Highlighting the gap between real action and tokenism, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard’s visionary donation of his company to the climate cause lights the way for other progressive corporations—if they choose to follow. But they probably won’t.

Last year I did some sustainability consulting for a young outdoor company. They opened the conversation by saying they already had a strategy in mind: to pursue a certification called “Climate Neutral,” and as part of that, buy offsets so that they could claim “net-zero” emissions status.

I spent the next hour explaining why I thought that was a terrible idea. For a start, Climate Neutral has certified 300 companies, many of them in the outdoor industry (and they’re just one of many such certifiers). From a brand-differentiation standpoint, this would be reaching up to touch bottom. More to the point, from an environmental perspective, buying offsets—credits for carbon reduction elsewhere—is highly questionable.

Why? Taking tree-planting as just one example: It has proven devilishly hard to demonstrate that the trees you protect will stay alive over the long term, that they weren’t already legally protected but sold as offsets anyway, or that their preservation didn’t ensure that nearby trees would be cut instead. The media is positively exploding with offset takedowns these days, from Bloomberg to Fast Company to John Oliver, who recently spent a whopping 24 minutes brilliantly destroying the concept. Given this growing press storm, there’s obvious brand risk to such a strategy.

Instead, I suggested, why not use the money they would have spent on offsets for something actually impactful, even if it doesn’t allow you to make great claims? Retrofitting all the windows in your office to save energy, for example, or switching company vehicles to electric, as a model for your industry and the world. Then take the remaining time and energy and publish an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about the need to pass climate legislation in the Senate. You’d be the only CEO in your industry doing that!

I was hopeful, but in the end the company decided to pursue the Climate Neutral certification. They meant well, but doing anything else felt unfamiliar and risky.

The Problem With Neutral

Setting “climate-neutral” goals (“I promise to quit smoking by 2030!”) and then buying offsets to get there has become such the norm in the sustainable business world that if you’re not doing it, you seem corrupt. In fact, it’s just the opposite. “Net-zero” or “climate-neutral” as a concept is so hard to pin down, let alone achieve any version of, that it’s flimflammery by definition.

How Do We Break This Pattern?

Let’s start by asking what businesses really want around “sustainability.” First, they need brand differentiation, which gets them employee attraction and retention, good press, and customer loyalty. But it can also be good for the environment. If a legitimately good company gets recognition for its climate work, then it will outperform others, force them to change, educate consumers, and even put bad actors out of business. So media, branding, and press, if not based on greenwashing, matters environmentally as much as it does financially. But in order to have good press, you have to be different, and that means not following the herd.

Second, in theory, businesses actually do want to solve the climate problem, because warming is proving to be so disruptive to global economies (Google “flood Pakistan Mississippi.”) It must be addressed.

Which brings us back to the only viable solution for business that actually cares and wants to stand out—very publicly wielding power to support policies that drive large-scale change.

Read the full article about corporate carbon neutrality by Auden Schendler at Stanford Social Innovation Review.