The right argument, the wrong language
What the Iran war reveals about climate communication
Ten days before the Iran war, I was listening to a BBC Newscast episode where they sat down with Robert Jenrick, Reform’s shadow chancellor and chief economic spokesperson, to talk through the party’s economic plan. It is worth a listen, not because the arguments are new, but because of how well they are made.
Jenrick is not speaking to climate scientists or policy analysts. He is speaking to people who get up early, go to work, pay their bills, and feel like the system is not built for them. And on net zero, his message is simple: it is making your life more expensive, and I will stop it. “I’m not prepared for this country’s economic competitiveness to be destroyed by Ed Miliband and his net zero zealotry,” he says. He talks about his dad. He talks about tradesmen. He talks about cold winter mornings and hard shifts.
The facts do not support his position. But the language does its job.
The insight climate advocates keep ignoring
Katharine Hayhoe is one of the most effective climate communicators in the world. Her central argument is deceptively simple. Facts do not persuade people who are not already looking for them. You do not win someone over by giving them better data. You win them over by starting with something they already care about, and showing them how it connects to the thing you are trying to say.
This is not a new observation. Hayhoe has been making it for over a decade, and the research behind it is older still. The problem is not that the climate movement has not heard it. The problem is that it keeps failing to act on it. And the cost of that failure is no longer abstract.
Having worked in climate education, I know how easy it is to reach for data and arguments first, and forget that people who are not already looking for that information are rarely persuaded by it. We lead with the science. We lead with the targets. We use terms like “net zero” and “carbon budgets” and “decarbonisation pathways” with people who are thinking about their energy bills and their job security and whether the country is heading in the right direction.
Jenrick does not make that mistake. He talks about his dad. And it works.
The climate side has better arguments. It just refuses to make them the way Reform makes its worse ones.
What the evidence actually says
In March 2026, the Climate Change Committee published its supplementary analysis of the Seventh Carbon Budget. It is a dense document, and almost nobody outside the policy world will read it. That is a shame, because buried inside it is one of the most powerful rebuttals to the Reform position that exists.
The CCC modelled what would happen if a fossil fuel price shock equivalent to the 2022 energy crisis hit the UK in 2040. Two scenarios: one where the UK has pursued net zero, one where it has not.
In the high-carbon scenario, average household energy bills rise by 59%.
In the net zero scenario, they rise by 4%.
That is not a marginal difference. That is the difference between a manageable increase and a crisis. And it is not a projection from a climate advocacy group. It is from the government’s own independent advisory body, using the same cost-benefit methodology recommended by HM Treasury’s Green Book.
The same report finds that the total cost of the 2022 energy crisis to the taxpayer, in bill support alone, was £41.6 billion in a single year. The net additional cost of reaching net zero across every year between now and 2050, by contrast, averages around £4 billion per year, or 0.2% of GDP. A single fossil fuel shock could cost as much as the entire net additional cost of the transition.
There is more. For every pound spent on net zero, the UK gets back between £2.20 and £4.10 in benefits, when you account for cleaner air, warmer homes, lower running costs for electric vehicles and heat pumps, and the avoided cost of climate damages. Energy losses in a net zero system are half what they are today, saving the equivalent of £1,000 per household per year.
The data is clear. Net zero is not a cost. Fossil fuel dependency is.
Why this is not landing
The CCC report was published on 11 March. It received some coverage in specialist outlets. It did not become a political moment. It did not shift the terms of the debate.
This is not surprising. The report is written for policymakers, not people.
And now, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed and a fifth of global oil supplies disrupted, oil is holding around $112 a barrel and UK gas prices have nearly doubled to 151p per therm. People in the UK are worried about what their bills will look like this summer. That worry is entirely rational. It is also the single best opening the climate movement has had in years to make the case for net zero in terms that connect with people who are not already converted.
Instead, the opposite is happening. Jenrick has called for ending what he calls “net zero madness” and drilling “unapologetically” in the North Sea.
The crisis is being used, in real time, to argue for exactly the policy that would leave the UK most exposed to the next one. And so far, the climate side’s response has been largely absent from the conversation that most people are actually having.
What better looks like
Hayhoe’s insight is not just theoretical. It is a practical instruction for how to use the CCC report differently.
The 59% versus 4% figure is not a statistic. It is a story about two futures. One where instability in the Middle East sends your heating bill through the roof, and one where it barely touches you because your home runs on British wind and your car runs on British electricity. That story is true, it is evidence-based, and it does not require anyone to care about climate change to find it compelling. It only requires them to care about their bills. Which everyone does.
The £41.6 billion in a single year of crisis support reframes the cost of net zero entirely. The question is not whether the transition is expensive. The question is expensive compared to what. Compared to remaining exposed to global fossil fuel markets and the geopolitical instability that drives them, net zero is not a green policy. It is an insurance policy. One that pays out every time a crisis hits, including the one happening right now.
Jenrick talks about tradesmen at rallies. The climate movement can talk about tradesmen too. The ones whose heating bills doubled in 2022, who would save £1,000 a year in a net zero energy system, and who stand to lose most from the fossil fuel volatility that Reform’s position would lock in. Start with them. Start with the cold morning and the heating bill and the dad. Then bring the data in as confirmation of something the person already feels, rather than as the opening argument.
That is what Hayhoe means. Not dumbing down the evidence. Choosing the right entry point into it.
The facts are there. The moment is here. The only thing missing is the willingness to speak about net zero the way Jenrick speaks about scrapping it. In plain English, with urgency, and in the name of people who are already paying the price for getting this wrong.
Because right now, the right argument is losing to the wrong one. And that is a communications failure, not an evidence failure.