On the same day that drought was declared across half of England, the Daily Telegraph published a column by Allister Heath, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, urging Britain to abandon its net zero commitments. The timing was striking. The Mediterranean region — the very climate Heath invited Britons to embrace — was at that moment burning in a series of record wildfires, a fact that prompted considerable mockery on social media and eventually led the newspaper's editors to quietly change the column's headline. Heath's argument followed a pattern that researchers who study climate communication have documented carefully.

First, a publication disputes the scientific consensus — something the Telegraph titles have done for years. Then, once that position becomes untenable, the framing shifts: the problem is real, the argument now goes, but it is already too late to address it. Heath wrote that "the war against global warming has been lost" and that seeking to cut Britain's emissions amounts to what he called "suicidal empathy." The logical problem with the "too late" position, however, is that the delay it references was itself partly produced by decades of denial in outlets including his own.

Several of Heath's practical proposals also collided with available evidence. He called for wider irrigation and the construction of more swimming pools at precisely the moment drought was being declared across English counties. He argued that the free market should be trusted to deliver clean energy when it becomes cheaper than fossil fuels — yet renewables already cost less than fossil-fuel alternatives in most contexts. And he appeared unconcerned that the Trump administration has spent billions of dollars actively resisting the market forces that were delivering that transition.