Carbon has become a shorthand for climate action, but what to do about CO2 and emissions is something many businesses still struggle with. Should you offset? If you do, what credits should you buy? Should you have a science-based target? If you do, what does that actually mean?

There are endless articles about sustainability, ESG, leadership, transition, action beyond the value change, biodiversity and nature and yet every day there seems to be more confusion about exactly what companies should do. The arguments about the use of offsetting are growing and the term carbon neutral is under attack.

Carbon neutrality and offsetting has been described as a shortcut, or even giving a false impression to stakeholders, as companies may use them as an excuse to continue with business as usual and not decarbonising operations. Also, they are high risk: some carbon credits don’t deliver the emissions reductions claimed, exposing buyers to greenwash accusations. Yet how are we going to funnel funds to action on nature and emissions reduction without an effective financing framework?

Today we’re revisiting three of our episodes which we hope will help you understand what’s going on and what the issues are, what questions you need to ask and how to think about your business both in terms of action and strategy.

We talk to Pablo Fernandez at EcoSecurities about the carbon markets, which have been given increasingly strong guardrails with the actions of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Markets and the agreement for rules around the compliance market for credits under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement.

We talk to Chris Hocknell at Eight Versa about carbon neutral, the term and the actions it calls for. While accepting that the term carbon neutral has been misused by many companies, leading to mistrust, Chris argues that the launch of the ISO carbon neutral standard actually makes it one of the only terms you can use that makes sense, and where you can point to a standard to verify your actions and, more importantly, your credibility. Perhaps most importantly, it's possible to attain without redesigning your entire business, not always possible with net zero.

Last but not least, we talk to Stuart McLachlan at Anthesis Group about sustainability and how it should, in fact must, be linked to performance. It’s all well and good to want to see action on climate, resource management, clean air, water and more – but in the end you have to talk the language of business to get business to understand the necessity of change, to integrate externalities into operations and adopt circular economy principles.

Today there is growing anti-ESG and climate change rhetoric, the international political situation seems increasingly unhinged and we seem to be moving ever further away from a peaceful, liberal and accepting global order. We need to share tools, knowledge and data to underpin actions to leverage change in the way we do business, invest and think about the longer term.

As ever, we hope you enjoy the conversations and don’t forget to share the newsletter and subscribe.

• Linking sustainability to performance with Anthesis Group

• Carbon markets uncovered with EcoSecurities

• Choosing between carbon neutral or net zero with Eight Versa

Season 3 has ended and we are gearing up for Season 4, to launch in the new year. We are changing direction to focus on helping you and your business get ready for the sustainable transition. If you're ready to join us, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram