Just under three-quarters of UK media stories about the extreme heat the country experienced in June failed to make any mention of the climate crisis, new research has found.
Almost 2,500 about the abnormal conditions experience across large parts of the UK, when temperatures reached record levels for June, were written across the nine main British national daily media publications.
But in 72% of these articles, there was no mention of rising global temperatures or the climate crisis, according to analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
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At the same time, less than one in 20 stories about the heat mentioned “net zero” and the government’s policies to tackle climate change.
The articles examined were from Monday 22 June to Sunday 28 June. The analysis looked for whether pieces mentioning “extreme heat” or “heatwave” also referred to ““climate change” or a similar term such as “climate” or “global warming.”
The publications analysed were the Express, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the Mail, the Mirror, the Sun, the Telegraph and the Times.
The FT and Guardian scored highest on mentions of the climate crisis, with around two-thirds and half of their stories respectively mentioning the climate crisis.
Roughly 39% of the Independent’s articles mentioned the climate, whilst this fell to one in five for the Mail and one in eight for the Express.
The worst performing outlets were the Mirror (9%) and the Sun (6%).
The country is currently in the midst of its third heatwave of the year.
It was announced this week that there had been over 2,700 heat-related excess deaths in the UK over the course of the May and June heatwaves, according to researchers from Imperial College, the Met Office and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Some 1,100 of these would not have died it it had not been for the additional heat caused by the climate crisis.
Gareth Redmond-King, head of international at the ECIU thinktank, said: “The link between all three recent periods of extreme heat and climate change is indisputable.”
He added: “If recent heatwaves are the symptom, then climate change is the illness, and net zero is the medicine. When public understanding of this link is so low, it’s vital that the dots are joined between these three concepts to help make us all better.”