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........