The Pothole Problem at the Heart of Net Zero
Recent polling suggests the British public still overwhelmingly supports action on climate change. Yet support for “net zero” policies is slipping.
Why?
The answer may lie in what some commentators dubbed this year’s local elections: the “pothole elections”.
On the surface, potholes have little to do with climate policy. But politically, they have everything to do with it. They have become shorthand for a deeper public anxiety: the sense that basic services are deteriorating while government appears unable, or unwilling, to fix them.
That perception is proving toxic for incumbent parties and helps explain the electoral drift towards both Reform and the Greens. Voters are not simply searching for ideological alternatives; they are looking for evidence that somebody can still make things work.
This crisis of confidence is reinforced every time a major national project appears to spiral out of control. HS2 has become the defining example: tens of billions over budget, years behind schedule, and delivering less than originally promised.
The result is growing public scepticism about the state’s ability to deliver long-term change. And net zero is especially vulnerable to that scepticism because, for many voters, it appears to combine three politically dangerous characteristics: high cost, distant deadlines, and unclear immediate benefits.
That creates two interconnected problems.
First, many people simply do not believe the transition will be delivered as promised or at the price advertised. The natural public response becomes: why are we prioritising this when roads, healthcare, housing and local services already feel in decline?
Second, this distrust allows opponents to fold climate policy into broader culture war narratives. “Net zero” becomes less a practical programme and more a symbol of political detachment: expensive, abstract and imposed from above.
But the local elections also revealed something more hopeful. Support for climate-related action remains surprisingly resilient when policies are tangible, local and rooted in everyday concerns.
The lesson is not that the public has turned against climate action.
It is that people increasingly judge environmental policy by the same test they apply to everything else: will this actually improve my life and can I trust those in charge to deliver it?
To answer these questions several changes in emphasis are required.
First, climate investment must produce visible, practical improvements. Andy Burnham’s transport reforms in Greater Manchester are instructive. By delivering a more integrated, affordable and reliable public transport system, he turned infrastructure into something people could see, use and value in their daily lives.
Second, climate policy works best when it addresses problems people already recognise. Communities are increasingly experiencing flooding, overheating, drought and extreme weather first-hand. Policies focused on resilience, adaptation and protecting local areas often attract broader support because the risks already feel real.
Third, the transition cannot appear to reward only large corporations or wealthy investors. Community-owned energy projects consistently generate more goodwill than schemes perceived to enrich distant businesses with little local benefit. Fairness matters as much as carbon reduction.
Fourth, environmental policies should speak more confidently about nature, beauty and place. Protecting green spaces, restoring rivers and improving local environments are goals that cut across political divides far more effectively than technocratic language ever will.
Finally, language itself matters. Abstract terminology and overly technical framing create distance and suspicion. So do grand promises that are unlikely to survive contact with reality. Trust, once lost, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.
The political challenge for climate policy is therefore not primarily scientific or technological. It is democratic.
People do not need to be convinced that climate change matters. Increasingly, they can see it for themselves. What they need is confidence that the transition will be fair, practical and competently delivered.
If net zero continues to be presented as an abstract national mission measured in targets for 2050, public support will continue to erode. But if it is framed instead around safer communities, cheaper transport, warmer homes, restored nature and visible local improvement, the politics begin to change.
In the end, voters are not rejecting climate action. They are rejecting the feeling that nothing works anymore. The governments and movements that succeed will be those that can reconnect environmental ambition with everyday competence proving that tackling climate change is not a distraction from improving people’s lives, but one of the clearest ways to do it.