Nearly 100 UK newspaper editorials opposed climate action in 2025, a record figure that reveals the scale of the backlash against net-zero in the right-leaning press.

Carbon Brief has analysed editorials – articles considered the newspaper’s formal “voice” – since 2011 and this is the first year opposition to climate action has exceeded support.

Criticism of net-zero policies, including renewable-energy expansion, came entirely from right-leaning newspapers, particularly the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph.

In addition, there were 112 editorials – more than two a week – that included attacks on Ed Miliband, continuing a highly personal campaign by some newspapers against the Labour energy secretary.

These editorials, nearly all of which were in right-leaning titles, typically characterised him as a “zealot”, driving through a “costly” net-zero “agenda”.

Taken together, the newspaper editorials mirror a significant shift on the UK political right in 2025, as the opposition Conservative party mimicked the hard-right populist Reform UK party by definitively rejecting the net-zero target that it had legislated for and the policies that it had previously championed.

Record climate opposition

Nearly 100 UK newspaper editorials voiced opposition to climate action in 2025 – more than double the number of editorials that backed climate action.

As the chart below shows, 2025 marked the fourth record-breaking year in a row for criticism of climate action in newspaper editorials.

This also marks the first time that editorials opposing climate action have overtaken those supporting it, during the 15 years that Carbon Brief has analysed.

This trend demonstrates the rapid shift away from a long-standing political consensus on climate change by those on the UK’s political right.

Over the past year, the Conservative party has rejected both the “net-zero by 2050” target that it legislated for in 2019 and the underpinning Climate Change Act that it had a major role in creating. Meanwhile, the Reform UK party has been rising in the polls, while pledging to “ditch net-zero”.

These views are reinforced and reflected in the pages of the UK’s right-leaning newspapers, which tend to support these parties and influence their politics.

All of the 98 editorials opposing climate action were in right-leaning titles, including the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Times and the Daily Express.

Conversely, nearly all of the 46 editorials pushing for more climate action were in the left-leaning and centrist publications the Guardian and the Financial Times. These newspapers have far lower circulations than some of the right-leaning titles.

In total, 81% of the climate-related editorials published by right-leaning newspapers in 2025 rejected climate action. As the chart below shows, this is a marked difference from just a few years ago, when the same newspapers showed a surge in enthusiasm for climate action.

That trend had coincided with Conservative governments led by Theresa May and Boris Johnson, which introduced the net-zero goal and were broadly supportive of climate policies.

Notably, none of the editorials opposing climate action in 2025 took a climate-sceptic position by questioning the existence of climate change or the science behind it. Instead, they voiced “response scepticism”, meaning they criticised policies that seek to address climate change.

(The current Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has described herself as “a net-zero sceptic, not a climate change sceptic”. This is illogical as reaching net-zero is, according to scientists, the only way to stop climate change from getting worse.)

In particular, newspapers took aim at “net-zero” as a catch-all term for policies that they deemed harmful. Most editorials that rejected climate action did not even mention the word “climate”, often using “net-zero” instead.

This supports recent analysis by Dr James Painter, a research associate at the University of Oxford, which concluded that UK newspaper coverage has been “decoupling net-zero from climate change”.

This is significant, given strong and broad UK public support for many of the individual climate policies that underpin net-zero. Notably, there is also majority support for the “net-zero by 2050” target itself.

Much of the negative framing by politicians and media outlets paints “net-zero” as something that is too expensive for people in the UK.

In total, 87% of the editorials that opposed climate action cited economic factors as a reason, making this by far the most common justification. Net-zero goals were described as “ruinous” and “costly”, as well as being blamed – falsely – for “driving up energy costs”.

The Sunday Telegraph summarised the view of many politicians and commentators on the right by stating simply that said “net-zero should be scrapped”.

While some criticism of net-zero policies is made in good faith, the notion that climate change can be stopped without reducing emissions to net-zero is incorrect. Alternative policies for tackling climate change are rarely presented by critical editorials.

Moreover, numerous assessments have concluded that the transition to net-zero can be both “affordable” and far cheaper than previously thought.

This transition can also provide significant economic benefits, even before considering the evidence that the cost of unmitigated warming will significantly outweigh the cost of action.

Miliband attacks intensify

Meanwhile, UK newspapers published 112 editorials over the course of 2025 taking personal aim at energy security and net-zero secretary Ed Miliband.

Nearly all of these articles were in right-leaning newspapers, with the Sun alone publishing 51. The Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Times published most of the remainder.

This trend of relentlessly criticising Miliband personally began last year in the run up to Labour’s election victory. However, it ramped up significantly in 2025, as the chart below shows.

Around 58% of the editorials that opposed climate action used criticism of climate advocates as a justification – and nearly all of these articles mentioned Miliband, specifically.

Editorials denounced Miliband as a “loon” and a “zealot”, suffering from “eco insanity” and “quasi-religious delusions”. Nicknames given to him include “His Greenness”, the “high priest of net-zero” and “air miles Miliband”.

Many of these attacks were highly personal. The Daily Mail, for example, called Miliband “pompous and patronising”, with an “air of moral and intellectual superiority”.

Frequently, newspapers refer to “Ed Miliband’s net-zero agenda”, “Ed Miliband’s swivel-eyed targets” and “Mr Miliband’s green taxes”.

These formulations frame climate policies as harmful measures that are being imposed on people by the energy secretary.

In fact, the Labour government decisively won an election in 2024 with a manifesto that prioritised net-zero policies. Often, the “targets” and “taxes” in question are long-standing policies that were introduced by the previous Conservative government, with cross-party support.

Moreover, the government’s climate policy not only continues to rely on many of the same tools created by previous administrations, it is also very much in line with expert evidence and advice. This is to prioritise the expansion of clean power and to fuel an economy that relies on increasing levels of electrification, including through electric cars and heat pumps.

Despite newspaper editorials regularly calling for Miliband to be “sacked”, prime minister Keir Starmer has voiced his support both for the energy secretary and the government’s prioritisation of net-zero.

In an interview with podcast The Rest is Politics last year, Miliband was asked about the previous Carbon Brief analysis that showed the criticism aimed at him by right-leaning newspapers.

Podcast host Alastair Campbell asked if Miliband thought the attacks were the legacy of his strong stance, while Labour leader, during the Leveson inquiry into the practices of the UK press. Miliband replied:

“Some of these institutions don’t like net-zero and some of them don’t like me – and maybe quite a lot of them don’t like either.”

Renewable backlash

As well as editorial attitudes to climate action in general, Carbon Brief analysed newspapers’ views on three energy technologies – renewables, nuclear power and fracking.

There were 42 newspaper editorials criticising renewable energy in 2025. This meant that, for the first time since 2014, there were more anti-renewables editorials than pro-renewables editorials, as the chart below shows.

As with climate action more broadly, this was a highly partisan issue. The Times was the only right-leaning newspaper that published any editorials supporting renewables.

By far the most common stated reason for opposing renewable energy was that it is “expensive”, with 86% of critical editorials using economic arguments as a justification.

The Sun referred to “chucking billions at unreliable renewables” while the Daily Telegraph warned of an “expensive and intermittent renewables grid”.

At the same time, editorials in supportive publications also used economic arguments in favour of renewables. The Guardian, for example, stressed the importance of building an “affordable clean-energy system” that is “built on renewables”.

There was continued support in right-leaning publications for nuclear power, despite the high costs associated with the technology. In total, there were 20 editorials supporting nuclear power in 2025 – nearly all in right-leaning newspapers – and none that opposed it.

Fracking was barely mentioned by newspapers in 2023 and 2024, after a failed push by the Conservatives under prime minister Liz Truss to overturn a ban on the practice in 2022. This attempt had been accompanied by a surge in supportive right-leaning newspaper editorials.

There was a small uptick of 15 editorials supporting fracking in 2025, as right-leaning newspapers once again argued that it would be economically beneficial.

The Sun urged current Conservative leader Badenoch to make room for this “cheap, safe solution” in her future energy policy. The government plans to ban fracking “permanently”.

North Sea oil and gas remained the main fossil-fuel policy focus, with 30 editorials – all in right-leaning newspapers – that mentioned the topic. Most of the editorials arguing for more extraction from the North Sea also argued for less climate action or opposed renewable energy.

None of these editorials noted that the UK is expected to be significantly less reliant on fossil-fuel imports if it pursues net-zero, than if it rolls back on climate action and attempts to squeeze more out of the remaining deposits in the North Sea.

Methodology

This is a 2025 update of previous analysis conducted for the period 2011-2021 by Carbon Brief in association with Dr Sylvia Hayes, a research fellow at the University of Exeter. Previous updates were published in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

The count of editorials criticising Ed Miliband was not conducted in the original analysis.

The full methodology can be found in the original article, including the coding schema used to assess the language and themes used in editorials concerning climate change and energy technologies.

The analysis is based on Carbon Brief’s editorial database, which is regularly updated with leading articles from the UK’s major newspapers.

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Analysis: UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time