How press attitudes to climate change have shifted

 From a Twitter thread by Josh Gabbatiss, of Carbon Brief

I'm pleased to reveal a new @CarbonBrief  project that's been months in the making.

Using our database of 1364 UK newspaper editorials we have analysed how press attitudes to climate & energy have changed in a decade. The results may surprise you.

For years we have tracked how newspapers talk about climate change, renewables etc in their editorials – which serve as the "voice" of a publication. 

In doing this, we got the sense that a shift was underway...

Newspapers that had spent years dismissing “doom-laden” warnings and mocking green “zealots" were seemingly accepting the reality of climate change.

The Daily Express welcomed a “green Britain revolution”. The Sun called the UK “a world leader in the green movement”.

We teamed up with PhD researcher @sylviahayes98  to understand what was going on.

She helped us assess the language in 100s of editorials concerning climate change, renewables, fracking & nuclear. 

The results show a surge in editorials calling for climate action after 2018.

Editorials explicitly opposing climate action have been relatively rare, but concentrated in a handful of right-leaning publications - Mail, Sun, Express etc.

They are also the publications with by far the most readers - e.g. the Sun/Mail have 10x the readership of the Guardian.

However, a significant shift has occurred in recent years among these right-leaning titles. 

Bolstered by a Conservative net-zero pledge and COP26, they have gone from publishing editorials that mainly oppose climate action to - for the most part - embracing such action.

A similar trend can be seen for renewables. 

This chart shows that among all newspapers, editorials have gone from largely opposing wind turbines (dismissing them as expensive, ineffective and ugly) to supporting Boris Johnson’s vow to make the UK “the Saudi Arabia of wind”.

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

The last appearance of such explicitly sceptical sentiments appeared in a Daily Telegraph editorial 3 years ago.

A good news story then? Well, kind of. 

Besides looking at the broad positive/negative framing of each editorial, we analysed the more subtle language being used - including the ways in which newspapers are blocking progress while saying they support climate action.

While it's no longer as acceptable to deny climate science outright, instead editorials criticise the activists delivering the message or describe the UK's burden as unfair, asking why China isn't doing more. 

But most of all they complain about the high costs of climate action.

Concerns about cost are particularly relevant amid the current energy crisis and pushback against the UK net-zero target (although the cutoff point for this analysis was 2021).

The messaging also aligns with what some have dubbed "discourses of delay".