As the world hurtles toward yet another make-or-break UN climate summit, fresh evidence shows that Britain’s major newspapers are still doing more to sell high-carbon lifestyles than to explain the crisis. A new analysis reported by The Ecologist in “Climate reporting deluged by high carbon adverts” found that during COP29 in 2024, the UK’s national print titles devoted more space to adverts for polluting travel, SUVs and other high-emission products than to coverage of the talks themselves. On two key days at the start and end of the summit, high-carbon adverts filled 5,086 column inches, while all reporting on COP29 amounted to just 1,540 inches – barely a third of the space given to selling pollution instead of scrutinising it. Climate reporting deluged by high carbon adverts

The warning could not come at a more critical time. The UK House of Lords has already concluded that around one-third of the emissions cuts needed by 2035 must come from changes in how people travel, eat and heat their homes. Its 2022 report In Our Hands described advertising as a “powerful influence on consumer behaviour on a large scale” and called for “measures to regulate advertising of high carbon and environmentally damaging products” as part of a serious net-zero strategy. Yet instead of helping to accelerate this shift, many newspapers are still filling their pages with invitations to fly further, drive bigger cars and keep shopping as if the climate crisis did not exist. In Our Hands

The new research, Promoting Pollution Before Reporting The Climate, examined the adverts in 10 national newspapers on two crucial days of COP29: the opening Monday and the first weekday after the talks finally concluded. It found that the largest single category of paid advertising for high-carbon products was travel, including holiday deals and package tours promoted under the newspapers’ own brands. These travel ads alone covered 1,745 inches of newsprint across the two editions – about 9.2 percent of all advertising space. Meanwhile, coverage of COP29 took up just 2.1 percent of total editorial space on those days, with any other articles that even mentioned climate change adding a further 0.5 percent. Promoting Pollution Before Reporting The Climate

The study also reveals how this commercial pressure helps bury real-world climate impacts. During the same period, the British press reported on dramatic floods in Valencia and damage from Storm Bert in the UK – but out of 19 stories about these events, only one even mentioned climate change. In other words, readers were given pages of adverts for flights and holidays with almost no clear explanation that these very activities are driving the extreme weather now battering communities in Europe and beyond. This is not just a missed opportunity; it is a dangerous distortion of reality at a time when public understanding is vital for rapid action. Climate reporting deluged by high carbon adverts

There were, however, striking exceptions. The Financial Times was the only newspaper in the study that did not publish any high-carbon travel adverts on the two key COP29 days. It also carried no advertising for energy companies, energy-adjacent products or supermarkets, while still running adverts for banks and investment firms. Crucially, the FT devoted more space to covering the summit than any of its competitors. This contrast suggests that it is perfectly possible for a major news organisation to prioritise climate journalism over lucrative high-carbon advertising – if its owners decide that credibility in a time of planetary emergency matters more than short-term revenue. Climate reporting deluged by high carbon adverts

The fossil fuel industry, meanwhile, has not disappeared from the information battlefield. The report notes that energy companies placed less than 0.5 percent of all ads in the sampled newspapers during COP29, suggesting that they are pouring their money instead into social media, sponsorships and lobbying behind closed doors. This shift comes even after UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged governments to ban fossil fuel advertising outright and called on news and tech companies to stop taking money from polluters, comparing the situation to past efforts to confront the tobacco industry. Ignoring that call, much of the British press continues to profit from adverts that promote frequent flying, gas-guzzling cars and other luxury emissions.

Some media organisations are beginning to draw a line. In early 2020 The Guardian announced that it would no longer accept adverts from oil and gas companies, becoming the first major global news outlet to impose an outright fossil-fuel ad ban. The decision, explained in detail in the article “Guardian to ban advertising from fossil fuel firms”, was explicitly linked to decades of fossil-fuel lobbying against climate policy. Guardian to ban advertising from fossil fuel firms The British Medical Journal went further, first banning adverts and research funded by fossil fuel producers and then, in 2024, declaring that it would no longer take advertising money from banks that finance fossil fuel expansion. Bad ads banned by medical mag

Other outlets have felt the pressure from scientists and readers. New Scientist stopped accepting sponsorship from oil and arms companies for its live events in 2022 after academics began withdrawing from a flagship science festival that had previously been sponsored by firms like Shell and BP. In France, the leading newspaper Le Monde announced in 2023 that it would steadily reduce adverts for products and activities based solely on fossil fuels as part of its annual climate commitments. And in Sweden, Dagens ETC decided back in 2019 to stop taking advertising from high-carbon industries altogether, including airlines and car makers, arguing that “journalism cannot be bankrolled by forces that have everything to gain from blocking large-scale climate action”. Climate reporting deluged by high carbon adverts Swedish newspaper stops taking adverts from fossil fuel firms

Even more mainstream outlets are starting to restrict who can buy their most prominent ad slots. Dagens Nyheter, another major Swedish newspaper, now refuses to sell premium front-page and takeover formats to companies that earn most of their income from fossil fuels. This kind of policy hints at what a transition away from high-carbon advertising could look like: not an overnight switch-off, but a rapid shrinking of the most powerful marketing channels available to fossil-dependent businesses. In each case, editors and owners have concluded that their long-term credibility and duty to readers outweigh the short-term income from selling the public more pollution.

For the majority of British national newspapers, though, the double standard remains glaring. Readers are told in occasional news pieces that scientists warn we must rapidly cut fossil fuel use to avoid catastrophic warming – while the surrounding pages suggest that everyone else is booking long-haul flights, buying bigger SUVs and enjoying carbon-heavy holidays with no consequences. The new study shows that this is not an accident but a pattern: during a crucial climate summit, the papers systematically gave more space to material encouraging emissions than to journalism explaining why those emissions must fall. Promoting Pollution Before Reporting The Climate

The consequences go beyond hypocrisy. Advertising does not simply reflect what people already want; it shapes what they see as normal, desirable and achievable. When newspapers flood their pages with high-carbon adverts, they lock in expectations of endless cheap flights and car-dominated streets at the very moment when the science says rich countries must be driving emissions down at emergency speed. Younger audiences notice this. Many already distrust national print newspapers, not only because of political bias but because the climate emergency is treated as a niche topic, squeezed between glossy promotions for the very industries causing the damage. Climate reporting deluged by high carbon adverts

Campaigns like Badvertising and initiatives such as World Without Fossil Ads argue that this is where media organisations can make one of the quickest, easiest contributions to climate safety: by ending adverts for fossil fuels, high-carbon vehicles, frequent-flyer schemes and other products that lock in dangerous levels of pollution. Doing so would not solve the crisis on its own, but it would stop media companies from actively pushing society in the wrong direction. It would also align journalism with the message coming from climate science and institutions such as the House of Lords: that behaviour change is essential, and that governments, businesses and civil society all share responsibility for enabling it. UK newspapers gave more space to adverts for polluting travel than to reporting the climate crisis

The stakes could not be higher. COP30 in Brazil is being billed as one of the last chances to keep the goals of the Paris Agreement within reach. If the public conversation is drowned out by adverts for cruises, cheap flights and oversized cars, voters will never hear the full story about what is at risk – or about the alternatives that could lead to cleaner air, safer communities and more secure livelihoods. Newspaper proprietors and editors, many of them billionaires, need to act as though the climate emergency is real: by phasing out high-carbon advertising, backing strong climate reporting and treating their front pages as a public trust rather than just another billboard. Otherwise, their titles risk becoming part of the machinery driving us toward ecological and social collapse, just as the science is pleading for an emergency brake.