What if “we” are not failing – What if “they” are winning

For years, we told ourselves a comforting story. That things were shifting, that the tide was turning, that the pieces were finally coming together. Climate targets. Paris commitments. Green technologies. Impact investment. Growing public awareness. We looked at metrics, coalitions, ESG reports, and saw progress. Imperfect, yes. Too slow, certainly. But moving in the right direction.

One version of this story was especially seductive: the idea that business would lead, that sustainability would become not so much a moral imperative, but a strategic necessity. Trillions in green finance. Impact investing going mainstream. Climate and biodiversity risks integrated into financial disclosures. Capital finally flowing where it should. We were told the business case for sustainability was rock-solid, that companies would decarbonize because it made economic sense, that markets would reward what matters, or that clean energy would outcompete fossil fuels and big oil companies would wither away. And we believed it.

We had science on our side – and still do. We had the IPCC reports, the planetary boundaries, the charts and the curves and the models. We had Greta and Christiana and Paul and Johan. We had progressive CEOs making bold pledges. We had the moral high ground, the urgency, the youth. We had the best story.

And yet. Here we are, watching that story fall apart in real time. How come? Who is maneuvering behind closed doors? And how come these forces are winning again, after a string of defeats over the past decade? Because we see that the so-called business case for sustainability is being quietly withdrawn. Goals are delayed, executive bonuses are decoupled from climate targets, sustainability teams are downsized. Companies are no longer boasting about their net-zero plans, they’re hiding them. Lobbyists are back in charge. The mood in boardrooms seems to have shifted. The retreat is gathering steam.

Have you heard the word greenhushing? Some say it’s the new norm: It means saying less, showing less, admitting less. It means keeping your climate targets quiet. Not because they’ve been met, but because it’s safer to pretend they were never there.

So is this a temporary slump or a slowdown? Is the idea that the transition is inevitable, that change is too far along to stop, still viable? What if it is crumbling, not because of confusion or lack of knowledge, but because power is being exercised?

Here is a depressing list of setbacks in climate and environmental work over the past year or so. It took some time to compile this inventory, but the point is clear: Old raw power is advancing. Fossil power, lobbyist power, vested interest power, Big Ag power, Wall Street power.

• Trump pulls the US out of the Paris Agreement, framing climate commitments as “globalist surrender.”

• US offshore wind permits are frozen under a “national energy emergency” to accelerate fossil fuel development. And the American Petroleum Institute pushes to repeal EPA tailpipe rules and lift LNG export pause.

• The Clean Power Plan 2.0 is scrapped; EPA methane rules put on indefinite hold.
  Republican-led House budget seeks to repeal clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act.

• The EU withdraws its Sustainable Use of Pesticides law following coordinated protests and political pressure.

• The Nature Restoration Law survives—but only after major exemptions, delays, and diluted ambition.

• The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is weakened, with climate clauses almost entirely removed.

• CSRD and EU Taxonomy reporting requirements are delayed and simplified, reducing scope and mandatory disclosures.

• The EU Deforestation Regulation is delayed and weakened under pressure from commodity trade associations.

• European carmakers secure 3-year averaging for CO₂ targets and stall EV transition through strong lobbying by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association.

• In finance, several major banks quietly exit Net-Zero Banking Alliance, eroding its credibility and enforcement power. UBS removes climate targets from executive bonuses, citing “investor expectations.”, and HSBC delays net-zero operations target from 2030 to 2050 while also dropping ties to CEO pay.

• Among airlines, United Airlines quietly drops its 100% green aviation fuel pledge by 2050, citing “market availability,” Lufthansa Group stops linking executive pay to emissions reduction milestones after shareholder pushback, Air France–KLM delays 2030 emissions intensity targets, citing rising energy costs and fleet transition delays, European airline lobbying group A4E campaigns successfully to weaken EU-level taxes on kerosene and reduce scope of the Fit for 55 package, Delta Air Lines faces legal action over false carbon-neutral claims, prompting industry-wide pullback on public targets, and EasyJet drops interim 2035 emissions targets while maintaining net-zero rhetoric.

• Among oil companies, BP further retreats from its emissions targets, citing “shareholder value” as the primary metric of success, Shell quietly shelves major wind and solar investments, redirecting capital to deepwater drilling and LNG projects, Saudi Aramco announces record investment in oil expansion, and ExxonMobil’s legal team leads multi-state effort to block stricter climate disclosures in US financial regulation. And Equinor’s 2025 Energy Perspectives downplays 1.5°C alignment, doubling down on oil and gas investment.

• Copa-Cogeca, the EU’s powerful farm lobby, torpedoes pesticide reform and secures major CAP rollbacks.

• FuelsEurope lobbies to delay vehicle emissions targets and preserve fossil fuel access in transition plans.

• European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) steers REACH deregulation and “Clean Industrial Deal” flexibility.

• In COP30 preparations, fossil fuel lobbyists are embedded in national COP30 delegations under “party overflow” badges. Brazil just auctioned off 172 oil and gas blocks (including offshore sites near the Amazon), and thousands of Amazonian trees are felled to build roads and infrastructure for the COP30 summit venue.

• And just this week, it emerged that global treaty talks on plastic pollution were “totally infiltrated” by fossil and petrochemical lobbyists, flooding the room to derail ambition and delay regulation, all while pretending to negotiate.

Sure, groups opposed to climate action, progressive regulation, or systemic transition have always been around. Anyone who’s worked in sustainability has met them. Some are outright climate skeptics. Others are ideologically driven defenders of big business, suspicious of government and allergic to any kind of regulation. Others are just cynical “merchants of doubt”. What’s new isn’t their existence, it’s their momentum. This year, they have reorganized, rearmed, and reasserted control. And for reasons we’re only beginning to understand, they seem to have cracked the code. They are not just resisting. They are winning.

Could it be that the recent wave of backlash is not a sign of weakness, but of impact? That climate and sustainability efforts, after years of noise and slow gains, finally began to bite? Perhaps we started to press, however modestly, against the limits of what the current system can tolerate. Not just making demands but threatening to change the game. And maybe that’s why the counterattack has been so coordinated, so aggressive, so effective. Maybe we were closer to a real shift than we realized. And that’s exactly what triggered the response.

Be that as it may, the truth is brutal, and we need to face it: we are outgunned. The ‘opposition’ has built the most sophisticated deny-and-delay machinery in history, an ecosystem of lobbying groups, PR firms, legal teams, think tanks, social media accounts and online personalities with millions of followers.

Still we keep talking about what the climate movement got wrong, or how scientists could become better storytellers, or whether the activists are alienating the center. And we ask, did we push too hard, or not hard enough; were we too radical, or too polite; too technical, or too emotional?

When I hear people say that environmentalists were naïve, that the failures come from not being pragmatic or persuasive or smart enough, I think of Munich, 1942. I think of the White Rose, the small circle of students who dared to speak out against the Nazi regime. Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst. They printed leaflets. They spoke the truth. They called for conscience in a time of terror. And they were arrested, tried, and executed by guillotine. Did they fail because they lacked strategy or weren’t convincing enough? Of course not. They failed because they were up against overwhelming force. Their leaflets did not topple the regime.

The problem isn’t failed messaging. It’s power. While advocates refined scenarios, others built pipelines. While activists fasted, lobbyists rewrote laws. While CEOs pledged net-zero, their trade groups gutted regulation. While land defenders were jailed, fossil profits soared. That’s the system.

We keep saying the system is broken. But it isn’t, it’s doing exactly what it was built to do: extract, exploit, expand, delay, and protect its own. We are fighting an operating system that does not want to be rewritten. It was never designed to descend, de-grow, retreat or regenerate.

In earlier posts, I’ve written about the big oopses, the policy delusions that felt like progress but delivered little. I’ve tried to name the deeper patterns: the double binds we’re trapped in, the false urgencies that exhaust us, the myths of green growth and technocratic control. I’ve tried to listen carefully to those who warned us early and clearly, and to those building quiet alternatives in the ruins.

But this week, I don’t want to analyze. I don’t want to offer another frame. I just want to say: they are winning. Not metaphorically. Not structurally. Not philosophically. Literally. And no, this is not a call to keep fighting harder. Not this week. This is something else. A moment to stop pretending. Sometimes, knowledge does not equal power. Urgency does not guarantee action. Justice does not come just because it should.

I don’t know what comes next. But I do know that we cannot afford to keep lying to ourselves.

Postscript

Joanna Macy died a few days ago. She spent her life helping people look into the abyss without turning away. Not by offering comfort, but by inviting courage. Her phrase “active hope” was never about optimism, it was about being present, choosing to participate in the healing of life and the protection of what still matters, even without guarantees. She taught that we do not need certainty to act, only presence. This essay is not hopeful. But I hope she would recognize it as part of the Work she named: seeing clearly, feeling deeply, and refusing to numb or look away.