Extreme weather, rising energy prices and food insecurity should have made environmental disruption harder to ignore.
Yet climate action has become harder to advance. Support for reaching net zero earlier than 2050 has nearly halved since 2021, while climate policy has increasingly been reduced to an ideological marker in wider culture-war debates.
That matters because many of the issues voters currently rank above climate change — bills, energy security, food prices, housing, immigration and public services — are increasingly shaped by environmental disruption.
Why the message is not landing
Part of the problem is that climate messaging has often leaned on the language of sacrifice: fly less, drive less, consume less. Many of the behaviours now framed as environmentally damaging have long been associated with prosperity, freedom and security. Climate action can therefore sound like a demand for people to accept less, rather than a route to greater stability.
Terms such as “net zero” and “decarbonisation” are technocratic and detached from everyday concerns. That makes them easy targets for critics who frame climate action as anti-growth, anti-freedom and disconnected from ordinary life.
People simply do not experience climate change through carbon targets or IPCC reports.
An opportunity to reconnect
Research from King’s College London and Ipsos found that most Britons do not identify as either climate activists or climate sceptics. That middle ground matters. It suggests climate opinion may not be as polarised as political debate can make it seem.
The strongest arguments around climate are rooted in things people already value: protecting future generations, safeguarding the natural world, reducing exposure to volatile energy prices and making homes, businesses and communities more resilient.
Communicators should not so easily concede ideas like freedom, prosperity and security to critics who portray climate action as restrictive, particularly when climate action is what helps safeguard those very same things.
Start with what people already value
Nature and stewardship are powerful but underused frames. Nature remains one of the few genuinely unifying forces in British public life. People connect more readily with restoring local environments and protecting landscapes than they do with abstract discussions around climate targets.
Security and resilience matter too. When the economy, defence, immigration and energy costs dominate public debate, climate communications need to show how climate action supports national resilience. Energy independence, lower bills, food security and protection from extreme weather are not separate from sustainability. They are central to it.
The task is not to make climate action sound nicer. It is to make it matter.
If communicators start with what people already value — security, prosperity, home and place — climate action becomes less of an abstract demand and more of a practical route to a safer, more resilient country.
