Five Things I Learned at London Climate Action Week (From a Media Relations perspective)

I spent two days at London Climate Action Week expecting to hear a lot about carbon markets, supply chains, and regulation. I got that. But the conversation that kept resurfacing, in nearly every session I sat in on, wasn't really about climate science at all. It was about communication, and specifically, how badly most companies are doing it.

Here's what stuck with me.

1. "Carbon neutral" is a cautionary tale, not a claim.

One panelist put it plainly: the term has been used so loosely, for so long, that it's become almost meaningless to consumers. Nobody can quite explain what it really means anymore, and that's not an accident. It's the result of years of companies reaching for a phrase that sounded credible without doing the work to back it up. The lesson for comms professionals is uncomfortable but clear: vague language doesn't just fail to build trust, it actively erodes the credibility of every other company still trying to make an honest claim using the same words.

2. Companies aren't just overclaiming. They're going quiet.

This was the one that hit closest to home for me. Greenwashing gets all the headlines, but greenhushing, the practice of saying nothing rather than risk saying the wrong thing, is becoming just as common, especially among smaller businesses that can't afford third-party audits or certifications. One speaker pointed out that even companies doing genuinely good work are choosing silence because the cost and risk of speaking up feels too high. That's a real problem. If consumers and investors can't see what's working, they can't reward it, and the companies doing the right thing lose the commercial case for continuing to do it.

3. Trust is sequential, not simultaneous.

A phrase from one of the panels stuck with me: you have to do trustworthy things before you get to tell a trustworthy story. It sounds obvious, but it runs counter to how a lot of PR and marketing functions actually operate, where the instinct is to announce intentions early to generate momentum. The room's collective pet peeve was exactly this: companies publicizing what they plan to do, rather than what they've already done. Ambition is fine. Ambition presented as accomplishment is where things go wrong.

4. "Humbition" might be the most useful word I picked up all week.

It's a mashup of humility and ambition, and it describes the posture companies need if they want to communicate credibly in this environment. Nobody expects perfection. What audiences are actually looking for is honesty about where a company is in its journey, including the parts that aren't finished yet. Waiting until everything is airtight before saying anything is its own kind of communication failure. It just looks like caution instead of avoidance.

5. The real bottleneck often isn't external. It's internal.

This was the most surprising thread for me. Several speakers described a literacy gap inside organizations, where sustainability teams have the data, but marketing and communications teams don't have the background to translate it into claims that are both compelling and compliant. One panelist suggested the fix isn't more regulation; it's getting CSOs and CMOs in a room together more often. I'd extend that to PR. If communicators aren't fluent in the underlying data, we end up either overstating what we don't fully understand or saying nothing at all, and neither outcome serves the client or the public.

Where this leaves us:

Every session circled back to the same idea from a different angle. When companies communicate vaguely, or not at all, they don't just lose a marketing opportunity. They slow down the broader adoption of the solutions they've built. Consumers and investors can't act on progress they can't see or understand. That's not a regulatory problem or a science problem. It's a communications problem, and it's one our industry is well positioned to help fix, provided we're willing to push clients toward precision and patience instead of polish and speed.

I left London Climate Action Week with more questions than I came with, which feels like the right outcome. But the one thing I'm certain of is this: the next phase of climate communication isn't going to be won by whoever has the boldest claim. It's going to be won by whoever is most willing to be specific.