Lawmakers are the issue, not big tech companies.
I know it’s popular to hate on big tech companies, but many of them are actually doing a lot more to improve the climate impact of their own operations than average or required by law.
Amazon has committed to switching to 100% renewable energy in the next few years and also going completely carbon neutral before the date proposed in the Paris Agreement: https://www.aboutamazon.com/planet/climate-pledge
They’ve also created a program to coordinate with other companies to join the same climate pledge and funded research in the area to the tune of $2 billion (so far): https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/about/the-climate-ple...
I don’t understand why Amazon is the first target that comes to mind when they’re doing more than required to reduce their own and others climate impacts.
It’s not the big tech companies we need to be angry at. It’s the lawmakers who are failing to put appropriate regulations in place and the voters who continue to enable them.
Anytime a politician complains about companies not doing their part or not paying their taxes all I can hear is you can’t do your own job.
The first rule of leadership is that everything is your fault. If there’s loopholes, close them. If companies are polluting or emitting change the law.
The function of a company is to make money for it’s shareholders. The function of government is to keep them in check.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
The focus on short-term shareholder value is contraproductive. It's bad for the company, it's bad for society.
If there are two rival companies, and one of the two focuses on social initiatives to the detriment of it’s financial competitiveness, then logically the result is that it falls behind it’s less moral competitor until being crushed completely or subsumed.
In this scenario, you’re defacto punishing social initiatives rather than supporting them.
It’s illogical to expect companies to behave in a way that they’ll be punished for.
You clearly blame Milton Friedman.
I blame a political class with no morals or consequences for betraying their electorate. They’re at best too lazy to do what they’re paid to do and at worst utterly corrupt. Either way, they’re responsible.
Don't get me wrong, I wish they would, I just don't find it's hard to understand why they don't.
You can find similar commitments from other big tech companies like Apple: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/07/apple-commits-to-be-1...
Let’s focus on the lawmakers who are failing us, not the big tech companies who are already doing more than required by law to reduce their footprint.
[1] completely carbon neutral by 2040, carbon-neutral shipments by 2030, 100% renewable power for their operations by 2025, $2 billion pledged for decarbonizing tech, $100 million invested in reforestation https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/.
[2] carbon-neutral by 2050 meets the Paris agreement goal-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7007533/
This is disappointing because in a few years companies will be sustainable on paper. This will make a coordinated effort to fight climate change even harder to achieve.
You can see Amazon not walking the talk on their political lobbying.
I don't know if your conclusions apply to a set of businesses s/Amazon/businesses in a broader sense, but it's hard to see how they apply to Amazon.
But the mistake here (and some other comments) of drawing "lawmakers", "politics", etc as being conceptually distinct from private corporations is particularly absurd from a historical view. The Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment forged political battles with substantial effort, debate, human cost that over centuries invented the concept you take granted as "companies", but which no other human civilization previous would have been familiar with. That there are "companies" at all is political, and so the OP is already pointing to a failure of politics.
Government is just a function of agreed upon values, rules and principles.
It's really a failure of our society. We're all failing.
When you put the blame on big companies, like the person I replied to, that is distancing! Because we cannot influence those decisions.
I'm pretty sure that this is the great filter: a species evolving under the constraints of competition for resources inevitably fails as soon as it steps on the land mine of global dominance.
Joking aside; it's kinda tragic to see this happening. The worst thing about it is the willful blindness of many people that should know it better; we're at the brink of extinction and still people find ways to close their eye and go "lalala".
It's fantastic. As in; beyond believable...
Clarification Edit: I'm not being facetious/snarky. Otherwise I don't understand the downvotes as they don't provide any meaningful feedback in this case. I would appreciate feedback, thanks.
(I do believe in taking care of the environment etc, my line of questioning is mere curiousity, not trying to imply a worsing environment is a good thing.)
Think that the warming you are seeing is a second+ level consequence of our action. We emit GHG, the planet keeps more energy than the one it emits because the excess of GHG, the global average yearly temperature increases. Emitting less GHG will keep increasing that excess of GHG. Emitting zero will keep that excess in its place (because the carbon cycle last around 100 years or more). Doing a massive capture managing to do more carbon capture than what we emit will keep having an excess of GHG until we reach the preindustrial levels. All the way till that fantasy point the global average temperature will keep increasing.
And your emissions are not the main drive of that anymore. We reached already a lot of tipping points that triggered a lot of positive feedback mechanisms. Less ice means less albedo and so getting more heat from the sun. Hotter northern regions are releasing methane that were frozen there for millenia. Forest fires emits even carbon and cause even more heat. And there are several more.
And the problem is not just heat. It is energy to fuel extreme weather events, that happens from the equator to the poles. Is disrupting previously stable climate features that made the world livable as it were for thousands of years, the polar vortex seem to be disrupted, the atlantic ocean current seem to be going in the same direction too.
And we depend on more life, in direct and indirect ways. Agriculture doesn't mix well with extreme weather. We are in one of the biggest extinction events on Earth history. Its just not sustainable in the long term.
Either OP meant the whole world, or the circumstances which are leading to what is happening, which would include "the people who caused it". It would be difficult for the to "thrive in and profit" from it if they "failed to incentivise it's own survival."
And I guess the fund for the magic technology bullet that fixes everything exists too. Not that we have existing technology that would be carbon neutral.
Hey, we need to handle our existing nuclear waste anyway, might as well keep using it.
Not saying we won’t manage it eventually, I just don’t think it’s very likely in Elon Musks lifetime. Perhaps he should start with building a mars colony... here on Earth first. Some kind of habitat dome thing perhaps.
The underlying cause of this in western society is well explained in ‘Voltaire’s Bastards’ by John Ralston Saul. Good reading to understand our collective problem with some ideas on what to do about it. The answer isn’t clear.
I am not remotely religious, but it is a powerful force. Islam is the fastest growing religion, and while that alarms some people, it has a wonderful innovation that I think is key to our survival. Maybe it is from playing too many hours of Civ, but if I was playing with a pending climate catastrophe, I would double down on this:
‘Caring for the environment is an important teaching of Islam. The Qurʾān describes mankind as being stewards of the earth and therefore Muslims must care for the earth. It is our responsibility to care for the earth and environment. The reality of climate change requires us to rethink our lifestyles and actions and we must reflect on how our actions impact our environment. The Qurʾān highlights this point: Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of that which men’s hands have done (Q. 30: 41).‘
You would think that trillion dollar companies like Amazon would care about not being able to operate at all in a few decades.
I get it from behavioral science why it all works like this, but one still wonders if it's the same for every other civilizations out there, if there are any.