Climate journalism can change the world – but only if we are honest about what we’ve learned, and brave enough to say when something isn’t working. And this is the part most people miss: some of the heroes of climate awareness are also at the heart of today’s biggest controversies.
After spending decades as an environment reporter, one thing becomes clear: a long career in this field is not just about statistics and science – it is about people, power, and the repeated failure to act when the facts are already on the table. The reflections that follow come from 45 years of reporting, shared from a hospital bed after a terminal lung cancer diagnosis, and they trace how environmental journalism – and climate politics – have evolved, stumbled, and circled back on the same mistakes.
Strangely enough, modern climate reporting owes a surprising debt to Margaret Thatcher – a politician whose views were deeply opposed by many readers of progressive newspapers. Her economic stance and social policies alienated much of the environmental movement, yet she insisted on seeing herself first as a scientist, then as a political leader. That dual identity matters more than many like to admit.
It was Thatcher’s curiosity and demand for evidence that pushed experts to brief her on the emerging threat of the thinning ozone layer, and then on the even larger, slower-burning crisis of climate change. At that time, she stood near the peak of her global influence, and when a leader in that position decides to talk about planetary risk, the world tends to listen. But here’s where it gets controversial: understanding the science did not mean she was willing to change the economic model that drove the problem.
While this was happening on the world stage, one newspaper was slowly transforming into a hub for environmental awareness. The Guardian’s interest in ecological stories was growing, reflecting a wider shift among readers and activists. Groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace were expanding rapidly into bold, campaigning organisations, joined by more traditional bodies like WWF. Their young and increasingly vocal supporters were turning to that newspaper both to follow major campaigns and to look for new careers in the environmental field, especially through job adverts focused on green roles.
In the middle of this shift, a general reporter was sent, almost by chance, to cover nuclear power while the science editor was unwell. That assignment opened the door to a new kind of reporting: hands-on, risky, and closely linked with frontline activism. As a registered crew member on different Greenpeace vessels, this reporter joined voyages that tried to physically block the pipeline at Sellafield, which was releasing plutonium into the Irish Sea. Other trips circled the coastline to expose sewage dumping and unregulated chemical waste pipes that most people had no idea even existed.
From there, environmental reporting expanded onto the international stage. Coverage moved to global conferences that aimed to protect the oceans and overfished stocks, documenting attempts to put rules in place before damage became irreversible. One of the most remarkable periods involved three months on a Greenpeace ship in Antarctica, working to persuade the global community to recognise the continent as a protected world park. During that time, 26 reports were filed back to the newspaper directly via satellite, making the writer the first journalist to send stories straight from the Antarctic ice.
When that Antarctic mission ended, global politics were again heating up. Thatcher, now speaking in New York, warned the United Nations about the dangers of a warming planet. Soon after, in Geneva, European leaders including Thatcher herself were publicly stating that continued, unchecked fossil fuel use would push the world toward catastrophe. The recognition of the threat was real, but the political will to transform economies remained fragile.
Back in London, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Peter Preston, acted on a principle he often repeated: you can only truly write about a place if you have seen it with your own eyes. With this in mind, he called the returning reporter into his office and created a new role – environment correspondent. The timing was significant. The Green party had just secured 16% of the vote in European elections, rattling mainstream politicians, and Thatcher herself saw them as a potential danger to her party’s grip on power.
That appointment led to 16 intense years in the job. For much of that period, the environment correspondent sat next to John Vidal, a colleague endlessly curious about everything from local pollution stories to global land grabs. Vidal took on editing the weekly environment pages but often abandoned his desk to chase unconventional leads that usually turned into powerful stories. More than once, he left a simple note behind: “Could you do the pages this week, gone to Africa.” Those spur-of-the-moment trips helped shape some of the best environmental reporting of that era.
From the beginning, there was a glaring contradiction at the heart of climate politics: Thatcher respected the science but clung tightly to her free-market ideology. Deep cuts to emissions and strong regulation were incompatible with the economic philosophy she championed. Instead of confronting that conflict, she chose the path many leaders still follow – acknowledge the issue, then redirect attention. One of her solutions was to establish the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, a serious institution that has since grown into a globally respected scientific body. But here’s the uncomfortable question: is building institutions enough if leaders still refuse to impose the changes those institutions say are necessary?
This pattern did not stop with Thatcher. Time and again, politicians have been thoroughly briefed on the reality of climate change and the urgency of action, only to shy away from the difficult decisions needed to cut emissions at scale. In recent years, the rise of outright climate denial in some quarters has made the situation even worse, providing some leaders with convenient excuses to stall or backslide.
The 1990s were marked by a hectic circuit of international gatherings that promised progress but often delivered frustration. At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the world watched as figures such as George HW Bush and Fidel Castro passed each other in the corridors while studiously pretending not to see one another – a small moment that captured the political tensions of the time. That summit did lead to the creation of major frameworks, including the climate change convention and the biodiversity convention, and many other agreements. However, it fell short in some crucial areas, notably the protection of forests.
The treaties launched in Rio set in motion a long series of Conferences of the Parties (Cops), drawing journalists and campaigners to capitals around the world. Reports from these meetings often documented the painfully slow progress in turning promises into real cuts in emissions. For many observers, each new round of negotiations felt like a replay of the same arguments with slightly different slogans.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, the domestic picture was also shifting. The country slid into recession in the early 1990s, and the focus of many newsrooms narrowed to immediate concerns: repossessed homes, rising unemployment, and economic pain for ordinary families. In that climate, the news desk’s enthusiasm for environment stories shrank once the drama of the Earth Summit had faded. Environmental issues were still important, but they struggled to compete with kitchen-table crises.
As the decade went on, politics changed again. The Conservative government was voted out in 1997, and John Prescott became environment secretary. Under the new administration, green issues gradually rose back up the political agenda. By the time of the second Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, environment coverage had moved from the margins back to the top of many news lists.
By 2005, the workload for a seasoned environment correspondent had become almost overwhelming. In the wake of the devastating foot and mouth disease outbreak, every department – home news, foreign, city, features – demanded daily ideas and stories about environmental, agricultural, and policy angles. Each section naturally wanted priority. A valuable lesson learned from Vidal now proved essential: editors are far more forgiving about your absence from the newsroom if you return with a story that genuinely matters.
Around the same time, the Guardian Foundation and a range of UN bodies began inviting this journalist to teach colleagues in eastern Europe and Asia how to report on environmental issues. Training others became a way to spread skills and insight beyond one newsroom and to help build a more informed global conversation about climate. Eventually, though, the pressure became too intense, and redundancy was accepted in 2005. Within half a year, the paper had five people covering the same beat that one person had handled before.
The following two decades were anything but quiet. Writing on climate change and related topics continued for many different outlets, including hundreds of Weatherwatch and Specieswatch pieces for the Guardian. There were more major Cops to attend – including landmark meetings in Paris and Warsaw – and more opportunities to train younger journalists in navigating these complex and often confusing events. In that way, experience was passed on, and a new generation of reporters learned how to base their work on facts rather than spin.
Yet a deep frustration persisted: what might be called the “Thatcher syndrome” kept reappearing in new guises. Again and again, intelligent, well-briefed politicians failed to push through the measures needed to confront the ever-closer threat of dangerous climate change. At many recent climate conferences, such as Cop30 in Brazil, the halls and side events were dominated not by environmental advocates but by lobbyists funded by fossil fuel interests. That imbalance was already visible in the 1990s and was first exposed by reporters like Vidal and his colleagues. It raises an urgent question: do the deep pockets of fossil fuel lobby groups always have to outweigh the public interest?
Another development has been even more troubling: the renewed push to sell nuclear power as a climate solution, often branded as a “nuclear renaissance”. Having reported on the nuclear sector since the early 1980s, the journalist initially approached the topic neutrally, as any well-trained reporter should. At that time, nuclear power had the aura of a success story, partly because it sat within the structure of the National Coal Board and its real costs were hidden from both consumers and the government itself.
The first so-called nuclear renaissance emerged in the late 1980s, when Sizewell B was under construction and several other stations were planned. Thatcher, wanting clarity, pressed for the true costs and the likely impact on electricity bills. When she finally saw the numbers, she was furious to discover how thoroughly she and her ministers had been misled. Her response was swift and ruthless: she cancelled the rest of the nuclear programme. For an environment reporter, that moment – a leader halting an entire strategy after confronting real costs – remains unforgettable.
At least two more waves of renewed nuclear enthusiasm have risen and fallen since then, often collapsing once again over spiralling costs. Now, however, a new government under Keir Starmer has embraced nuclear power with extraordinary enthusiasm. This shift has horrified many environmental campaigners who see huge risks, delays, and opportunity costs. But here’s where the debate gets really divisive: is this nuclear push a genuine attempt to decarbonise, or a convenient way to shield continued fossil fuel use behind a green-sounding label?
The scale of public support being channelled into nuclear power is enormous. Subsidies amount to what is effectively a nuclear tax paid by already struggling households. This raises a stark question: what exactly is the government trying to achieve, and at whose expense? The fossil fuel industry appears more than pleased with the situation, having thrown its weight behind nuclear projects. Decades of construction with no electricity delivered means years more of burning gas without serious competition. It is no coincidence that companies like Centrica, primarily a gas business, have invested in projects such as Sizewell C. If that plant takes 10 to 15 years to complete, that is a long stretch of additional gas consumption and healthy profits for shareholders.
Perhaps the most puzzling element in this picture is the push for small modular reactors, or SMRs. In theory, these reactors would be manufactured in factories, transported in parts, and assembled on site, making them quicker and cheaper to build than traditional nuclear plants. Originally, SMRs were defined as producing under 300MW, roughly one-third the output of a standard nuclear or gas plant. More recently, a company such as Rolls-Royce has stretched that definition to 470MW because, even at the planning stage, the economics did not work at the smaller scale.
Promises about SMRs abound, but there is a crucial problem: they are largely hypothetical. No dedicated factories exist to produce their components, no full-scale prototype has been completed, and no full licensing process has been carried through. For now, most of what is claimed about them lives only in design documents and computer models. What is known from those models is unsettling – they are expected to create higher-temperature waste at the end of their life cycles, adding yet more complexity to long-term waste management.
Many journalists and editors would challenge this critical view of nuclear power, and that disagreement itself could be healthy if it leads to deeper scrutiny rather than blind faith. As a reporter who has spent 40 years following this industry and is now approaching the end of life, one final request stands out: keep watching it, and do not be seduced by glossy promises. Over the years, industry sources have repeatedly supplied highly optimistic projections for construction costs, delivery times, and power output. In the worst cases, those projections have not just been wrong – they have been deliberate misrepresentations. Unlike wind and solar, where costs have dropped dramatically, nuclear power has seen its costs climb steadily for decades.
Today, this pattern is repeating itself in projects such as Sizewell C in Suffolk and new schemes in north Wales. The public is being forced to stand by and watch as enormous sums of their money are spent on projects that may never deliver the clean, affordable energy they are promised. For journalists, this should be a clear call to action. In the name of climate responsibility and basic fairness, reporters must dig into the real numbers, test the claims, and resist hype from both governments and corporations.
So here is the challenge: should societies keep funnelling billions into nuclear projects with long lead times and rising costs when faster, cheaper renewable options exist, or is nuclear still a necessary part of a low-carbon future despite its flaws? Is the so-called nuclear renaissance a genuine solution or a clever distraction that benefits fossil fuel interests while draining public resources? Share where you stand – do you see nuclear power as a vital climate tool, or as an expensive detour that slows real progress? And if you disagree with these conclusions, what evidence convinces you that this time, unlike all the others, the promises around nuclear will finally be kept?
