The biggest climate stories often aren’t labelled ‘climat...

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Academic rigour, journalistic flair

Rachel Reeves poses for the media before delivering the budget. Stefan Rousseau / Alamy The biggest climate stories often aren’t labelled ‘climate’ – so newsrooms miss them Published: November 27, 2025 5.19pm GMT Doug Specht, University of Westminster

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Doug Specht
Reader in Cultural Geography and Communication, University of Westminster

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Doug Specht does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.dkxgvcv66

https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-climate-stories-often-arent-labelled-climate-so-newsrooms-miss-them-270833 https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-climate-stories-often-arent-labelled-climate-so-newsrooms-miss-them-270833 Link copied Share article

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Rachel Reeves did not deliver a climate focused budget on November 26 2025. The Chancellor’s statement was framed around growth, productivity and the cost of living. Climate change and net zero were not primary headings. The word “climate” barely featured in her speech.

Yet dig into the budget document and climate was everywhere. The government announced the end of the energy company obligation (ECO), a long-standing scheme funding energy efficiency and low-carbon home upgrades.

The budget also introduced a new per-mile levy on electric vehicles from 2028. It extended the 5p fuel duty cut, kept the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas at 78% until 2030, created new permissions for drilling near existing oil fields, committed billions to nuclear power, extended the UK emissions trading scheme to maritime routes, and introduced a carbon border adjustment mechanism from 2027.

These are not minor technical adjustments. They are decisions that will shape Britain’s emissions trajectory, energy infrastructure and climate resilience for decades. Some push in a low-carbon direction; others cut against or complicate decarbonisation. The tensions and trade-offs embedded in this budget deserve public scrutiny.

But you would struggle to learn much of this from the media coverage.

Searching across major UK news outlets on budget day revealed a striking pattern. Some outlets made climate connections: the BBC covered the oil industry windfall tax, the new electric vehicle levy and grid charge changes. The Independent and Daily Mirror reported on energy bills and green levies. The Telegraph and Reuters touched on energy elements in their roundups.

What the papers saw. Maureen McLean/Alamy

But other major outlets published multiple budget articles with little to no dedicated climate coverage at all. The Sun, Sky News and ITV News between them produced numerous pieces on the budget’s tax implications, benefit changes and political fallout, and the unprecedented leak of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) forecasts – yet barely mentioned the climate implications of the policies announced.

The substantive analysis of what the budget means for Britain’s climate trajectory appeared almost entirely in specialist publications. Carbon Brief produced a comprehensive breakdown. Climate think tank E3G warned that ending the Energy Company Obligation scheme risks 10,000 jobs and will prevent a million families from insulating their homes. The LSE’s Grantham Institute, BusinessGreen, Offshore Energies UK and others provided detailed coverage of implications for the energy transition.

This work is valuable. But specialist outlets reach specialist audiences. The gap between expert analysis and public information is vast. Most people who read about the budget on November 26 encountered stories about tax raids, benefit caps and political drama, not stories about home insulation, fuel duty’s climate impact, or the contradictions between new North Sea drilling and net zero.

Why climate remains a side story

The pattern reflects structural problems in how British media covers climate. Several factors were at play on budget day.

First, dominant frames crowded out climate. The budget was presented by government as being about growth and cost of living. The leak before the Chancellor’s speech dominated the news cycle, with procedural scandal trumping policy substance. Tax changes and benefit reforms fit familiar political narratives that journalists and audiences recognise.

Second, climate connections require explanation. Linking the end of the ECO scheme to insulation jobs and fuel poverty requires context. Connecting the emissions trading scheme extension to maritime emissions needs specialist knowledge. On budget day, with tight deadlines and competing stories, reporters default to familiar frames.

Third, climate remains a “beat” rather than a “lens” in most newsrooms. Environment reporters cover climate; political reporters cover budgets. The integration has not happened. Climate implications of fiscal policy fall between desks.

The result is that detailed climate analysis exists, but in a specialist niche that mass audiences do not access. The public receives fragmented, decontextualised information about policies that will affect their lives for decades.

A different approach is possible

Other media systems demonstrate that climate connections can be mainstreamed. In France, broadcasters and newspapers have transformed their coverage of extreme weather events, explicitly drawing connections between heatwaves, wildfires and flooding and the documented effects of global warming. Headline language has shifted from “exceptional heatwave” to “symptom of climate change”. Climate is now treated as context, not occasional specialist story.

When climate policy is made through non-climate budgets, as it was on November 26, audiences need journalists who can surface those connections. This requires climate literacy across newsrooms, not confined to environment desks. It requires editorial decisions to treat climate as relevant to fiscal, economic and political coverage.

What gets lost

When climate connections go unreported, democratic accountability suffers. The public did not easily learn from mainstream coverage that ending the ECO scheme trades lower bills now for reduced home insulation in future. They did not learn that fuel duty cuts work against emissions reduction. They did not learn that this budget embeds climate choices in infrastructure spending for decades.

Policy contradictions go unscrutinised. Trade-offs are not debated. Climate measures, both positive and negative, happen without public understanding.

November 26, 2025 was not a climate budget. But it was a budget with significant climate consequences. The gap between those two facts, and the media’s failure to bridge it, matters for how Britain navigates the transition ahead.

If climate policy is everywhere, climate journalism needs to be too.