A silver lining in the new corporate climate storm - greenstalling

Delays are frustrating, but the era of hot-air news releases is finally over as investors turn up the pressure.

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‘Greenstalling?’ Companies are quietly walking back their climate goals for various reasons. Who’s paying attention? Photo: Tuan Nguyen Khac/Pixabay.

(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — There’s a silver lining hidden in the latest reincarnation of greenwashing, known as “greenstalling.”

Greenstalling refers to companies that are quietly walking back on their climate commitments. Not too many years ago companies were very publicly pledging to become carbon neutral at some point in the not-too-distant future; now they are privately pushing those dates further and further into the future — or getting rid of them altogether.

It would seem difficult to put lipstick on this pig. The reason to nevertheless do so is that the companies’ greenstalling behavior is tacit acknowledgment that they can’t get away with empty rhetoric.