Tim Cook says businesses should tackle climate change & equal rights proactively, not wait for gover
Large corporations should actively wield their power and influence for the good of the planet and its people, rather than sitting back and waiting for governments to take the lead, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a speech at Italy's top business school on Tuesday.
Cook addressed the topics of climate change and equal rights while speaking at Bocconi University, where he said that the business community shares the responsibility of finding solutions for such problems. In select quotes taken by the Associated Press, Cook made it clear he felt it was not enough for companies to simply let the government alone address such problems.
"The challenges are simply too great for businesses to stand on the sideline," Cook said, noting that climate change affects supply chains, energy crises and economic stability at a global level.
In the speech, Cook cited two two newclean energy programs Apple launched last month with the goal of reducing the carbon footprint of its Chinese manufacturing partners. The two programs are said to save over 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution, roughly equivalent to taking 4 million passenger vehicles off the road for a year.
Cook said the programs, which seek to produce 2.2 gigawatts of solar power and other renewable energy by 2020 is enough to supply power to 2.6 million households in China. Longer term, the company wants to run worldwide entirely on renewable energy and Cook says they're 87 percent of the way towards that goal.
Ironically, one thing that might be holding back more progress in this area is the continued uptick in overall Apple device sales. A report earlier this year cited an increase of 400,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in fiscal year 2014 versus the previous year, with total manufacturing emissions actually increasing by 5 percent.
Still, the company is committed to continued progress in this area.
"We don't want to debate climate change," the company said at the time. "We want to stop it."
As CEO of the world's most valuable company, Cook has used his considerable influence to stump for a number of issues impacting global society, including topics like user privacy, as well as equal protection for the LGBT community. He touched on equal rights again on Tuesday, saying that Apple hires employees regardless of their race, appearance, sexual orientation, gender identification, or religion.
Cook addressed the topics of climate change and equal rights while speaking at Bocconi University, where he said that the business community shares the responsibility of finding solutions for such problems. In select quotes taken by the Associated Press, Cook made it clear he felt it was not enough for companies to simply let the government alone address such problems.
"The challenges are simply too great for businesses to stand on the sideline," Cook said, noting that climate change affects supply chains, energy crises and economic stability at a global level.
In the speech, Cook cited two two newclean energy programs Apple launched last month with the goal of reducing the carbon footprint of its Chinese manufacturing partners. The two programs are said to save over 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution, roughly equivalent to taking 4 million passenger vehicles off the road for a year.
Cook said the programs, which seek to produce 2.2 gigawatts of solar power and other renewable energy by 2020 is enough to supply power to 2.6 million households in China. Longer term, the company wants to run worldwide entirely on renewable energy and Cook says they're 87 percent of the way towards that goal.
Ironically, one thing that might be holding back more progress in this area is the continued uptick in overall Apple device sales. A report earlier this year cited an increase of 400,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in fiscal year 2014 versus the previous year, with total manufacturing emissions actually increasing by 5 percent.
Still, the company is committed to continued progress in this area.
"We don't want to debate climate change," the company said at the time. "We want to stop it."
As CEO of the world's most valuable company, Cook has used his considerable influence to stump for a number of issues impacting global society, including topics like user privacy, as well as equal protection for the LGBT community. He touched on equal rights again on Tuesday, saying that Apple hires employees regardless of their race, appearance, sexual orientation, gender identification, or religion.
Comments
"We don't want to debate climate change," the company said at the time. "We want to stop it."
Beautiful that Cook is leading the way, being so public about it. Hopefully he can convince all the big companies.
Spoken like the world's most influential corporation. Also, have to look for that quote where he says that the problems are too large for governments alone. Companies have to lead as well.
Unmentioned is the underlying assumption that all this will be better for customers and Apple's business in the future. Of course they can't draw that conclusion explicitly.
We don't want to debate it...because we'd lose and we know it.
The world has much greater problems to face than Al Gore's latest money making scheme.
On the one hand, fewer glaciers and polar bears means less demand for smartphone photography.
On the other hand, extreme storms, flooding, wildfires, starvation and refugees and scarcity wars means greater demand for smartphone emergency calls.
"We don't want to debate climate change," the company said at the time. "We want to stop it."
Beautiful that Cook is leading the way, being so public about it. Hopefully he can convince all the big companies.
Spoken like a true leader.
So what melted the 2 mile thick (10,000 plus feet) glaciers covering half of North America just 18,000 years ago?
The problem with this or of thinking is that the climate changes and has changed dramatically even without the aid of man. Nobody is seriously denying the the climate changes, what is at issue here is mans contribution to that climate change and the proper way to address that contribution. For example wasting massive amounts of land mass, for solar panel collection of electrical energy, is absolute stupidity.
So what melted the 2 mile thick (10,000 plus feet) glaciers covering half of North America just 18,000 years ago?
Dinosaur SUV's of course.
The climate is always changing and it is not changing more rapidly now than it did before man came along.
In the 1970s, people who sought control and power scared everyone over global cooling and the next ice age. I remember being taught about it in school.
Then all of a sudden... Oops.
It stopped cooling.
Then more people seeking power and control (including some of the same ones that warned about cooling) began warning us about global warming. Thankfully just enough people were skeptical that it took too long for anything to be taxed or controlled. Why? Because it stopped warming.
That's when they had a brilliant idea and changed the name to climate change.
But the power hungry are getting desperate because even more people are seeing through the lies.
Historical data and records, and studies and reports are easier than ever to find on the internet. which shows that the past was worse than the present.
So what have we seen lately? The Earth is greening, including Africa and the Sahara. Crop yields are up. No trend in the number or severity of floods or droughts. Atlantic hurricanes at record lows. Number of violent tornado numbers down since the 1970s. Past few years have had tornado numbers well below normal.
NASA reports that Antarctica is gaining ice and has been for some time. Danish Meteorological Institute reports that the Arctic is gaining sea ice at record rates and that the amount of multi year ice is increasing. Plus Greenland is gaining ice.
The satellite based temperature record shows no increase in the warming anoamly for 18 years and 9 months.
They said it would take 15 years of no warming to prove their theories wrong.
Well it has been over 15 years and they still won't admit they are wrong. Instead they have made up over 60 excuses for the lack of warming instead of admitting that their computer models are junk.
But we cover the earth with expensive, inefficient, unreliable solar panels and wind turbines, eating up land like there was no tomorrow and making energy too expensive for the poor to afford it.
Countries raise their standards of living through the use of affordable and available energy. The pwoer hungry seeking control wish to keep people poor, ill and hungry.
Countries raise their standards of living through the use of affordable and available energy. The pwoer hungry seeking control wish to keep people poor, ill and hungry.
Yep. People don't realize just how close we are to eliminating true poverty in the world. Do countries have a long way to go? Of course, but they'll get there if they're allowed to. Fossil fuels are a huge part of that elimination of poverty.
I haven't decided if Cook is misguided or corrupt/evil, I hope it's the former. People like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bob Iger are definitely the latter.
In a nut shell this is the problem with much of the global warming crowd, they deny that the climate on this planet has been changing for millennia. Frankly changing well before man had any significant impact at all on climate. Beyond all of that there is plenty of data to indicate that the climate change that is being described by scientist right now is baloney. If any thing the amount of ice on the planet is increasing.
Frankly I have more respect for the scientist currently suggestion that we could be headed for a mini ice age in a decade or so. At least their projections indicate some respect for the importance of the sun in the whole discussion.
"We don't want to debate climate change. We want to stop it."
Spoken like the world's most influential corporation. Also, have to look for that quote where he says that the problems are too large for governments alone. Companies have to lead as well.
Unmentioned is the underlying assumption that all this will be better for customers and Apple's business in the future. Of course they can't draw that conclusion explicitly.
What assumption? Climate change is now guaranteed to kill the Great Barrier Reef even if everything that can be done is -- time has run out for that wonder of nature. 2C only increase in average temperature along with massive droughts in some parts of the world (California?) and flooding in others (west Indian ocean) and that is now not even the best case scenario. The dice is now loaded for the normalization of extreme weather events. Apple and its customers will not be the only victim.
Honestly if Tim cook really wanted to help the world he would be supporting the various techniques being studied to bring low cost nuclear fusion on line as a power source. In the end it tis the only way to save the earth and keep it a livable and natural place to be. There simply isn't enough land mass to devote to solar farms, especially considering that the human population continues to grow.
Not only is Apple doing the right thing on this issue, they are also making an investment in their brand. Aside from some gullible hicks in the US who are easy marks for oil industry propaganda, most people in the world take global warming seriously.
A closely related issue is air pollutants that cause lung disease. In countries like China and India clean air is an increasingly important issue. If Apple becomes closely associated with clean air it will be a very positive thing for the Apple brand in those countries.
In a nut shell this is the problem with much of the global warming crowd, they deny that the climate on this planet has been changing for millennia. Frankly changing well before man had any significant impact at all on climate. Beyond all of that there is plenty of data to indicate that the climate change that is being described by scientist right now is baloney. If any thing the amount of ice on the planet is increasing.
Frankly I have more respect for the scientist currently suggestion that we could be headed for a mini ice age in a decade or so. At least their projections indicate some respect for the importance of the sun in the whole discussion.
Except for asteroid impacts and massive volcano eruptions which always cause mass extinctions, gradual climate change over 10s of thousands of years allow biological systems to evolve. Sudden changes cause massive extinctions. Sudden climate changes is happening now caused by human emissions of carbon and toxins in the environment == massive extinctions.
Take off the tin-foil hat.
Dinosaur SUV's of course.
I was thinking perhaps bison farts! Must have been millions of them roamin' around pre-Colombus times!
Why fusion? Why not just keep burning fossil fuels? I mean if the whole global warming thing is a hoax by that evil genius Al Gore, then why not just keep extracting and burning?
Aside from some gullible hicks in the US who are easy marks for oil industry propaganda,
So the majority of Scientists who have taken a position on this issue are gullible hicks? Cause the scientists aren't supporting the AGW hypothesis. Which would be stupid if they did because it was disproven in the 1980s.
Climate Change is a political movement, not a scientific one. The science is settled-- the earth is getting cooler while CO2 goes higher.
So what melted the 2 mile thick (10,000 plus feet) glaciers covering half of North America just 18,000 years ago?
Al Gore's pontificating. Yes, he is that old.
Climate change is now guaranteed to kill the Great Barrier Reef
You must be pretty gullible.
Now i do believe that heat in the oceans plays a big role in the intensity of the storms that can come off them. If we have seen nothing in the way of more storms and storms of greater intensity then obviously there is not enough extra energy going into the oceans to suggest that global warming is happening. In other words there would be a real effect, that can be seen, if in fact planetary temperatures where rising.
As for California, come on, anybody with a bit of education knows the most of California is naturally a desert. Saying that there is a drought in the desert is well less that impressive display of intelligence. This is totally BS, simply because we would have already have seen such event if there was a real increase in thermal energy going into the oceans. Even after the media tries to blow the size of of this seasons storms out of proportion to reality, the actual impacts of the storms indicates far less intensity that was alluded to. In other words we are seining bold faced lies hit with the hard reality of truth.
Beyond all of that one can go back through the history of this country and find that large storms have in fact hit the eastern coast and the Caribbean at regular intervals.