Will 2026 be the year we look back at and say “that was the year the climate emergency really started”? We have certainly had many crises over the past few years as global temperatures have risen. But the protracted weather extremes experienced globally, in Europe, North America, and across Asia, make this year feel different.
What future historians will puzzle over is why contemporaneous records will show that public discussion of climate change as the root cause didn’t increase. At least in the UK, where I live, the silence got worse.
Between 2021 and 2025, climate coverage in media decreased by 38%. In June this year, the UK recorded its then-hottest month on record, but more than 70% of the coverage didn’t mention climate change at all. The net-zero policies designed to address the challenge were hardly mentioned, except by outlets frantically peddling misinformation.
And while even vehemently anti-climate outlets have recently acknowledged climate change is real (“but we’ve lost, so let’s enjoy the heat”), many news reports about heat and wildfires don’t discuss the root cause. What’s driving this collective silence?
First of all, there’s a popular misconception that people don’t like to hear about climate. Yes, people switch off when they hear jargon like “planetary boundaries” or “the clean energy transition”. But research from the Potential Energy Coalition shows climate matters to people when it connects to what they care about: the health of their children, the insurance on their home, the price of their food.
We see the same appetite around Climate Week NYC, which Climate Group organises every September – we see in our data that registrations and events are much higher than the same time last year. People want to meet and they want to do something about a world that is on fire.
Another clear reason for the silence is that climate has once again become extremely politicised. For the last few decades, climate has been a highly political issue in the U.S. And that was even before President Trump, with his support of oil and gas, loathing of wind turbines and banning of the word climate in federal documents.
The UK had escaped this politicisation, passing the Climate Change Act in 2008 with cross-party support. The next Conservative prime ministers, up to Boris Johnson, were supportive of green policies, particularly those backed by UK business (for example supporting electric vehicle mandates).
But populism and algorithms have let anti-science rhetoric flourish. The UK is now kicking around in the backwash of politicised anti-climate action sentiment from the U.S., fuelling (and fuelled by) disinformation in right-wing media.
The most sustained attack is that climate action costs too much and asks too much of ordinary families. In the UK, Reform wants to scrap net zero and axe the government department responsible for it, while the Conservatives’ leader, Kemi Badenoch, has called the 2050 target “impossible” and vowed to repeal the Climate Change Act.
The economics tell a different story. This summer’s heatwaves are set to cost the EU 180 billion euros, and these costs are going to mount, with 2027 forecast to be even worse, due to the building El Niño. In contrast the solution to climate change, net zero, is making the UK money: it’s clean energy economygenerates around 105 billion pounds a year in gross value added, supports over 1 million jobs, and has attracted more than 100 billion pounds in private investment since 2024.
But you probably won’t have read that in the media or on your social feed.
Silence comes at a cost. It breeds inaction, which will slow us down further and cause more pain and suffering. People who care deeply about the climate start to think they’re alone in caring, which saps the momentum for action. Silence is space someone else will fill – usually with climate denial, distraction and disinformation. We can’t afford to cede that ground.
Businesses staying silent also matters. It’s dubbed “greenhushing”: companies keeping quiet on their climate goals, wary of political backlash or public scrutiny if they fall short of their targets.
Many will say “it’s fine, we can carry on with the same action, we just don’t talk about it”. But that’s only true up to a point. Without the climate urgency, programmes become just another potential choice alongside others that may have a better immediate ROI.
We know that people want climate action, they see what’s happening. And collective action problems need collective solutions. What we need is loud voices returning to companies and to the media. And we need some more bravery to stand up for our shared futures.
