Anyone who has read the article “Why well-off Brits who think collapse is coming still stay silent” will recognise the scenarios it calls out. Those silent Brits are familiar to us all: they know the planet is hurtling towards existential crisis but they do not use their voice to influence others while they live comfortably within a system that cannot endure (and they know it).

Forbes talks about a ‘spiral of silence’ and how it derails climate action. It says that the spiral of silence describes how “people suppress their views to avoid social isolation, even when their opinions are widely shared”.

The publication points to a report which says that 86% of those surveyed endorse pro-climate social norms and 89% demand intensified political action and yet “the world is in a state of pluralistic ignorance, wherein individuals around the globe systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act”. The result is climate inaction.

The media has stepped in and launched the 89 Percent Project. This is a “year-long global journalistic effort to explore the fact that “the overwhelming majority of the world’s people…want governments to take stronger action. But that fact is not reflected in our news coverage, which helps explain why the 89% don’t know that they are the global majority.”

Any newsroom or journalist can get involved by publishing stories on climate action in the hopes this will help focus the world’s attention on climate change’s silent majority.

Whether the press is doing enough to unlock the voices of the silent majority is open to question. They have their own advertisers, sponsors, owners and other stakeholders to consider in their editorial strategies; it is not easy to be part of the corporate media machine. They too have to make payroll.

This brings us to corporations more generally. While 2025 is characterised by a seeming reversal of climate strategies generally, if you prise open individual companies, the chances are that decarbonisation efforts are continuing – they are just not being discussed openly. But silence means it is harder to measure climate action and its impact – from the outside.

Call it greenhushing if you will, but this corporate silence is more to do with backlashes, greenwashing accusations, avoidance of tricky allegiances and nervousness around labelling than intent around climate action.

The continuum towards decarbonisation by individual companies stands to reason. Climate action is really about longevity; not heartstrings and morality. It just happens that looking after the planet also means looking after the bottom line…that’s why companies are compelled to act.

Recent research reveals that 97% of business leaders back the renewables transition. The We Mean Business Coalition survey found that half of business leaders say they will relocate their operations (52%) and supply chains (49%) to markets with better access to renewables-based power systems within five years.

These leaders associate renewables with stronger energy security (75%), lower electricity bills (50%) and higher profits (42%). They don’t need to talk about their strategies around renewables in terms of climate action; it just makes good business sense to build their businesses around renewable energy.

PwC’s 2025 CEO Survey shows that investment in climate action is paying off. One in three CEOs report that climate-friendly investments made over the last five years have resulted in increased revenue. Two-thirds say these investments have either reduced costs or had no significant cost impact.

While individual businesses quietly get on with future-facing strategies, innovation and measures to ensure resilience, it’s easy to assume whole industries are sitting on their laurels as the space and appetite for climate debate and allegiances wanes in 2025.

So what are we to make of this silence at both the individual level and the corporate level; and does it matter that organisations that represent entire industries are no longer vocal on climate?

What the planet needs are workable strategies with climate embedded. Perhaps silence is golden after all.