Exxon, Apple and other corporate giants will have to disclose all their emissions under California’s new climate laws – that will have a global impact::California is the world’s fifth-largest economy. Laws tested there often spread across the U.S. and around the world.
Will it have an impact? Exxon says, “our emissions were ___ amount of CO2, ___ amount of methane, [etc.]” Then they say, “by the way, we couldn’t give less of a shit” and go back to business as usual. How does this change anything they do? As the article even says, plenty of them are voluntarily reporting it anyway.
More importantly, what are the requirements for accuracy and what are the penalties for wild guestimations or falsifying data?
If everything else in the US is any indication, Exxon will be like “we emit 2 carbons” and the government will respond with “here’s a fine that’s 1/10th the expense you would incur if you made a legitimate attempt at reporting your emissions”… “and don’t you forget it!!”
Exxon won’t give a shit, but apple probably will. Half of their marketing is greenwashing, so they’ll have to think of something new.
Maybe some people will also understand that corporations aren’t their friends, but with apple users that’s a rather slim chance.
Check this, I worked at Apple on the bar for 3 years and every year we would wear blue for most the year, red for Christmas and get this, green for Earth day.
So they would ship shirts around the world every year for these. You could use your old ones but they always gave more.
I brought it up to a manager that the green one is laughable as we are celebrating earth day by shipping green shirts around. I’m pretty sure they stopped it now but it always struck me as insane.
I also, had some discussions about how well we got treated in the UK but my American counterparts not so much and my Asian counterparts even less, but I always got the we don’t control the Foxconn stuff etc.
It’s all words really and their bottom line is making money.
Apple is already disclosing that information. So is Google. No one seems to give a shit.
Not saying we shouldn’t pressure corporations to do better, but one of the unintended consequences here is that Apple’s green initiatives and disclosures are in part simply a product of tight vertical integration. At a certain point pollution is simply resources not optimally exploited and extracted, and those inefficiencies are lost profits. Meeting environmental goals at that point will be easier for large conglomerates than for smaller players, thus encouraging the rise of more conglomerates.
Just another opportunity for green washing. The Exxon report should just be a letter-headed page saying “yes”.
I assume your username is a Simpson’s reference?
We would then have data that we didn’t have before, which enables legislation. This is how democracy works in this world.
Do you think Exxon reports? Truthfully?
It will have an impact on investment. Environmental ratings are already starting to impact how easily companies can acquire funding for growth.
Which is why big oil is lobbying so hard against ESG data now.