Everyone says echo chambers are bad. But they helped us build something remarkable.

When we started helping organisations reduce their environmental impact at Green Element, most of the world thought what we were doing was a bit odd. The answer wasn't to seek out sceptics. It was to find our people: the B Corp network, sustainability-minded founders, people like James Gibb and Darren Chadwick who understood why this work mattered.

That echo chamber normalised what we were doing. It gave us endorsement and validation at a time when the mainstream hadn't caught up yet. Being surrounded by people who get it doesn't just feel good, it actually helps you push further and faster.

There's a lot of noise about the dangers of echo chambers, and I'll cover the bad side in a follow-up video. But if you're pioneering something new in sustainability or net zero, choosing your circle carefully isn't a weakness. It's a strategy.

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This week in sustainability, one story dominated everything else — and it is not the one you would expect.

The Iran War is turbocharging the clean energy transition at a speed no policy ever managed. BYD showrooms in Manila sold a month's worth of EVs in two weeks. VinFast in Hanoi quadrupled customer visits. In San Francisco, petrol hit $6.81 a gallon and used EV dealers are overwhelmed with appointments. Pakistan is saving $6.3 billion this year by using solar instead of oil.

And one fact that stopped me in my tracks: Southeast Asian countries now have EV adoption rates of around 40% — higher than the UK and Europe.

In this week's top 10 sustainability news countdown, we cover all of that, plus:

• Why Qatar's largest LNG plant emitted the equivalent of 20,000 cars' annual CO2 in just three weeks
• How long-duration iron-air batteries are reshaping the data centre energy story
• Why poor countries will face 10 times more heat deaths than rich ones by 2050
• What New York's climate law U-turn tells us about building resilient carbon strategies
• The UK flood insurance scandal that is benefitting the wealthy instead of the vulnerable
• And three mind-blowing environmental facts you will not hear anywhere else this week

If you work in sustainability, lead a business, or advise organisations on their carbon strategy; this is your weekly briefing.

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We had a record April. The quarter before that was brilliant. And I still sat the whole team down and told them the business was going to have a serious cash flow problem by September.

That decision changed everything.

In this video I talk about what happened when we chose complete transparency with our team during one of the hardest periods we had ever faced as a business. We didn't have to do it. We chose to. And the way every single person responded made me genuinely proud.

There's something important here for any leader who has been in that position where the numbers are heading the wrong way but you don't want to panic anyone. The instinct is to protect people by keeping them in the dark. I've come to believe that's completely the wrong call.

What you actually need is the kind of culture where honest conversations are normal, not just in a crisis, but every single week. We had spent over a decade building that at Green Element, and when the moment came, it held.

If you're leading a team through uncertainty right now, whether that's financial pressure, a restructure, or something shifting underneath the business, I hope this helps.

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#Leadership #BusinessTransparency #SustainabilityLeadership #TeamCulture #NetZero