We analysed 73,000 articles and found the UK media is divorcing ‘climate change’ from net zero
In October 2024, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch declared herself a “net zero sceptic”, but “not a climate sceptic”. Most recently she doubled down, announcing plans to scrap the 2030 ban on new petrol cars in a 900-word Sunday Telegraph article that did not mention climate change once.
Badenoch is not an outlier. She’s following a similar script to one increasingly found in the British press.
My new research reveals a surprising trend: the linguistic divorcing of “net zero” from “climate change”. My colleague Will Vowell and I analysed more than 73,000 articles across nine UK media outlets and found that the two terms – once closely linked – are becoming more detached.
In 2018, when our data begins, the link was explicit. In that year, 90% of articles mentioning “net zero” also included the phrase “climate change” or a similar term like “global warming”. By 2024, this figure had fallen to just 42%.
We then looked at those articles where net zero appeared in the headline and at least two (other) mentions in the text. This was a more robust measure of whether the article included an important discussion about net zero, rather than a passing mention.
Here there was a similar pattern of a gradual decline. In 2018 – a year before the Conservative government brought a net zero target into law – 100% of net zero discussions also mentioned climate change. That dropped to 75% in 2022 and to 59% in 2024.
This trend was replicated in articles where net zero appeared in the headline along with at least four other mentions in the text. In this category, out of the broadsheet papers, the Times – often regarded as the UK’s paper of record – had the lowest percentage of articles referencing climate change, at 64%. Four articles in 2024 – across the Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Express – had as many as eight mentions of net zero, but no mention at all of the climate emergency it is designed to solve.
In 2018-19, there appeared to be a reasonable amount of support in newspapers for the net zero policy. For example, the Daily Mail published an article around the time of the 2019 youth climate strike headlined: “Net zero hero! How being carbon neutral will help the planet”. Fast forward to 2024, and in September the Mail published the headline “Bonkers’ net-zero target could cost 1 MILLION jobs, union chief warns”, which included four mentions of net zero but no mention of climate change.
The rise of ‘response scepticism’
Our new report was commissioned by thinktank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU). Its director Peter Chalkley notes there is a “strong case” that certain papers or editors are driving an agenda to “divide climate change (an issue that the public greatly care about) from net zero (its solution, which is less understood)”.
This is part of a wider trend of “response scepticism” over the past decade in parts of the UK media. I co-authored a report published in early 2025 which found that scepticism of climate science has largely disappeared from opinion pieces and editorials, but criticism of the policies required to tackle climate change is pervasive.
“By removing the scientific and policy context,” argues Chalkley, “net zero risks being reframed – no longer the solution to stopping climate change, but part of a green culture war.”
A confused public
Despite the UK having a net zero target for more than six years, public understanding remains disappointing.
Awareness of the term is high (around 90%), but actual knowledge is low: around 50% say they knew a little, hardly anything or nothing at all about it.
In April 2025, Climate Barometer, an organisation that tracks public opinion on climate change, found 22% of people wrongly thought net zero meant “producing no carbon emissions at all”, a figure which rose to 41% among Reform supporters. The organisation argues that public confusion around the meaning of net zero and its implications for the country reflected attacks on net zero in the media and political debates.
Given these levels of public confusion and misunderstanding, reporters should remind audiences more frequently of why net zero is a necessity. At the very least, a simple statement outlining that scientists view net zero as essential to stopping global warming should be standard practice.
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James Painter receives funding from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. He is a senior visiting fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.