“Climate forward” has become the corporate equivalent of a horoscope. Vague enough to apply to everyone. Specific enough to feel meaningful. Descriptive of absolutely nothing.
I’ve worked with companies that use this label. When I ask what it means operationally — what decisions it changes, what trade-offs it forces, what it rules out — the answer is usually silence followed by restatement of the aspiration.
The structural problem with aspirational labels
An identity label that doesn’t constrain behavior isn’t an identity. It’s marketing. “Climate forward” doesn’t tell you what the company will do. More importantly, it doesn’t tell you what the company won’t do.
Strategy is about trade-offs. If your climate positioning doesn’t force trade-offs — if it doesn’t make some business decisions harder or rule out some revenue opportunities — it’s not strategy. It’s wallpaper.
What I see in practice
Companies with “climate forward” positioning and defense contracts. Companies with net-zero commitments and no Scope 3 accounting. Companies whose climate strategy is a page in the investor deck and whose operational decisions are made on pure margin optimization.
This isn’t hypocrisy. It’s structural. The climate commitment exists at the narrative level. The decision-making architecture operates on different incentives entirely. The two systems aren’t connected. One is a story. The other is a machine.
What your company actually is
Your company is whatever its decision-making structure produces. Not what the strategy deck says. Not what the CEO believes. Not what the careers page promises. The output of the system is the identity of the system.
If your system optimizes for short-term margin and your deck says “climate forward,” your company is a margin optimizer with a climate narrative. That’s a diagnosis, not a judgment. You can change it — but only by changing the decision-making architecture, not by updating the language.
What would change
A company that’s structurally committed to climate impact would have it embedded in the decision-making framework. Capital allocation criteria that weight climate outcomes. Product roadmap priorities that reflect decarbonization pathways. Compensation structures that align with stated climate goals.
These are mechanical changes. They’re not about values or culture or belief. They’re about wiring the system so that the output matches the stated intention. Most companies haven’t done this work. They’ve done the narrative work and skipped the structural work.
The narrative feels good. The structural work is hard and constraining. That’s how you know it’s real.