No Apple Tax for environmental efforts applied to users, says Lisa Jackson
Apple's Lisa Jackson says that buyers do not pay an Apple tax in order to fund the company's work fighting climate change and making its products greener.
Lisa Jackson
While some reports say Apple's environmental efforts far exceed those of its rivals, others accuse the firm of "greenwashing" its figures to look better. Apple itself is calling on its suppliers to decarbonize by 2030, and now it is saying that this work does not make its iPhone more expensive.
"We don't factor in a premium to take care of the work that we're doing," Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, told Reuters.
"I want to do it in a way that other businesses can say this isn't because they're Apple," she said. "It's because they understand how to make clean energy and (recyclable) materials work in the manufacturing chains and drive emissions down."
Jackson says that this is a direct instruction from Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook has been repeatedly stressing that its Apple Watch is the firm's first carbon-neutral product.
But Jackson, while praising the 78% reduction in its carbon footprint for the Apple Watch, notes that beyond buying carbon offsets, the firm still can't reduce what Reuters calls almost 8 kilograms of emissions from each device including transportation and logistical considerations.
"We just right now don't have the ability to take care" of that, says Jackson. But she does see Apple making an increasing impact. "That's somewhere Apple can invest and then help to scale and bring (other) businesses along."
Speaking at the Reuters Next Conference in New York, Jackson also talked about the practical difficulties of moving to carbon-neutral devices.
"Even making the windmills to generate renewable energy has a carbon footprint," she said, "and so you have to account for that."
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
The Chinese government is handing out massive fines to industries that are producing too much pollution so it’s in the companies’ best interests to reduce pollution. Apple will be adding to that incentive.
That leaves the real problem being European and American productions.
It's worth repeating: the question assumes that it is more expensive to be carbon neutral. That's flat out false for many many things. For example, residential solar PV and batteries. If you live in the same house for 10-20 years, having solar PV and batteries will save you thousands of dollars over that 20 year time span versus doing nothing. Having an EV will save you thousands of dollars in the long run because it is less expensive to drive and maintain.
Heck, just doing the simple thing of just making sure your doors and windows have proper weather stripping could save you hundreds of dollars.
You have to remember that this notion of carbon emissions going hand-in-hand with economic development is flat out false. Carbon neutral means that method of production of energy comes from carbon neutral energy sources, rather than fossil fuels. So, there really isn't a change in how you live. A few plus and minuses here and there, but really no change on personal level. Society and world wide, there will be huge benefits, and that would spread across everyone in small ways.
There will be a big change in who gets the money. Fossil fuel companies lose and renewable energy companies win. Like when the iPhone was announced in 2007, everyone could see that the smartphone incumbents at the time (Nokia, RIM, Palm, Sony, LG, MS) needed to change, and change immediately as development times were about 3 years minimum. Virtually all these companies didn't want to believe and continued apace. They didn't want to change.
It is the same with fossil fuel companies. They are doing everything in there power, and they have a lot given that "petrol state" is in our vocabulary, to prevent the change. So, this notion that we need fossil fuels to industrialize or develop an economy just plays into that, but it is definitely wrong. We will continue apace with technological and economic development with renewables.
It's not a homogenous world and there are many who prefer it not to happen. Texas citizens just voted to "approve" subsidizing the building of natural gas plants. The language for the proposition was basically a lie, and my bet is 90% of the voters did not know what they were voting for. With its approval, Texas will provide natural gas plant companies low interest loans - that they don't have to pay back - and grants, to build more gas plants. It's just a subsidy the Texas gov't is giving to natural gas company owners. Whether more will be built, who knows. Even with that, renewable power capacity additions in Texas will be 3x that of natural gas. There will probably be more grid battery capacity additions than new natural gas plants capacity in ERCOT.
China and India having milquetoast unambitious transition plans is a problem, but they know more than most that they have to switch if they care about their future at all. Why aren't they moving faster? Well, there are some entities that don't care, some that are beholden to fossil fuel companies, some that it is manageable, hence they continue to build coal plants, even when it costs them more. They will turn the corner soon.
Even Germany, who are as pro-renewable as possible, made a worst possible decision by shutting down nuclear power plants and restarting coal plants. Who knows what is wrong with Japan.
So, fits and starts. Lots of fighting, but the economics for renewable power is now inevitable. Solar+battery will be pretty much it after a while. They have an economies of scale advantage that they can ride, driving down prices further. Another 10x drop in costs may even be possible.
Water in the creek behind your house is not a problem. Excessive water in the creek behind your house can become a serious problem. Water brings life. Fill your living room and your lungs with it, and it could take life away. See how that works?
CO2 in the air acts like a blanket, letting heat from the sun in, and then reflects it back down when it radiates back from below, holding it in. A certain amount of that is a good thing. It's why we don't have daily temperature swings like on the surface of Mars. Carbon cycles through the air, flora and fauna every moment of every day. Some of that carbon is more permanently captured in flora and fauna and stays there when those things die, and then gets buried under silt as rivers wash out into the sea. Over millions of years, those things are buried deeper, compressed, and turned into crude oil, coal and natural gas. In the last 150 yeas, humans have dug and drilled vast quantities of those things that had been slowly pulled out of the system for hundreds of millions of years, lit them on fire and pumped the resulting CO2 back up into the air. The excess carbon dioxide makes the CO2 blanket denser, causing it to retain more heat energy in the atmosphere. That extra heat energy drives climate change. It strengthens weather systems making them more violent in some cases, producing more precipitation in some cases, and shifts normal weather and climactic patterns out of place. There is no remaining debate, outside of disinformation campaigns driven by fossil fuel interests, that human use of fossil fuels is driving climate change. There just isn't.
There is no getting around that. No hoping it cannot be, no waving a magic wand. These initiatives do cost money. And it is impossible to argue those costs aren’t passed on given Apple’s margins compared with the rest of the industry.
That an Apple spokesman would make such a claim offends me. And Lisa Jackson can’t do a Jedi mind trick.
Have Apple's prices increased? If so, how do you know the price increase isn't due to some other thing?
Apple can claim that they are not explicitly tacking on the costs associated with trying to achieve carbon neutrality as an added line item on purchase receipts, as is done with many taxes, surcharges, mandatory tips, and additional dealer profit charges for products/services in high demand. But those costs are already factored into their cost of doing business which must be offset by the price we pay for products.
Personally I’m okay with what they are doing, just like I’m okay with massively wealthy people like Warren Buffet pledging to give most of their wealth away rather than sequestering it for the benefit of their silver spoon babies. Anything that breaks the cycle of short term thinking, siloed mentality, “it’s all about me,” and “let’s burn it all down” ways of living one’s minuscule time on earth is good, where “good” is better than doing nothing. Doing something that has a measurable positive impact on people other than yourself or your tribe is worth doing, even if the overall impact is relatively small. There are way more than enough people worldwide taking the exact opposite approach than what Apple is taking.
To be in a position to make a positive impact and do nothing, or deflect or try to justify your inaction based on what other people or other countries are doing, like building more coal plants, is a cop out. Apple can’t stop China or Russia or Brazil or any other country from doing whatever they want to do with no regard for anyone other than themselves. But Apple can control what Apple does. Apple is in a position to take action, so they are taking action, detractors and nit pickers be damned. Good for them and good for our children and grandchildren.
it is just that saying these expenditures are not costing money gets up my nose.
Taxes come in many forms
Someone’s head should roll for that decision