MIGHT 'GREENHUSHING' ACTUALLY EXPOSE 'GREENWASHING'? The Bizarre Politicisation of ESG: A UK Perspective on a US Phenomenon

Being based in the UK yet also having some US clients, you can imagine my surprise (not to mention confusion!) the other day when I discovered that the harmless term ‘ESG’ – used in the UK with absolutely no political connotation – has apparently become some sort of uber-controversial politicised label in the US. This to the extent that supposedly well-meaning green companies are frantically removing the term from their websites or replacing it with other terminology (apparently known as ‘greenhushing’). How on earth could such an innocent acronym as ‘ESG’ be possibly controversial, standing as it does after all for nothing more complex than ‘Environmental, Social and Governance’, and so commonly used as shorthand for, in effect, better business practices, or ways to measure this? The acronym, from a UK perspective, seems almost so harmless as to be boring.

Of course what I hadn’t accounted for was that the US is in the grip of a Culture War the likes of which we don’t see in the UK – at least in my opinion. Certainly, there is a Culture War in the UK but I’d argue it’s more niche, and only waged between certain small groups who each themselves have especially strong viewpoints. Even where people disagree – say, on Brexit - most are able to have an ‘argy-bargy’ down the pub without breaking into outright political chaos. In fact I’d suggest that most in the UK are simply not enraged enough to bother – a simple British tepid beer usually solves the problem. And even in the highly politicised arenas where a true Culture War does exist, sustainability has never been the major part of it.

The UK is generally pro-sustainability, I’d suggest. Sure, Sunak has disappointed. And there are battles around the extremes of the agenda – for example many otherwise pro-sustainability citizens become irritated by protests which they may feel aren’t helpful. There are also concerns around the affordability of transition – for example, where a family already in financial straits is unable to afford to replace a gas boiler. But these debates remain for the most part civilised and a large proportion of people are to some degree in favour of 'doing their bit' – many people from all walks of life are happy to recycle, for example, and almost all Brits are perfectly happy to have a pro-sustainability monarchy and to have 'National Treasure' David Attenborough do 'prime time' shows on the demise of the natural environment.

So the idea that a seemingly harmless term such as ESG – and its equally harmless remit to be kind to the environment, to be socially beneficial, and to do kind business – could ever be controversial to the point of removing it from websites seems unfathomable from a UK perspective. What then is going on in the States? Of course I can’t speak too much on behalf of another country but it seems to me there are 2 separate issues here - one practical and (as a wordsmith this interests me), one ideological, we might even say linguistic.

On the practical front, the oil and gas industries in the US seem much more vehemently against transition than perhaps they do in the UK. I am no expert but I still find it hard to understand why such companies are so reluctant to innovate. Ordinarily, when a technology begins to become obsolete, great companies often handle this well by retaining the brand whilst transitioning their offer. For example, when digital photography came on the scene, Nikon embraced digital cameras (whilst Kodak didn’t, and all-but-disappeared). So it’s hard to understand why leading oil or gas companies didn’t begin innovating in green energy tech and jumping on the bandwagon decades ago. Similarly, I have never understood why the UK never made more use of its miserable weather by 'going large' on wind farms, other than that, despite being ‘merely a windmill’, and despite being many miles from anyone’s actual backyard, windfarms still stir up an irrational hatred. (Given UK citizens still visit the Netherlands all the time to look at windmills, I have to wonder whether, if Brits are so turned off by contemporary design, we cannot produce picturesque pastiche Dutch windmills instead?!) In short I can only assume, as a non-energy-industry-expert, that there are factors so complex that it is futile for outsiders to attempt to comprehend.

On a linguistic front though (and this is more interesting to me), it seems that that the acronym ESG has become what I can only describe as an ‘inflamed term’. If you reiterate a certain phrase or acronym repeatedly in conjunction with a strong emotion, you are bound to get a strong emotional response. This is basic rhetoric. From my distance here in the UK, therefore, it seems to me as if ‘ESG’ must now be shorthand for what, back in the UK day, some might have perhaps called ‘Loony Left’ or ‘Political Correctness Gone Mad’ – except that in the UK even these terms had a somewhat tongue-in-cheek nature and still lacked the inflammatory rage and vehemence of the US Culture War. I could argue, of course, about how ESG may have served many US employees well, but 25 years’ experience with language suggests to me that once a term is inflammatory, there is very rarely any turning back.

From my perspective as a marketer and writer, then, what does this actually mean for the US companies who prided themselves on their sustainable credentials (and indeed UK firms with a strong presence or customer base in the US)? Will they simply be replacing the term with something less controversial – ‘sustainability credentials’, ‘green targets’? It’s notable that Blackrock too has started talking about ‘transition finance’ – The Guardian has seen this as a cynical backtracking move but it could equally be seen as a more accurate description of what they are seeking to achieve - and Blackrock do have a strong track record (in fact they are being targeted) so I suspect The Guardian is getting things a little back to front.

Or does the shift to 'transition talk' presage something deeper? Are US green-friendly companies going to backtrack full stop, or merely tinker with wording?

Let’s try to look on the bright side. If this is a mere matter of wording, could it in fact be helpful? For example, if a company is too prepared to ‘greenhush’, and can do so without any major detriment to their business, how embedded was sustainability in the first place? Imagine, say, Innocent Smoothies suddenly deciding not to be so ‘innocent’? Their entire brand and customer base would collapse. So in actual fact all that ‘greenhushing’ surely proves is that those companies that do it were only ever ‘greenwashing’ in the first place.

And since I’ve long argued that ‘greenwashing’ is a blight on the face of genuinely sustainable business, this might have an unexpected positive effect. If this is a Culture War, then presumably around half of the US is still interested in sustainability – in which case all this means is that it will be easier to establish which companies really are actually ESG-friendly and which were only green-faking in the first place.

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