By Jo Nova
It’s rare to see such a dramatic 20 point shift in such a short amount of time
Four years ago, 54% of Brits said they wanted Net Zero to happen even sooner than 2050. Now only 29% do. It’s still a crazy thing to want, to spend billions to change cloud cover in 2100AD, but somehow 20% of the population are more skeptical than what they used to be.
This is a sizeable survey of 4,027 UK adults from 21-27 August 2025.
The ‘culture war’ on net zero: Why have Brits stopped supporting climate policies?
These anodyne surveys will always overestimate the enthusiasm for Net Zero, because they are not asking people how much they are willing to pay, or whether they would rather the government solved something else. Nor are they giving people gung-ho skeptical choices — like asking them if climate change is more like a religion than a science, for example. A question that gets people thinking in a way that 30 years of propaganda never does.
EuroNews asks why this shift happened, but has no idea. They don’t mention the bill shock in electricity prices in the last few years, or the way science was used and abused during the Covid era. Instead they blame the media…
The ‘culture war’ on net zero: Why have Brits stopped supporting climate policies?
By Liam Gilliver, Euronews
How the UK’s net zero attitudes are shifting
In 2021, surveys found that 54 per cent of the British public believed the UK government should achieve net zero before the 2050 target. Now, this has fallen to just 29 per cent.
The study*, carried out by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, Ipsos and the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations also found that the proportion who feel the UK either doesn’t need to reach net zero by 2050 – or shouldn’t have a net zero target at all – has risen from nine per cent to 26 per cent over the same period.
Researchers warn that between 2024 and 2025, support for climate-driven policies such as low-traffic neighbourhoods, taxes on those who fly more, subsidies for electric vehicle (EV) purchases and a tax on environmentally damaging foods have all declined.
The naughty media apparently focus on Net Zero and omit any references to climate change, tsk, tsk.
Researchers argue their findings show a “divorcing” of climate change from the solution of preventing emissions from rising, and come amid low levels of understanding around what net zero actually means.
The analysis found that a year before the legislation was signed, 100 per cent of articles across nine major publications mentioning the term ‘net zero’ at least three times (including in the headline) also mentioned ‘climate change’ or similar terms such as ‘global warming’. However, by 2024, this figure had plummeted to just 59 per cent.
There is hope:
…the percentage of 16-34-year-olds backing the target has dropped from 59 per cent in 2021 to 37 per cent in 2025.
It’s a big survey of 4,027 UK adults from 21-27 August 2025
REFERENCE
Declining Urgency, enduring support, Public attitudes to Net Zero and climate policy, IPSOS, The Policy Institute, Kings College. [Download PDF]