By Dr. Carla Woydt*
Hamburg – In 2025, the global dialogue on climate change has reached a critical junction. While the
scientific data is more precise and abundant than ever, the political narrative is fracturing, thereby creating uncertainty for corporates’ climate and broader sustainability reporting. With major geopolitical shifts and economic pressures, it has become evident that a fact-based climate narrative tailored to different stakeholder groups is vital to maintain climate awareness and motivate climate action. Grounding climate discussions in
verifiable data is no longer just a scientific requirement; it is a strategic necessity for corporate stability and civil societyʼs resilience.
The carbon narrative draw-back
The current international climate narrative is reeling from the official U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. This draw-back has created a leadership vacuum in global climate diplomacy. While the European Union and other Nations reaffirmed their commitments during COP30 in November 2025 in Belem, the withdrawal of the worldʼs largest economy leads to
fragmentation and uncertainty on a global scale.
The U.S. administration has also moved to slash budgets for over 60 international organizations and agencies, including the International Renewable Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This isn’t a mere political shift; it has serious implications on the global fact base. When the primary source of climate data is undermined, it becomes easier for disinformation to fill the gap.
The rise of greenhushing: A new kind of risk
In response to this volatility and a rising tide of anti-ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) sentiment, many corporates have adopted a practice referred to as greenhushing. This is the practice of continuing sustainability work in secret while staying silent publicly to avoid political scrutiny or legal greenwashing accusations. Trellis described 2025 as ‘The Yearʼ for greenhushing and also CEEZER reported a similar trend in their carbon market update report, Letting the money talk: Buyers increase spending for higher-quality carbon credits – quietly. Greenhushing has transitioned from a niche trend to a dominant corporate strategy for global corporates to avoid political or public targeting. While many firms are secretly maintaining their climate goals, this strategic silence is often mistaken for a retreat in ambition, creating a chilly atmosphere that stalls internal momentum and industry-wide peer pressure.
Ultimately, staying quiet may lower short-term political risk, but it certainly carries heavy long-term costs: it erodes investor trust, hampers talent recruitment, and weakens the collective action needed to drive global climate progress.
While greenhushing may feel like a safe defensive move, it carries profound risks.
1.Stalling innovation: When corporates stop sharing their progress, they stop sharing
“best practices.” This has negative impacts on the “race to the top” where
competitors push each other to be more efficient.
2.Overall ambition decrease: Peers donʼt feel the importance to maintain or even
increase climate ambition if corporate leaders donʼt talk about their climate action
and achievements.
3.Loss of talent and trust: Employees and consumers in 2026 are highly skeptical.
Silence is often interpreted not as “quiet work,” but as a lack of action or
transparency.
4.Capital misallocation: Investors need data to price risk. If corporates “hush” their
climate metrics, investors cannot accurately value assets, leading to market
instability.
Why a fact-based narrative is essential for business to thrive
For businesses, a fact-based narrative broadens the scope of climate change implications from sustainability and marketing efforts to a corporate balance sheet. By focusing on transition risk (e.g. the cost of changing regulations) and physical risk (e.g. the cost of storm damage), corporates can speak a language that both regulators and investors understand while increasing their resilience against these risks. In fact, a recent study shows that ESG, if done right, can be an incredible driver of financial and commercial performance.
Fact-based communication allows corporates to take a balanced approach combining responsible business activities with a clear business case. Therefore, radical transparency is the best defense against both greenwashing (over-promising) and greenhushing (hiding).
On top of that, there is a ripple effect for civil society in which every organizationʼs communication – may it be public institutions, non-profits or corporates – shape civil awareness and public perception of the complex topic of climate change. For the general public, climate communication that includes clear, understandable and relatable facts are the antidote to climate anxiety and compassion fatigue describing the mental exhaustion that results from the constant exposure to threatening climate crisis scenarios.
With many voices out there dismantling proven scientific consensus these days, it is imperative to share data, analyses, insights as well as materialized risk and success stories to demonstrate relevance, draw option spaces and propose tangible solutions.
The truth is and remains the tool for resilience
Talking about climate change on the basis of facts is the most promising way to bridge the current political – corporate – civil society divide. In a world where the U.S. has stepped back and many corporates have gone quiet, verifiable data remains. By prioritizing materiality, transparency, and education, it is time to move past the era of
performative promises and into an era of pragmatic action based on science and data.
*Dr. Carla Woydt is the CIO and Co-Founder of CEEZER