Caught by satellite - the pollution reduction lie

The dirty companies that brag the most about their climate efforts are mostly hot air

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We see you: MethaneSAT was a pioneering Earth observation satellite that tracked and measured global methane emissions with unprecedented precision. One of several pollution-targeting satellites, it was launched by the Environmental Defense Fund in 2024 and operated for about a year.

(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) — You should be suspicious of a company that goes out of its way to brag about how much it is doing to reduce its carbon footprint.

That’s according to a new study that provides more evidence for what I discussed in my column two weeks ago. I reported then that approximately one-quarter of firms are engaged in “greenhushing” — the deliberate downplaying of their environmental efforts. The researchers who discovered this surprising pattern speculated that “greenhushers” are motivated by the desire to avoid the backlash that is all too common in the current political environment.

This new study focuses on firms at the other end of the “pat themselves on the back” spectrum, who go out of their way to boast about their climate-related achievements. The source of these companies’ behavior is deceptively simple, according to this new study’s authors: It’s cheaper for companies to lie about their greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions than expend the considerable expenditures required to actually reduce them — so long, of course, that there’s no external data that can be used to catch them in their lies.