Silence is not a strategy when it comes to sustainability
7 April 2025 - In the current climate, there is huge opportunity for business in leading. But as the need to act grows more urgent, the political context is driving many companies to retreat from public leadership. CISL's CEO, Lindsay Hooper, makes the case for speaking up. First published in Newsweek.
The ground has shifted under the feet of business leaders as sustainability has become a political fault line, causing many to lose their footing. Executive orders signed by President Donald Trump have led to businesses being targeted for acting on climate. Elsewhere they are accused of greenwashing for trying. Either way they are threatened with legal or reputational consequences.
In the US, major companies - including Walmart, Meta, and Kraft Heinz - have removed or rewritten climate and inclusion references from corporate literature. In the UK and the EU, even longstanding climate transition targets are facing political pushback. Investor action to address climate and nature risks - once encouraged as good governance - is under attack as "woke."
And yet the risks that sustainability strategies aim to manage - climate instability, nature loss, resource constraints - are accelerating at great cost. In 2024, climate change was a major factor in the $320 billion costs of natural disasters; entire regions are becoming uninsurable; an Allianz Board member recently highlighted the looming climate-induced credit crunch. On the flipside, global competition for access to finite resources and to dominate the next generation of growth industries - clean energy, grid resilience, electric vehicles, sustainable food solutions - is redrawing supply chains, trade agreements, and geopolitics.
Businesses face twin threats - systemic breakdown if the transition stalls, and competitive displacement if others move faster. Tesla's biggest ongoing risk isn't anti-Elon Musk sentiment or Trump's tariffs, it's being outcompeted on cost and technical performance by Chinese EV makers like BYD.
This combination of spiraling risks and breakthrough technologies make the end of business as usual a certainty, whatever Trump says and does. The only question is how fast the shift to clean energy and sustainable resource use happens, at what cost, and on whose terms.
There is huge opportunity for business in leading. But as the need to act grows more urgent, the political context is driving many companies to retreat from public leadership. Behind the scenes, firms are taking action and investing in innovation. Yet too many are falling silent.
The risk of saying the wrong thing is real. But the risk of saying nothing is greater. Staying silent limits the ability of business to shape tomorrow's economy. It cedes the narrative to those who profit from breakdown and disinformation. Hope that market sentiment will bounce back is not a strategy.
There is a growing divergence between what is good for business and what is good for major wealth owners. The latter thrive on volatility, opacity, and lack of accountability. But businesses depend on facts, transparency, and the rule of law as the foundations for free and fair markets. They need market structures that make it more profitable to protect the environmental foundations on which they depend than to erode them.
This is why businesses cannot stay on the sidelines without consequence. Speaking up is essential for their own success and survival. They must defend the democratic and economic foundations on which markets depend. And while defending current foundations is necessary, it is insufficient. Businesses need to create commercially-viable transition pathways, rebuilding confidence that a managed, investable transition is possible and working to create the market conditions that incentivise action at scale.
This will require more than high level calls for action. Speaking out must be politically savvy-targeted interventions aligned with imperatives of growth, competitiveness, and national security to create thriving markets for long-term, sustainable value creation.
This isn't about more bureaucracy. It's about better, joined-up rules that enable innovation, dismantling planning barriers, supporting reforms that level the playing field. It also means alliance-building - not just for safety in numbers, but to unlock shared influence and create the tipping points needed for market change. And it means showing up in public, with confidence, clarity, and a story that wins public trust and aligns with societal goals.
This is the central message of our report, Competing in the Age of Disruption. It calls for a shift in strategy - from cautious incrementalism to more ambitious innovation and deliberate efforts to reset the rules, incentives, and expectations that shape whole markets.
For too long, sustainability has been treated as a compliance issue or a responsibility-driven add-on. But economic transitions aren't won through "doing our bit" or box-ticking. They are won through strategy, speed, and scale. The winners will be those who treat sustainability as a driver of innovation, growth, and competitive advantage - and help build the markets in which they can win. Tesla understood this when it lobbied for tax credits and emissions rules that supported EV adoption - then built its business to dominate the very market those policies helped create.
In today's context, silence is not neutrality. It is a strategic risk.
The companies that lead this shift will survive disruption and define the future of their industries. Those that delay may not get another chance.
First published in Newsweek