How to Talk About Sustainability Across the Political Divide

Earlier this year, two months into the second Trump administration, federal agencies in the US circulated an internal list of nearly 200 words that would be limited or avoided in the government’s clampdown on so-called “woke initiatives”, according to documents seen by The New York Times.

Among those words were: climate crisis, climate science, clean energy and pollution. Among the even more concerning broad sweeps: inequality, diversity, race and ethnicity, gender, women, men, disability, victim, bias, activists, and political.

While the words were not banned outright, the list sent shockwaves through the US. It also sent a message: for fashion brands with a sustainability focus, communicating their efforts across the political divide was about to get a whole lot harder.

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