In conversation with Fiona Harvey: media, messaging and the climate crisis

• Host: Holly Brazier Tope, deputy director of politics, Green Alliance
• Guest: Fiona Harvey, environment editor, The Guardian

Holly Brazier Tope: Welcome to the Green Alliance Podcast. We are the charity and think tank dedicated to achieving ambitious leadership for the environment. I’m Holly Brazier Tope, deputy director of politics at Green Alliance.

As Parliament returns from recess this week, politics and media are shifting back into high gear. The Labour government heads into its second year with climate and net zero as a defining but increasingly contested area of policy. Public attention is fragmented by global insecurity, the cost of living crisis and political polarisation. Against this backdrop, how we talk about climate has never been more important and never more difficult.

This episode explores the crisis of communication on climate. What stories resonate, how political communication compares with the past, and what is at stake in the busy political season ahead. For this episode, I’m thrilled to be joined by Fiona Harvey, environment editor at The Guardian, who has been reporting on the environment for more than 20 years.

Thank you so much for joining me, Fiona. Let’s get started by talking a bit about climate narratives and how the public engage with climate and environment issues. So in the broadest sense, how do you think climate communications and public salience and understanding is going in the current political context?

Fiona Harvey: I think it’s actually going rather well, which may be surprising to some people because we have this prevailing narrative that people are going against net zero, that people are fed up with environmental issues. There’s this kind of narrative that we should all just pack up and go home because the Reform Party narrative has one, and everyone just wants to go back to fossil fuels.

That’s not true when you ask people. And even people who say that their intention is to vote Reform actually want action on the climate. They don’t buy into this climate denialism, this anti-net zero narrative that’s being pushed by the Reform Party, but also by the Tories.

I think that’s really important for people to realise. It’s really important for the Labour government to realise that people are behind them when they push for climate action. People want to see climate action. They want to see it urgently. They want to see it strong. They want to see real progress here. They don’t want just to kind of fiddle around at the margins. They want more renewable energy, more onshore wind. Even though the last Conservative government tried to tell us that they didn’t, we know that people do. They want more offshore wind. They want more solar.

People are crying out for solar panels and for years we had a government that refused to even contemplate making solar panels compulsory on new buildings, which is such a no-brainer that we used to get tons of people writing into us and talking to us at every opportunity saying, “Why aren’t we doing this? It’s so basic.”

So there is an appetite out there for climate action. There really is a will there. And we should look very carefully at who is pushing this narrative that says people don’t care, that says people are anti-net zero. The people who are pushing that narrative are pushing it because it’s in their favour, and it’s in the favour of the people who back them and the vested interests that they represent.

Holly: That’s interesting. I mean, I think you’re completely right that people absolutely would not know that the public necessarily feel the way that you do, but polling does consistently back it up. Why do you think that’s not being represented in the media?

Fiona: We have a very right-wing media, don’t we? Apart from The Guardian. And they have a vested interest in this narrative, this anti-net zero narrative. They have it, partly for political reasons. Partly because they’ve got nowhere to go. You know, they had Brexit, they used to blame everything that went wrong on Europe as this kind of big bugbear. Now we fought Brexit, it’s been a disaster. And they’re trying to divert attention by saying, “Oh, look, here’s this other thing we’ve found, this other thing that we can pin all the blame on, you know, this net zero.”

And that appeals to a kind of certain inherent conservatism, small-c conservatism that’s in most people really. People don’t want their way of life to change too dramatically because that kind of change is quite scary. On the other hand, people do realise – people understand quite a lot more than they’re given credit for about the climate crisis.

People see that the weather is changing around them, and they know that something has to be done about it, and they know that really their way of life is going to have to change whether they like it or not, because the climate is going to change that for us.

If you are an old person in the UK today, you must be worried about heat waves, about overheating, because they can be really dangerous for older people. If you are a young person in the UK today, you are terrified about your future. And if you’re kind of a middle-aged person like me, then you’re worried about your children.

So everyone has a stake in this and everyone can see what’s happening. Most people want the government to take the lead here. And so really the people who are pushing this right-wing narrative, they’re rather desperate, aren’t they? And they’re trying to make a culture war out of something that the UK has traditionally been resistant to in terms of culture wars.

I mean, we’ve had attempts to make the UK more like the United States in terms of culture war issues, whether that be abortion or whether it be climate, or whether it be immigration, et cetera. And the only sphere in which that kind of culture war has really had any success has been in terms of immigration, which is a kind of separate issue. Although obviously there are links there to the climate, which really ought to be much more explored, and ought to be brought up more by climate experts.

So you know, pushing this narrative – it could work. That’s the scary thing. It could work because when you put an awful lot of effort into pushing a narrative like that, even if it’s nonsensical, then you can get a lot of traction for it. That’s exactly what we saw with Brexit. And that’s what they’re hoping for. They’re hoping that they will have the same success with going against net zero as they did with Brexit and pushing people into a desperate folly that’s to the benefit of no one except their vested interest backers. And that’s what we need to be wary of.

Holly: Yeah, very interesting. I mean, you talk a lot about the things that do resonate with individual people. So these people that may not be necessarily particularly interested in environmental issues themselves, but they are very much feeling the impact of them and like you say, different people in society. What do you think the best way of cutting through to the broadest cross-section of society should be? Is it talking about climate impact? Is it talking about how it relates to the breadth of other things people are experiencing, you know, the impact it has on the cost of living crisis and the health service and our economy?

Fiona: Yeah, the cost of living crisis is key here because look at what farmers are saying. They’re looking at their crop yields dropping massively. It’s a really scary picture that they’re facing, and they know that it’s the climate, and they’re telling us so. And so you’re seeing food price rises that are basically directly resulting from the impacts of the climate crisis. And we should be saying that more clearly all the time, because this is something that we’re going to see more and more of. It happens with imported food, but it’s also happening with food that we grow here and it’s damaging our food security.

So, this is a serious problem and if you talk to farmers, they get it. And we need to draw those links more clearly, so that everyone can see, when your supermarket shelves are empty or when you’re paying ludicrous amounts for your weekly shop, this is partly why. And we need to kind of show more of the links with climate impact as well, such as the price of energy, what’s happening with fossil fuels and so on.

But we also need to show more of the positives. What happens when you have more renewable energy? Well, we know that if we do this right, the costs of energy will come down. They’ll come down a great deal. We know that people’s health will improve if we do more to, for instance, encourage people into public transport and to active forms of transport, like walking and cycling and so on, rather than getting in their car. We know that electric cars will deliver people cost savings now because they’re no longer having to fill up with expensive petrol all the time.

So, we know that there are this whole range of benefits that come with climate action, and we need to put that across because not only do you get a safer climate for the future, but you also get a range of kind of shorter term, closer to home benefits.

We also need to confront this argument that the anti-net zero people come up with all the time, which is that the UK is responsible for a very small share of the world’s emissions, and therefore we will have no impact. These are the same people who go around boasting about how the UK is a major player on the world stage and has a really important relationship with America and with other countries and so on. And they can’t both be true.

What the UK does, it does have an impact – has an impact on what other countries do. Because you can’t go to a big international forum and say, “Hey China, hey India, hey Saudi Arabia, let’s move to renewable energy,” if you are exploiting the heck out of the North Sea at home. You just can’t do that. It doesn’t make sense. So if you want the UK to have a position on the world stage and be influential, then you need to be walking the walk as well as talking the talk.

Also you need to look at the potential economic benefits for the UK by investing in green technology because okay, we may be responsible for a small slice of global emissions. But if the future is in green technology, then if we don’t move in that direction, then we will be left behind.

Look at what has happened with, for instance, car makers. European car makers are facing a crisis because Chinese car makers are coming in with electric cars that are much lower in price than they were. This crisis is partly of their own making, because for years they delayed and delayed and delayed rules from the EU that would’ve pushed them further towards electric cars. They held on to fossil fuel cars for as long as they possibly could, and now China is coming along and eating their lunch.

Well, this should be a lesson to everyone. A lesson to every industry because if you don’t actually go forward with green technologies, which are the future, and you try to hang on to this dying fossil fuel past, then you will be left behind and someone else will eat your lunch. And then what are you going to do? Sit there and cry.

Holly: I’m thinking about the broader sort of media narrative that cover a lot of these issues in themselves. It’s very unusual for big programmes like Newsnight and the Today Programme on Radio 4 to overtly make that link that they will cover individual issues as they come up, but it will very rarely be linked to the root cause. Why do you think that is, and how do you think we can better get traction with mainstream broadcast media to get no-nonsense voices? You know, those farmers that you talk about, those engineers and car manufacturers that you talk about – why are they not represented and how could we make them so?

Fiona: Pure ignorance. That’s why they’re not doing this. They just don’t know. And they are reluctant to be educated. And they think it’s somehow clever to be kind of sceptical and questioning, “Oh, climate change. Oh really?” I mean, for God’s sake, these people couldn’t read a scientific report if you put it right in front of them with a magnifying glass. They revel in their ignorance while the world is changing around them. They’re dinosaurs.

Holly: That’s obviously a lot talking about the broader narrative. I just want to move us on quickly to, in terms of this government, and how governments themselves have shaped and framed these messages. So, from your perspective, how has this Labour government, since they came in just over a year ago, how has their approach to climate communication compared to previous governments, and where would you rank them in their communication style?

Fiona: Well, in some respects, they’ve done really well. Even the Climate Change Committee, which for years has been saying, “Oh, come on, government, do something,” gave them a very good report earlier this year saying that they’re doing lots of the right things and moving in the right direction. They’re not going fast enough, and also, they’re not really very vocal with this narrative, quite the opposite. In fact, we had a really major summit earlier this year with Ed Miliband and Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency, who’s a globally respected figure on this. Keir Starmer came along to that conference, and I sat there and listened while he talked about the action on climate change being in the DNA of his government and how when people told him to slow down, he was going to go faster and push harder on this issue.

It was a strong speech. It was a stirring speech, and you wouldn’t have known he made it if you’d looked at the television news or the front pages of newspapers, and that’s appalling. And partly that’s to do with the weakness of Number 10 and their communications because they should have pushed that much harder. This was a major speech made by the Prime Minister. Why didn’t they go out to all the newspapers and say, “Hey, splash on this”? Why didn’t they go to the BBC and say, “Come on, this is a really big intervention”?

I feel that the Number 10 communications are too cowardly, frankly, about this, they seem to given in to pressure from fossil fuels. There are fossil fuel lobbyists within the Labour Party. We should not forget. And they have a great deal of influence, which they should not have.

So really, I think they need to get a grip, you know. There’s nothing to gain for the Labour Party electorally in backing down on net zero. Nothing to gain at all and a great deal to lose. If they doubled down on net zero and they say, “These are the right policies, this is why, these are the benefits that you’re going to see. We are standing up to these bullies from Reform. We are going our own way and we are pushing forward with a narrative that is backed by science, backed by economists, backed by people, backed by business.” Then they would have a very, very powerful message, and that’s what they should do. Bring that message out. Stop hiding in the shadows, because Reform is going to come and get you if you hide in the shadows. So, what’s the benefit there?

Holly: I mean, you’ve obviously been reporting on environmental issues for more than 20 years. Have there been standout political moments where climate messaging has landed well or landed flat and really made those headlines? Or are there examples you can think of where things haven’t gone very well, and that might be in the back of government minds as to why they shouldn’t be so vocal?

Fiona: This is 10 years since the Paris Agreement was forged. And that was a real high point for global climate action. And unfortunately, I think the world didn’t manage to capitalise on that as much as we could have because as soon as you get some kind of success in climate action, you immediately get this backlash from all the vested interests of fossil fuels.

So, you get kind of in the international negotiations, you get people like the Saudis and some of the Gulf oil states coming along and trying to unpick things as soon as you’ve achieved something and you know, on another level, you get the kind of the fossil fuel interests pushing back wherever they can. Obviously, the Paris Agreement was followed very swiftly by the election of Donald Trump who is deeply in hock to the fossil fuel interests in the US. And so that was a major setback.

Another major setback, of course, was the war in Ukraine because that laid bare a lot of the hypocrisy of countries that are trying to move towards renewables but still reliant on gas. And if you’re reliant on Russian gas and suddenly Vladimir Putin turns off the taps, then that’s a really serious problem for you.

And what happened as a result of the invasion of Ukraine was that we saw an absolute bonanza for fossil fuels because the prices went through the roof. The cost of production remained the same. And so, the result was an enormous windfall profit for all of the fossil fuel industries. And what did they choose to do with those windfall profits? Did they put them into renewables and the energy infrastructure of the future? Oh, of course they didn’t. They’re oil men, so they put it back into oil. And that’s a really vicious circle.

And that’s going to be, when we look back 20 years from now and write the history of the climate crisis in the 2020s then we will see that, and the re-election of Donald Trump as two of the reasons why the world will be in a very, very deep crisis by then.

Holly: That is obviously where we’ve been. I mean there is quite a busy period coming up. So, we’re obviously in the back to school period. Parliament is back this week after a long summer. I mean, there are some big things coming up in the next few months, let alone the next year or so. We’ve obviously got big political and media moments like the carbon budget delivery plan, which is the legally binding time that the government have to set out how they will reach their climate targets. We’ve also got things like the Warm Homes Plan, not to mention COP and international diplomacy. There are big few months. So looking ahead and obviously looking at the risks and opportunities, how do you think the government can avoid kind of complete communications pitfalls in this next stretch?

Fiona: By fulfilling what Keir Starmer said in his speech by doubling down on that, by saying, “Climate action is in our DNA, and it’s to the benefit of the British people.” Because backing down is not going to get you anywhere. Backing down makes you look weak. It makes Reform stronger. And it outrages people because people can see what’s going on. People aren’t stupid.

And if you turn around and you say, “Oh, we don’t really need to worry about the climate crisis as much as we said before,” that’s not believable to anyone. Everyone will just say, “Oh yeah, you’re saying that ’cause of Nigel Farage.” So, there is no benefit to this government in weakening its position on the climate. No benefit at all.

Really, it’s something that they could turn into an advantage and they’re struggling so much with so many issues on which they’re being attacked. They’re struggling on the economy and they’re struggling on social issues. Climate could actually be a bright spot for them if they don’t give in. It could go either way to be honest. I mean, I’m afraid this government has made so many mistakes that it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see them make this massive mistake as well. But it would be a mistake. It would be a very foolish mistake.

The thing about the kind of anti-net zero narrative in the media is that there are sensible ways to contract it. I don’t think this government should be scared by a front page on the Daily Telegraph, I really don’t. Why would you, why would that scare you?

Holly: I mean, obviously the government have committed to releasing a public participation strategy. So, it’s like how to talk to the public on climate. Do you think things like that are necessary, or do you actually think it’s really big picture, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves standing up and really standing behind the things that they have committed to in the past? Or do you see a role for a strategy like that and how you talk to communities and people and connect with people?

Fiona: At this stage of the climate crisis, we need to be doing everything everywhere, all the time. And people do respond – people at a local level they love doing things to make their own patch greener. Whether that is putting solar panels on a primary school or growing trees or clearing up a neglected bit of green space or picking shopping trolleys out of the canal. People love doing that and they respond really, really well to that.

At the big picture level, people can also see that we live in a very dangerous world. Would anyone trust Donald Trump and Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi with the future of the planet? Not to mention Vladimir Putin – do we really trust them to do that? So if we want to have a liveable future planet, I think people do want to see the UK standing up for that on the world stage and standing up for a positive future.

Holly: I completely agree, and local communities are the way through to that and people really understand it. And that is something that is internally kind of shown in polling and focus groups up and down the country.

As a final question, if there is one change that you would like to see in how climate is communicated over the next year, both kind of in politics or in the media, what would it be?

Fiona: Be positive. I mean, yes, this is a really, really scary situation and we should not underplay that because we are at a moment of dire peril for this planet. The science that we’re seeing is frightening. But the thing is that we do have time to, if not completely heal the planet in a short space of time, at least put the planet back on the road to healing and to avoid the worst of the climate crisis. We definitely have time to avoid the worst of the climate crisis. And we need to use that time wisely.

And the impacts of that can be really positive. It’s satisfying for people to generate their own energy through solar panels. I’ve got a friend who lives in a boat and he’s not remotely interested in the climate crisis and what’s happening on the world stage, things like that. But he got some solar panels for his boat and he is so enthusiastic about them. He’s running around telling me, he comes home every night to hot showers from his solar panels, his energy bills are way down. He’s not having to fill up his generator with diesel all the time, and he didn’t get these for green reasons. But he absolutely loves them.

And I think that there are lots of people like that who have become sort of evangelical about green issues without being green at all. And I think we need to see more of that and acknowledge that there is a really positive story to be told here. If we would only listen.

Holly: On that incredibly positive note with some clear advice in this podcast, I think, about what the government and media could be doing differently. Thank you so much for joining us, Fiona.

Fiona: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for doing this podcast.