When Leaders Abdicate: Why CEOs Must Defend Climate Science When Governments Won’t

This week, the White House and the EPA moved to repeal the 2009 “endangerment finding” – the scientific determination that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases threaten the health and welfare of current and future generations, and must therefore be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Let me be direct about what this means. The legal foundation for federal climate regulation in the United States is being dismantled. Not because the science has changed, but because the politics has.

When future generations ask where we stood in 2026, they will not study our mission statements. They will look at what we did – and what we failed to do – in the months after the most powerful government on earth chose to deny that greenhouse gases endanger human health.

This Is Not Just an Environmental Issue

In an earlier article I argued that when politics fails the planet, business must lead on climate action. That moment is no longer theoretical. Regulations that took decades to build are being rolled back in months, climate science units have been defunded or disbanded, and entire agencies are being repurposed to serve short-term industrial interests. The guardians have abandoned the gate.

For boards and investors, the immediate danger is not ideological – it is structural. Capital markets depend on predictable rules and credible institutions. When a government openly disowns its own scientific findings to justify deregulation, it erodes the foundations on which long-term investment decisions are made. If the science of climate risk can be rewritten for political convenience, what else is negotiable – public-health standards, product-safety rules, labour protections?

That is why climate has moved from the CSR department to the board agenda. In boardrooms I work with, the real conversation is no longer “Is climate change real?” but “Can we trust the rules to remain rational over the life of our investments?” The answer, in light of this repeal, is increasingly no.

The Deeper Threat: Evidence-Based Governance Under Siege

Here is what troubles me most. The endangerment finding was not a political opinion. It was the conclusion of a rigorous, multi-year assessment by climate scientists, public-health experts and lawyers, aligning U.S. policy with overwhelming global evidence. By repealing it, the administration is publicly asserting that the United States government no longer accepts its responsibility to protect citizens from the risks of climate pollution.
If that principle becomes normalised – ignore the science, dismantle the safeguards, hope the market sorts it out – then every difficult, evidence-based problem becomes vulnerable to the same treatment. Pandemic preparedness. AI safety. Antibiotic resistance. The precedent being set here extends far beyond carbon. It is an assault on the very idea that policy should be grounded in evidence rather than political expediency.
Business leaders who understand systems know that when you remove the foundations of rational governance, you do not create freedom; you create chaos. And chaos is the most expensive operating environment there is.

Business Is Already Ahead – And Must Stay There

Paradoxically, as governments retreat, the private sector is already far ahead. Over 130 global companies, representing more than four trillion dollars in annual revenues, have committed to climate targets that outstrip many national pledges. Consider what is actually happening on the ground: Ørsted, the Danish energy company, transformed from one of Europe’s most coal-intensive utilities into the world’s largest offshore wind developer in less than a decade. Microsoft has committed not merely to net-zero but to removing all the carbon it has emitted since its founding in 1975. Unilever has maintained its climate commitments through multiple political cycles and economic downturns, treating them as non-negotiable elements of long-term strategy.

These companies are not acting out of altruism. The risk equation has irreversibly shifted. Investors now punish climate laggards, customers increasingly reward climate leadership, and young talent votes with its feet – choosing to work for organisations whose values match their own. As I wrote last year, delaying climate action now carries far greater risk than acting decisively.

The repeal of the endangerment finding does not change any of this. It only widens the gap between what markets know to be inevitable and what politics is prepared to acknowledge. It removes regulatory certainty at the federal level, but it does not repeal physics, nor does it abolish the expectations of investors, employees and customers who have already internalised climate risk.

The Moral Frontier of Corporate Leadership

There is a deeper dimension here, and I want to be honest about it. Leadership is not only about strategy and risk management; it is about moral courage. I have argued before that values have no value until they cost you something. If your corporate values include integrity, responsibility, sustainability or stewardship, this is the moment they are tested.

It is tempting for boards to retreat into narrow legalism: “If the government no longer requires us to cut emissions, perhaps we can slow down, extract a little more value, and let someone else worry about 2050.” Yet every serious piece of climate science tells us that the choices we make in this decade will determine the living conditions of our children and grandchildren. Choosing to accelerate pollution because the referee has walked off the pitch is not smart business. It is a betrayal of the very stakeholders whose trust we claim to serve.

I see a different kind of leader emerging – one who understands that the licence to operate is no longer granted solely by regulators but by society at large. Purpose-driven companies that align profit with planet are already attracting superior talent, stronger partnerships and more resilient valuations. They are discovering what I have called the first-mover advantage to save the planet: the strategic upside of acting ahead of regulation, not behind it.

What CEOs and Boards Must Do Now

If politics is retreating, business must step forward. Three commitments matter most.

Publicly reaffirm climate science – and mean it

Boards should make clear, in annual reports and public statements, that their climate strategies are grounded in mainstream science regardless of political noise. Endorsing science-based targets and joining credible initiatives like the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders is not virtue signalling; it is a statement of institutional integrity. It tells investors, employees and customers that your company stands with evidence, not ideology. In a world where governments are abandoning their own scientific findings, that declaration has become a competitive advantage.

Lock in climate strategies that outlive political cycles

Design climate roadmaps with 2030 and 2040 milestones that cannot be easily reversed by a change in government. Tie executive compensation to emissions reductions and resilience metrics, not just short-term earnings, so that climate performance becomes a core leadership KPI rather than a marketing slogan. The companies that will thrive in the coming decades are those building strategies on the assumption that the physical and economic realities of climate change are permanent – even if political acknowledgement of those realities is not.

Use your political capital – and audit your contradictions

The most advanced companies are no longer neutral on climate policy. In Europe and Brazil, corporate coalitions have helped shape ambitious climate legislation. The same can and must happen in the United States, at state and city level if federal leadership is absent. But credibility requires consistency. CEOs should audit their lobbying, trade association memberships and political donations to ensure they are not quietly funding the very obstruction they publicly condemn. The gap between what companies say on sustainability and what their lobbyists do in Washington is the single greatest threat to business credibility on climate.

If Not Us, Who?

I want to address one final concern directly. Some will argue that businesses overstepping into policy advocacy is itself a threat to democratic governance. I understand that concern, and I take it seriously. But there is a difference between a corporation seeking to capture regulatory advantage and a corporation standing up for the integrity of evidence-based policymaking. The first is self-interest disguised as principle. The second is leadership in its most essential form.

The scale, capital and innovation capacity to change course already sit in our boardrooms. We have seen that when business leaders act together – setting bold targets, shifting capital, speaking with a united voice – they can move markets faster than politics can move treaties.

The question is no longer whether governments will lead. They have answered that, loudly and clearly, by repealing their own recognition that greenhouse gases endanger human health. The real question is whether CEOs and boards will accept the responsibility that history is placing on their shoulders.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

Brian Bacon is Chairman of Oxford Leadership Group, a global leadership consultancy with over one million alumni across 28 countries. He has spent more than three decades advocating for the integration of principled leadership with sustainable business practice.