times stated that:

There are good reasons in principle to back the construction of a new plant…

Ministers, however, should proceed with caution. The government cannot afford a repeat of what happened with Hinkley Point.

That same month, the Daily Telegraph asked why nuclear power was being provided “by state actors in China and France” rather than the British state and called the UK’s lack of commitment to nuclear “one of the great failures of public policy of the past 40 years”.

Despite such widespread concerns about costs, the most common framing for nuclear has been as a way of meeting the UK’s energy demands. Notably, while nuclear is a near-zero carbon power source, its climate benefits were only referenced in 32 editorials, compared to 170 mentions for the emissions-cutting potential of renewables.