I started the Net Zero Business Podcast because I was bored – I felt my learning had plateaued, and realised that talking to lots of interesting people would bring fresh ideas and concepts across my bows. It hasn’t disappointed. Take last week’s episode with Michael Liebreich, I picked up loads of nuggets, but one phrase that stood out during the editing was ‘predatory delay’.

A quick google shows that it was coined in 2018 by Alex Steffen and it means deliberately slowing a required transition so vested interests can extract maximum wealth out of business as usual. For example, you often hear “we will require oil and gas for decades to come” in regard to, say, a proposal to exploit a new oilfield. The phrase is technically correct, but deployed in a misleading way – we already have sufficient fields in operation to take us into dangerous climate territory, we really don’t need any more.

Years ago I borrowed a copy of a book called “Toxic Sludge is Good for You” about the industry behind persuading the public that environmentally destructive processes were A-OK – and it is clear that nothing has changed. It is quite shocking to find that all of those “EVs burst into flames” and “heat pumps don’t work in cold weather” stories don’t get into the right wing press by themselves; vested interests pay PR companies to put them in there – this article by DeSmog shows how it works.

Maybe I’m naive, but I really struggle to understand how somebody could do this and sleep at night.

“Hey, Daddy, what did you do to prevent climate change?”

“Oh, I earned money persuading people not to take action until it was too late.”

And yet they do.

So how do we counter this? First, we need to get our own PR right. My criticism of the phrase ‘predatory delay’ is it fails the Ronseal test (aka “it does what it says on the tin”) – would a member of the public immediately understand what it meant? Some use ‘brownwashing’ which is definitely stronger, but is also used for companies whose performance on ethnic diversity doesn’t live up to their hype.

Any other suggestions?