Apple’s climate change efforts might be based on misguided idealism

11 years ago

“Under the leadership of Tim Cook, Apple has been a vocal advocate for certain policies, including what the company calls ‘climate change,'” Jim Lynch writes for CIO. “While some have applauded Apple’s commitment to battle global warming, I’m forced to wonder if the company’s efforts aren’t simply misguided.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that Apple is paying attention to the environment and that it’s aware of its own impact on it. But I think that Apple’s climate change efforts might be based on misguided idealism,” Lynch writes. “Before I offer my thoughts about Apple and global warming, here’s a recent story at The Verge that sums up the company’s perspective on the issue: ‘Apple is continuing to take a strong stance against climate change, writing in its newly released 2015 Environmental Responsibility Report, ‘We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it.””

“I think it’s worth considering if Apple’s take on climate change or global warming or whatever you want to call it is a worthwhile expenditure of the company’s resources,” Lynch writes. “I think the company means well, and I’m glad they care about the environment. But I also think they are contributing to the unnecessarily alarmist misinformation that gets pushed on the public by the media… As with the global cooling farce that happened in the 70s, I think we will eventually see that global warming is just as much of an overhyped bit of nonsense. When that finally happens, I think Apple will unfortunately end up with egg on its face if the company doesn’t promptly tone down its rhetoric on the issue.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Forget about “climate change” and just look at the dollars and cents: Apple is reportedly making money on these projects over the long term while also reaping positive feelings about their brand right now. See, everybody, “Apple cares.”

Regardless of whether “global warming/cooling/whatever” turns out to be a sham or a significant long-term event that humans can affect or over which humans have little or no control, or something else entirely, Apple won’t have egg on its face for generating electricity from the sun rather than from other, less environmentally-friendly, less healthy means.

That said, it wouldn’t hurt Apple in the least to tone done the absolutist rhetoric (i.e. “the time for talk is over” and “we don’t want to debate”) as that sort of imperiousness just irks unnecessarily while setting the company up for potential ridicule regardless of how you calculate the odds.