Discussion for article #235469
It would help if the big dogs like Apple take the word âdebateâ out of the climate change equation. There is no longer any debate.
While ALEC has said that climate change is a âhistorical phenomenonâ itâs also signaled opposition to moves to fight climate charge.
Spell check fail
This is really the right way to deal with issues like this. You donât have to include the toddlerâs opinion on anything when making decisions. Sadly, the GOP, said toddlers, are actually part of the governing process in this country. So sad.
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Isnât that exactly what they did, even in the line TPM pulled as the headline quote?
If there is a legitimate debate about if something exists or not you canât skip ahead to âstoppingâ it.
I thin, first, Apple has been very environmentally conscious for the past several years. Al Gore taking a position on its Board of Directors both reflected and spurred that movement towards a lower environmental (not just carbon, but several other rare metals and toxic compounds).
That said, Apple is really not unique here. As the article mentioned, other technology companies in the US have spoken up in similar terms. Generally speaking, large corporations are largely not the problem with regards to climate change. They want to sell products that customers will buy. What does impact those large corporations is an uneven playing field - if Apple spends more to come up with processes and plants which have a lower resource footprint, but they are competing in the marketplace with another company which just takes the cheaper route, and the two products are just as good so far as the consumer can tell, that does damage Appleâs bottom line. The solution for this is not less regulation, but more. Regulations requiring products sold in the US (hoping the rest of the world follows suit) have a certain level of environmental accuities makes for a level playing field - and actually adds a barrier to entry which helps the larger corporations anyway.
The large corporations which are âthe enemyâ here are those which are inexorably tied to a horrendous resource footprint - those who dig or pump those resources from the ground and have large processing apparatus investments and distribution apparatus investments. They HATE regulation of any sort.
All that said, the place where Apple is immediately relevant here is that it is the only company in the 21st century to have more market capital than any of the dead-dinosaur-mining companies. Thereâs something to a really big corporation actively standing up counter to those other mega-corps who have long been standing in the way of progress.
Sorry ⌠âwould helpâ was a bad choice of words ⌠I should have said either âdoes helpâ or âwill helpâ.
The debate on the fact of climate change is over and itâs time to act.
What a load of bull$#!T â If they were sincere, they wouldnât be making ISO products that are not upgradable with a short lifespan and a $H!T-time to repair (or just replace the battery) â probably wouldnât be making all their $#!T in a unhealthy @$$ place like China either.
Climate deniers insist on continuing the pretense that thereâs still a debate. The only substantial debates on the general science of global warming in 2015 concern how fast the Arctic will melt, how fast the oceans will rise, where the droughts will occur, how erratic the northern jet stream will be, how acidic the oceans will become and how fast global temperatures will rise. There are a lot of technical issues such as how the oceans will release heat that has been absorbed at different depths in recent years, how ocean currents will change and how quickly various ice dams in Greenland and Antarctica are likely to break down and allow glaciers to flow more rapidly.
There is still real debate on the best ways to reduce carbon emissions. But solar and wind are clearly part of the picture, and working to shut down fossil fuel emissions as soon as economically possible â tomorrow, perhaps? â is the only way to avoid enormous damage. And, incidentally, no country in the world is installing more gigawatts of wind and solar than China which means any American products made in China at least will benefit from the major shift in China. (Apple claimed it was going to make some products in the U.S.; not sure what the status on that is. But thatâs now a different debate; for example, isnât it more energy efficient to make products close to the markets that buy the products? That seems a plausible argument given the sheer weight of wind turbines and solar panels and the energy cost of shipping.)
The whole issue of debating climate and the right response to it has interesting permutations. For example, when reasonable people who take global warming seriously happen to disagree with one another on global warming or alternative energy, a more coherent picture emerges on any given issue. But when deniers present their various arguments, those arguments often become incoherent.
A good example is the so-called warming pause. In 2014, a new global surface temperature record was set. Deniers mock the record by noting that the record was broken âonlyâ by .01 degrees. But if we assume the given numbers are reasonably accurate, it actually takes a huge amount of energy to raise the Earthâs temperature .01 degrees centigrade over the course of a year. And over the course of decades, the temperatures have risen considerably more than .01 degrees. The only feasible mechanism that accounts for the huge increase in heat is the greenhouse effect and that is directly traceable by several measures to carbon emissions.
Yeah. If they donât stop climate change, all that moola they stash away overseas might not float so very well.
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Leaders leadâŚothers, like ALEC for example, want to party like itâs 1999âŚ
Okay, Iâll bite:
How many depressed, oppressed Apple factory workers flinging themselves over the railing to their deaths are required to stop climate change?