The new climate denial

Forget the old climate denial – science is no longer up for debate. The new battleground is the economy. 

In an exclusive interview with The Guardian this week, André Corrêa do Lago, Brazil’s lead climate diplomat and President of COP30, issued a warning: a new form of denial is taking hold. Not on climate change itself, but the belief that we simply can’t afford to do anything about it. He calls it “economic denial” – and it may be the most dangerous narrative yet. 

“It is not possible to have [scientific] denialism at this stage,” he said. “So, there is a migration fromscientific denial to a denial that economic measures against climate change can be good for the economy and for people.” In other words, denial has evolved. Today’s opponents of climate action no longer deny that the planet is warming. They argue that acting on it is too expensive, too disruptive, or too much, too fast. This line of attack is now being weaponised by populist politicians and echoed in parts of the business world. It’s subtler than outright denial – but no less obstructive. 

As I argued in a previous piece on the net zero backlash, climate policy is increasingly framed as an elite project – a costly imposition on working people. This economic framing now sits at the heart of opposition: not that climate change isn’t real, but that it’s unaffordable to fix. In Europe, green regulations are becoming a scapegoat for right-wing campaigns. In the US, Trump and his allies are dismantling environmental protections in the name of economic growth. Closer to home, figures like Nigel Farage frame net zero as a threat to livelihoods rather than a path to opportunity. Even some companies are retreating. Businesses once eager to lead on climate are now treading carefully, wary of political backlash and consumer scepticism.  

It’s no longer science that’s being challenged – it's the very idea that economic transition can be a win. A smarter form of denial. More sophisticated. More slippery. But it's just as harmful.  

And it’s this false economic framing that’s holding us back. We know the cost of inaction is far higher than the cost of transition. Yet many politicians still treat net zero as a burden, not a growth strategy. When ministers claim we can’t afford heat pumps or electric cars but stay silent on the billions poured into fossil fuel subsidies, they’re not being fiscally responsible. In reality, the economic situation has never been stronger. In the UK alone, the net zero economy is worth £28.8 billion and supports 273,000 high-quality jobs. 

As Corrêa do Lago put it: “Most of the answers have to come from the economy”. But mainstream economic thinking is still playing catch-up. Climate isn’t fully priced into budgets or business models, and until it is, we’ll keep facing opposition dressed as pragmatism. 

The job now – for communicators and campaigners – is to call out economic denial for what it is. We must reframe the transition not as a trade-off, but as a blueprint for a better, fairer economy.