Let’s be absolutely candid: the siren song of easing off climate commitments is tempting the corporate class and it stinks.
If 2025 was indeed the year business quietly began retreating from net zero, watering down pledges or scrapping them outright, then 2026 must be the year UK firms rediscover backbone and purpose. After all, the alternative isn’t merely inconvenient; it is recklessly self-defeating.
The Guardian’s recent investigation suggests that, from retailers to banks, carmakers to councils, pledges once trumpeted from press release rooftops are being softened or shelved. The rhetoric of carbon-neutral economies now reads, all too often, like a relic of corporate virtue signalling rather than a serious business strategy.
Yet here’s the part no executive memo seems to state with enough clarity: net zero isn’t a fad. It is the defining economic transformation of our era, as seismic as electrification or the internet. Treat it as a mere box-ticking exercise and you will wake up in a world where markets and reputations have passed you by.
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