The era of effortless ESG signalling has ended. We’re deep into a “downwave” of media and investor interest in sustainable business. So many businesses sustainability plans are fragmenting in response to different regulations, expectations and swirly political realities across the world.
The big question is how to respond. And the way I see it, there are three pathways through this messy landscape — pride, hide or slide.
These three approaches have little to do with the existential challenges that keep us awake. Nor are they necessarily what corporate leadership believes should be their priorities in response to those world-changing trends. They are about how organizations continue to function in a deeply polarized world, with intensifying scrutiny of claims, growing litigation risk and unpredictable markets.
Pride: louder, clearer public commitment
You double down on your goals, you defend your commitments and you talk about them. You advocate, you market, you show your progress to nearly everyone.
Pride means continuing, and often expanding, public commitment to environmental and social goals. Prideful companies keep or upgrade their targets, publish progress, market their sustainability credentials and are willing to advocate publicly. They speak about climate, equity and responsibility not as side issues but as part of their brand and purpose.
Patagonia remains the archetype here, treating activism as integral to its business model rather than a reputational accessory. REI has similarly refused to retreat into silence, connecting its commercial offering to climate action, renewable energy and community investment. And Ben & Jerry’s, despite governance tensions with its parent company, still operates as if values-led advocacy is non-negotiable. I expect to see more pride positioning in Asia and South America as new middle classes catch the sustainability vibe.
Pride can be a valid and powerful choice in 2026, but only under specific conditions. In disrupted markets, sustainability can still differentiate, provided it’s specific, provable and tied to the product or service itself.
Talent dynamics also matter: Despite the noise of backlash, many employees still see environmental and social values as a signal of long-term seriousness and cultural safety. There’s also a legal logic to pride when it’s done properly. As greenwashing enforcement sharpens, companies with detailed data, clear methodologies and transparent progress may be better protected than those relying on vague promises.
Hide: Keep doing the work, change the language
Same commitments with different nouns. Like many companies already operating in this way, you move away from “ESG,” “DEI,” perhaps even “net zero,” and you talk instead about risk, resilience, efficiency, responsibility, local impact, nature, health, reliability or energy security.
Hide is a subtler and more widespread pathway. Hide means changing the language, but not the goals. I’ve helped shape so many of these “new” narratives over the past months, with a brief to avoid “hot button” language such as climate, justice, diversity and ESG. And I’ve done so with a clear conscience and all the creativity I can muster, because keeping the action matters more than the words.
Targets, investments and programs are protected, but the vocabulary shifts. ESG disappears from report titles. DEI becomes “community culture” or “people strategy.” Climate becomes “energy resilience,” “valuing nature” or “risk management.” Net zero quietly recedes in favor of efficiency, reliability and cost control.
Many U.S. companies have moved in this direction, particularly in response to state-level political pressure and legal uncertainty. Across large-cap U.S. firms, the acronym ESG itself has been systematically scrubbed from public-facing documents, even as much of the underlying content remains. Constellation Brands, for example, publicly reframed its DEI efforts, renaming teams and redirecting attention toward local suppliers and community investment. Hide can be a rational strategy in 2026 for several reasons. First, it reduces noise. When sustainability language becomes a lightning rod, execution suffers if internal energy is consumed by messaging debates rather than delivery. Second, it lowers political exposure. In parts of the U.S., certain words function less as descriptors and more as ideological triggers. Removing them can be a form of operational risk management rather than ideological retreat. Finally, it aligns with a quieter investor shift. Serious capital is increasingly less interested in moral theatre and more focused on whether companies understand long-term risk, resilience and competitiveness.
Slide: An actual retreat
You drop commitments, weaken targets, leave alliances, cut programs and sometimes you do it loudly as a signal to politicians or a particular customer base.
Slide is a retreat. Wells Fargo’s decision to step away from net-zero commitments is a clear example. Meta’s dismantling of core DEI initiatives, justified by legal and political risk, reflects a similar calculation.
Slide is often framed as realism and perhaps, in some narrow circumstances, it can be defensible. Some companies set targets they never resourced and are now choosing the uncomfortable honesty of withdrawal over the slow bleed of under-delivery. Others are prioritizing short-term regulatory access or political capital in highly exposed sectors. In industries facing severe margin pressure, sustainability is sometimes still treated as discretionary, particularly where it was never embedded into capital planning or operations.
But slide is the most dangerous option in the medium to long term. Reputational damage is only the first cost. Talent loss, reduced innovation capacity and vulnerability to physical climate risk follow. More importantly, retreat doesn’t stop the underlying forces driving our global energy transition. Climate impacts, insurance constraints, supply chain disruption and future regulation don’t disappear just because a company has stopped talking about them. Sliding away from preparedness today almost always means paying more to catch up tomorrow.
So which approach should companies choose in 2026? The answer for many will be a hybrid scenario. Pride where performance is real and measurable. Hide where language has become a distraction from delivery. And extreme caution around slide, reserved only for situations where commitments were hollow to begin with and a credible alternative strategy exists.
Yes, you can mix-and-match these responses. But the three archetypes are useful because they force a brutally practical question: are you going to signal, soften or surrender in 2026?
