The UK’s right-leaning newspapers have unleashed a huge wave of editorials attacking energy secretary Ed Miliband since last year’s general election, Carbon Brief analysis reveals.
In the first half of 2024, newspapers published 16 editorials – articles that are considered the newspaper’s formal “voice” – attacking Miliband. In the second half of the year, since Labour’s election win, this increased to 45 – roughly two every week.
Right-leaning outlets such as the Sun and the Daily Mail repeatedly called Miliband an “eco-zealot”, a “madman” and a “hysterical eco-obsessive”, due to his support for net-zero policies.
More broadly, there were 368 editorials published in UK newspapers last year that were about climate change and energy. This is the second-highest annual tally recorded by Carbon Brief’s long-running project, which tracks UK newspaper editorials back to 2011.
In 2024, unprecedented numbers of these editorials opposed climate action in general, as well as renewable energy, specifically.
As the new Labour government pursues a clean power system by 2030 and other net-zero policies, right-leaning newspapers argued that such measures would be costly and harmful.
This continues a recent trend of the right-leaning press rejecting net-zero policies, after briefly embracing climate action during Boris Johnson’s Conservative government.
Attacking Miliband
In his role as energy security and net-zero secretary, Miliband has been the face of Labour’s plan to achieve a clean power system by 2030 and is a long-standing and staunch defender of climate policies in general.
Last year, newspapers such as the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph continued to push back against net-zero policies, with much of their criticism personally focused on Miliband himself.
Carbon Brief’s analysis identified 61 editorials that directly criticised Miliband in 2024. All of these, barring one published in the Independent, were in right-leaning newspapers.
A particular uptick followed the general election on 4 July, which saw Miliband enter government for the first time in 14 years. Newspapers published 45 critical editorials between election day and the end of the year, amounting to nearly two a week, on average, as the chart below shows.
By far the biggest critic of Miliband was the Sun, which published 29 editorials attacking him. This was followed by the Daily Mail, with 12, and the Daily Telegraph, with nine. The Sunday editions of these three newspapers also published a handful of critical editorials.
The favoured editorial criticism was that Miliband is a “muddled climate zealot”, prone to “demented fantasies”, who places the “mad rush to net-zero” ahead of – the newspapers claim – more pressing issues. Newspapers alleged – often with little supporting evidence – that “his” policies will lead to higher energy bills and the “lights going out”.
This claim was often in response to Miliband stating that renewables would help curb the UK’s reliance on expensive gas, as well as bring down energy prices.
There were several calls for prime minister Keir Starmer to “rein in” Miliband, calling him a “drag” on the Labour government.
Such specific and personal attacks are not directed at all government ministers. As a comparison, Carbon Brief only identified two editorials in 2024 that took specific aim at Miliband’s Conservative predecessor, Claire Coutinho, even though she held the role for half of the year.
(The criticism of Coutinho was also fairly mild in comparison to the claims about Miliband, focusing on the difficulties of building nuclear power. For example, the Sun said she needed a “reality check” and that “both main parties have been an abject failure” on nuclear.)
Miliband, who introduced the landmark Climate Change Act during his first stint as climate secretary in 2008, has long been a target for the right-leaning press and climate sceptics. The same newspapers criticising him now ran a similarly personal campaign to oppose Miliband becoming prime minister, when he was leader of the Labour party in 2015.
Record climate opposition
In total, Carbon Brief identified 368 editorials that touched on climate and energy issues in 15 UK newspapers last year, averaging one per day
Of these, 169 dealt explicitly with climate change. In an election year that saw Labour take power with a clean energy-focused manifesto, many of these editorials referred to measures the new government was pledging or starting to implement.
According to Carbon Brief’s analysis, a record 44 of the editorials published in 2024 argued for less climate action. This is the third record-breaking year in a row for such editorials in UK newspapers, as the chart below shows.
While there were still more than twice as many supportive editorials calling for more climate action, they were heavily skewed towards certain publications.
In total, 80 of the 99 editorials calling for “more action” were published in left-leaning and “centrist” publications, with the Guardian alone publishing 40 of them.
Right-leaning titles, which tend to have higher readerships, published just 19 editorials advocating for climate action, 14 of which were in the Times. The Sun, which is one of the UK’s most-read daily newspapers, did not publish any editorials supporting climate action.
For a brief period, peaking in 2020, these right-leaning publications appeared to have shifted in their attitudes. Publications with long histories of publishing climate-sceptic journalism, such as the Sun and the Daily Express, made public commitments to cover climate change.
This coincided with the Conservative government of Boris Johnson, which made major climate commitments, and the build-up to the UK hosting the COP26 climate summit.
However, since 2020 there has been a steep decline in support for climate action by these newspapers. As the chart below shows, the share of their editorials supporting and opposing climate policies is now back where it was a decade ago.
Carbon Brief’s analysis also assesses the themes present in newspaper editorials.
It shows that, once again, the most common argument against climate action was that there would be a negative economic impact of climate policies. Last year, 35 climate-related editorials, or one-fifth of the total, made this argument.
The “cost of net-zero” has been a key talking point in the right-leaning press. This can be seen in editorial headlines such as “the untenable costs of net-zero” and “it’s time MPs were honest about the true cost of net-zero”, in the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times, respectively.
Economic benefits of climate policies, on the other hand, were mentioned in 29 climate-related editorials – 16% of the total. Analysis for the UK government has repeatedly demonstrated that switching to clean technologies will save people money, offsetting upfront investment costs, as well as delivering significant social benefits.
Another common negative theme – mentioned in around a sixth of climate editorials – was criticism of climate advocates, from Just Stop Oil to Ed Miliband.
Right-leaning newspapers frequently denounced such advocates for “green piety” and “hypocrisy”, or called them “fanatics” and “extremists”.
Renewable pushback
Carbon Brief analysed 79 editorials that focused specifically on three major energy technologies – renewables, nuclear power and fracking.
Fracking has fallen off the political agenda since plans to overturn a ban on the practice came to nothing in 2022. Only two editorials mentioned it at all in 2024.
Nuclear power was mentioned in 20 editorials, with none expressing anti-nuclear sentiments. Notably, the technology enjoyed support across the political spectrum of newspapers, as it has in previous years.
Renewable energy was far more divisive. Mirroring the results for climate action more generally, 2024 saw a record 25 UK newspaper editorials opposing wind, solar and other renewable energy sources. As the chart below shows, there was also a dip in the number of editorials actively supporting renewables.
All but one of the editorials opposing renewables were published in right-leaning newspapers, particularly the Daily Mail – with 11 – and the Sun, with seven.
Again, the supposed economic cost of renewables was the main reason cited. The Daily Mail said “eye-watering subsidies” were required to support renewables, while the Sun called the government’s plan to cut reliance on expensive gas, in favour of renewables a “ruinous fantasy”.
In contrast, some newspapers made the economic case for renewables. In an editorial about wind power, the Guardian said that “exploiting the British Isles’ most obvious natural asset is environmentally and economically the right thing to do”.
Methodology
This is a 2024 update of previous analysis conducted for the period 2011-2021 by Carbon Brief in association with Sylvia Hayes, then a PhD researcher and now a research fellow at the University of Exeter. Previous updates were published in 2022 and 2023.
The count of editorials criticising Ed Miliband was not conducted in previous years.
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.
The post Analysis: UK newspaper editorials attacked Ed Miliband relentlessly throughout 2024 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK newspaper editorials attacked Ed Miliband relentlessly throughout 2024
Antarctic sea ice has recorded its third-smallest winter peak extent since satellite records began 48 years ago, new data reveals.
Provisional data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that Antarctic sea ice hit its annual winter peak on 14 September, with an extent of 17.59m square kilometres (km2).
The organisation notes that the data is still preliminary, adding that “large fluctuations in extent are typical of Antarctic sea ice near the seasonal maximum”.
One expert tells Carbon Brief that it is “concerning to see these low values persisting”, but says that scientists need more time to determine whether this represents a “structural shift” in Antarctic sea ice extent.
Meanwhile, at the Earth’s other pole, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on 12 September, ranking as the joint-10th lowest in the satellite record.
The NSIDC notes that the last 20 years have seen the lowest 20 Arctic sea ice extents in the satellite record.
Antarctic peak
Dr Lettie Roach, a polar climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, tells Carbon Brief that this year’s Antarctic sea ice maximum was “well below average for the season”. She warns that, “after several decades of stable or increasing winter Antarctic sea ice conditions, it is concerning to see these low values persisting”.
She adds:
“Compared with the Arctic, it’s less clear how recent changes in Antarctic sea ice are attributable to human-caused warming vs natural variability. We need more years of observations to better understand whether this is truly a structural shift.”
Dr Clare Eayrs, a postdoctoral researcher at the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI), tells Carbon Brief that, since recording a “near-average February minimum” extent, Antarctic sea ice has “returned to unusually low winter coverage”.
She notes that Antarctic sea ice extent in July and August this year were the fifth and fourth lowest on record, respectively, adding that “all five of the lowest July extents have occurred since 2022 and all four of the lowest August extents since 2023”.
The chart below shows Antarctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2023 (mid blue), the year of the smallest winter sea-ice maximum on record.
Eayrs tells Carbon Brief that the regional pattern of Antarctic sea ice cover “changed substantially during the growth season”.
For example, she says that “in April, the Bellingshausen Sea remained almost entirely ice-free, while the neighbouring Amundsen Sea had more ice than usual”.
However, by late August, changes in atmospheric pressure and wind meant that “the Bellingshausen deficit had largely recovered, while ice was unusually scarce in the Amundsen Sea and across much of East Antarctica”.
Arctic minimum
Meanwhile, the Arctic recorded its minimum summer sea ice extent on 12 September. At 4.60m km2, this year ties with 2025, 2010 and 2008 as the 10th-lowest sea ice extent on record.
The chart below shows Arctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2012 (mid blue), the year of the smallest summer sea-ice minimum on record.
Roach tells Carbon Brief that although this minimum is not “record setting”, it is still “lower than any sea ice minimum before 2007”. She adds:
“Human-caused climate change has reduced Arctic sea ice cover and thickness, so the region is fundamentally different compared to a few decades ago.”
Scientists have been tracking Arctic sea ice thickness using a reanalysis produced called the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) since 1979.
In March 2026, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) terminated a global dataset of air pressure that scientists relied upon to produce PIOMAS, forcing both datasets to stop publishing updates.
The PIOMAS website says it will take “considerable effort and time” to find alternative data to use in their reanalysis. It adds that “we don’t yet have a good sense if that’s possible with available funds and if so, when we will be able to resume production of a new PIOMAS timeseries”.
Roach also notes that August saw record-breaking heat sweep across much of the world, explaining that high temperatures “extended into Arctic coastal regions, close to regions with substantial sea ice loss – particularly the Barents-Kara and East Siberian seas”.
Dr Zack Labe, a scientist at Climate Central, tells Carbon Brief that the absence of a new record does not mean that ice cover is becoming more “resilient”. He says:
“Local weather patterns across the Arctic play a really important role in year-to-year sea-ice extent, even as the long-term trend is clearly downward.”
Labe tells Carbon Brief that weather in the Arctic this summer was “influenced mainly by lower pressure toward the central Arctic, which brought cloudier and cooler conditions that limited surface melt and delayed the start of the melt season”.
He explains that this “was most obvious across parts of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, where the melt season didn’t really kick off until after early July, which was more than two weeks later than normal”.
In contrast, he says, the Atlantic side of the Arctic “had a much more extreme summer”, with sea ice in the Barents Sea recording its “earliest melt-out on record”.
This was partly due to “unusually warm air and ocean temperatures”, Labe says. He notes, for example, that parts of western Siberia saw unusually persistent temperatures more than 5C above the 1981-2010 average for much of the summer, which extended out over the Kara Sea and contributed to substantial ice melt in this area”.
Labe tells Carbon Brief that, going forward, scientists need “more data and observations of other sea-ice metrics, like ice thickness, which may give us better insight into the overall condition of the ice pack, especially during years like 2026 when it is very fragmented”.
(In March 2026, Arctic sea ice reached its peak extent for this winter, clocking in as the joint-smallest in a satellite record going back almost half a century.)
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The post ‘Concerning’ low sea ice persists as Antarctic hits third-lowest winter peak appeared first on Carbon Brief.
‘Concerning’ low sea ice persists as Antarctic hits third-lowest winter peak
Participants at COP31 in Antalya will have a “duty” not to interfere in Türkiye’s internal affairs under the country’s hosting deal with the UN, reviving a clause dropped for last year’s climate summit in Brazil that human rights groups warn could put activists at risk.
Türkiye has faced growing criticism from human rights groups over the jailing of opposition figures, journalists and activists and imposed a blanket protest ban around July’s summit of the NATO military alliance in Ankara.
The contested provision is included in the binding agreement between the UN climate secretariat and the Turkish government that sets out responsibilities over logistical arrangements and details participants’ rights and obligations.
The document, signed in June but only made public on Wednesday, gives accredited COP31 attendees immunity from legal action over what they say, write or do in connection with the conference. Climate Home News understands that this safeguard can be applied to what takes place both inside and, in certain circumstances, outside of the UN-controlled COP “Blue Zone”. For the first time, this protection explicitly continues after the summit ends.
But participants enjoying these “privileges and immunities” also have a duty to respect Türkiye’s laws and regulations and not to interfere in its internal affairs, the agreement states. Rights groups fear its wide-ranging formulation could be used to discourage criticism of the host government.
Climate Home News understands that whether an action is covered by the immunity or infringes on the host’s internal affairs would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with close coordination between the country’s authorities and the UN climate change body.
A separate provision states that immunity shall be waived where the UN believes it would “impede the course of justice”.
‘Chilling effect’
Those same provisions featured in the host country agreements for COP28 in the United Arab Emirates and COP29 in Azerbaijan, both regarded as authoritarian regimes, before being dropped for COP30 in Brazil.
Ann Harrison, climate justice policy advisor at Amnesty International, said it is “extremely disappointing” that the COP31 agreement re-introduced clauses that could “hinder the ability of human rights defenders and civil society organisations to conduct their work safely”.
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She added the provisions could have a “wider chilling effect” on rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, given concerns over the human rights situation in Türkiye, including laws that “have shrunk civic space” and their “abusive” implementation by authorities.
The UN climate change body declined to comment.
Rights groups have documented blanket protest bans, unlawful use of force by the police and prosecutions of journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers across Türkiye in the last year.
Arrests and protest bans
Last July, environmental activist Esra Işık was sentenced to more than two years for “resisting” a public official over what Amnesty International described as a peaceful protest against an urgent expropriation order linked to the expansion of coal mining in south-western Türkiye. She is appealing the conviction.
Ahead of a summit of the NATO alliance in the capital Ankara in July, authorities put in place a 13-day blanket ban on demonstrations, citing “national security”, and arrested over 200 people. Human Rights Watch said the crackdown showed Türkiye’s “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly”.
Earlier this month, Turkish police detained dozens of people as part of what rights groups described as the government’s widening crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists and venues.
Questioned by media as to how he would guarantee the right to protest at COP31, Kurum said earlier in September that his team would “try to meet” any request they receive from civil society and give them “a free space to express themselves”.
“Don’t worry, thinking you will not be able to voice your opinions or really share your thoughts,” he said in an attempt to reassure campaigners, adding that he had put former deputy environment minister Mehmet Birpinar in charge of liaising with civil society.
Civic space needed
Camilla Pollera, human rights and climate change campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said meaningful participation at COP31 is fundamental to the legitimacy of climate action.
“At a climate summit, civil society participation necessarily includes being present, speaking out, scrutinising governments’ decisions and climate policies, and advocating for communities most vulnerable to climate change,” she added.
At last year’s COP30 summit, thousands of Indigenous people and climate activists peacefully marched through the Amazonian city of Belém in the first major demonstration outside the UN venue in four years. Smaller-scale demonstrations were largely confined to the “Blue Zone” at COP27 in Egypt, COP28 in the UAE and COP29 in Azerbaijan.
In two other separate incidents in Belém, members of the Munduruku tribe blocked access to the conference centre for hours, demanding an end to development projects in their ancestral land, and protesters stormed through the venue clashing with UN security officials.
The COP31 hosting agreement keeps some of the safeguards previously hailed by civil society groups. The government and the UN secretariat commit to upholding “the fundamental human rights” of all participants in the agreement’s preamble.
Under the deal, Türkiye also needs to ensure that security personnel follow “the highest ethical and professional standards and are expected to behave with integrity and respect”.
The post COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs” appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”
As rising seas submerge growing swathes of land, countries that lose territory should still keep their national boundaries, sovereign rights and UN membership, according to a political declaration adopted at the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
The declaration, which was championed by climate-vulnerable small island states, affirms “the presumption in favour of continued statehood” in the face of sea level rise fuelled by climate change, and urges countries to work together to assist communities affected by encroaching oceans.
Speaking at a high-level UN meeting to address the existential threats posed by sea level rise, Cabo Verde’s Prime Minister Francisco Carvalho, one of the initiative’s co-facilitators along with Australia, said the adoption of the text by consensus sends “a message of hope”.
“This declaration has a very special meaning. For us, sea level rise is neither a distant threat nor a theoretical concern,” he said, adding that rising seas put at risk key infrastructure, water resources and economic growth in small island states.
In the Pacific, sea levels have risen at twice the global rate, dramatically increasing coastal flooding events from two to 20 a year in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and from zero to 102 events per year in American Samoa, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the Pacific island of Palau, said the summit in New York represents a “moment of international solidarity”, and highlighted that small island states will remain permanent members of the UN.
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Declaration recognises statehood
An advisory opinion by the world’s top maritime court, the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), first upheld in 2024 that countries do not have to shrink their maritime borders even if they lose land territory due to sea level rise. This was reiterated by the International Court of Justice in last year’s landmark ruling on the climate obligations of states.
The new declaration endorsed by all governments at the UN General Assembly stresses that sea level rise “is not a distant scenario but a real and lived experience for many”, and notes that international law must be implemented in global responses to rising seas.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the “milestone must now be translated into action”, adding that the declaration should encourage an “ongoing dialogue” at the “highest possible level” leading to practical outcomes. Pacific islands have proposed an international treaty on sea level rise that would provide more legal certainty.
“Those on the frontlines must be front and centre on every decision. We cannot allow countries and cultures to vanish beneath the waves,” he said. “The SOS has gone out. The world must answer.”
At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance
Goodwin Friday, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said measures to protect vulnerable states will require adequate finance. “Investing in resilience now is more cost-effective than paying the far greater price for loss and damage later,” he added.
Championed by Australia’s COP31 co-presidency, Pacific islands have sought to put adaptation to sea level rise and ocean conservation at the top of the political agenda by inviting world leaders to attend the pre-COP31 summit co-hosted by Fiji and Tuvalu in October.
Tuvalu will also host the second global fossil fuel phase-out summit in April 2027, after around 60 governments met this year in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss ending their dependence on coal, oil and gas.
“Our coastlines, our reefs and our communities are living with the consequences of fossil fuel dependence every day, and our people have earned the right to help shape the way forward,” Lynda Tabuya, Fiji’s climate minister, said in a statement announcing details of the conference.
Ocean monitoring gets a boost in New York
Amid record-breaking marine heat and seas rising at unprecedented speed, governments in New York announced new commitments to protect the world’s ocean, as efforts to bolster marine ecosystems and coastal communities rise up the political agenda.
On Wednesday, the EU and Canada announced more funding for a new Europe-led ocean monitoring system called OceanEye, launched in the aftermath of a failed attempt by the Trump administration to dismantle the largest existing network of deep-sea observatories.
During an event at UN headquarters in New York, EU President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced around $163 million in new funding for the initiative, with the EU pledging €92 million ($105m) on top of existing seed funding and Canada pledging C$82 million (US$58m) over five years.
According to an EU statement, while OceanEye will collaborate with the Global Ocean Observing System, that network “remains vulnerable to financial shortfalls and geopolitical disruptions”. A group of 30 countries from Europe, Africa and the Americas joined an international initiative in support of OceanEye, including large coastal nations like Brazil, Namibia and Mexico.
Von der Leyen said OceanEye “can make us the leading ocean data provider in a matter of years”, including by launching new satellites and installing new observatories in the deep ocean. “From outer space to the deepest ocean, our funding helps us keep watch beneath the waves,” she added.
Carney said the initiative would help protect Canada’s Arctic region with real-time monitoring operating year-round. “We can’t protect what we can’t see,” he said, also highlighting that Canada had expanded conservation of its ocean territory from 1% a decade ago to 15% now.
In New York, a group of 19 countries said they are either developing or implementing plans to sustainably manage all of their ocean territory, with 12 new nations joining the initiative. In a joint communiqué, they called on more countries to sign up ahead of COP31.
Warnings of El Niño-fuelled extreme heat
Scientists and world leaders have raised the alarm over this year’s record-breaking marine temperatures, which have persisted above historical peaks for more than 100 days as the naturally occurring El Niño phenomenon intensifies in the Pacific.
Extreme ocean heat could become a threat to coastal ecosystems and communities, experts fear. Water temperatures 1.5C above normal levels have also rapidly fuelled a strong hurricane in the Pacific in recent days.
Despite scientific calls for additional ocean conservation efforts, a report launched this week in New York warned that efforts to protect ocean ecosystems are lagging behind, with only 10% of the global ocean covered by conservation areas and just 3.5% designated as “effectively protected”.
The post Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood appeared first on Climate Home News.
Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood
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