Exxon, Apple And Other Corporate Giants Will Have To Disclose All Their Emissions Under California’s New Climate Laws

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This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1471111
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There’s a lot of territory for double counting emissions. Going to be hard to be accurate with estimations.

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Certainly. But getting a start on it now, using guidelines from the voluntary reporting that’s been ramping up, will give the companies and regulators some practical experience and help narrow future improvements as they find what works, and what is not readily measurable, and what adds cost without providing useful information.

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I love it. Get the data. Such as it is. It’s the right idea. Data can be sifted. Lies can be sifted.

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Thanks, I didn’t know about the Carbon Disclosure Project, and am glad that I now do.

Those of here in California are in the process of preparing a homeland for TPM refugees from other parts of the country. Okay, we don’t have “fall colors,” but it really is a great almost-country to live in, which is one of the reasons FOX hates us so much.

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CDP is a nonprofit that surveys companies on behalf of institutional investors about their carbon management and plans to reduce carbon emissions.

A good example of the conservative argument that the free market will respond to need. Compiling emission data is a good start. The problem conservatism missed is government is needed to make sense of the aggregate data and determine national goals with can inform business development.

As President of Exxon, I’m not going to give Chevron data about my operation. And what if I don’t distribute to all fifty states? My data, by itself, is meaningless.

154,000,000 voted in 2020.
143,000,000 may have attend church that month.

Liberal government is the solution.

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What’s with the giant U.S. flag at the refinery in L.A.? Remind the the workers it’s not Mexico or China? Some sort of signal?

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This is all great news. We should have already been doing this but it’s better late than never. The bigger question is, whether or not knowing how much CO2 we’re emitting will cause us to change our habits? I kinda doubt it will but we’ll see.

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Other things California corporations might also disclose,

  • Water use per acre (for agriculture)
  • Percentage of in-state employees paid less than 1/100th of the CEO
  • Amount spent on lobbying and political donations
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In NYC, the electric, natural gas, oil, and steam supplied to every building larger than 25,000 square feet is reported and owners must post the building’s carbon emissions grade in the lobby.

Starting next year, building owners will have to pay annual penalties if their carbon footprint is above a target level based on the building use. The target levels will drop to zero in 2050, and the penalties will increase, so building owners have a lot of motivation to eliminate the use of carbon fuels for heating, lighting, air conditioning, and other purposes and to become more energy efficient.

ETA: Avoiding serious penalties is a big motivation.

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My wife and are planning to be two of those refugees. Here in Pennsylvania, we have a 1 vote majority in the state house and Governor Shapiro holding back a sea of Republican bullshit. CA is our only warm weather option. Thank you for the invitation!

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I assume sequoias do not produce sweet sap that boils down to a tasty syrup, right? You would have stood up when we had various rounds of the Maple Syrup Wars?

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Targeting for the drone swarm that will then provide precise targeting for the ICBM.

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“You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”

I don’t expect this system will be perfect, but we won’t get to a perfect system by doing nothing until perfection arrives.

This is 30 years too late, of course, but that’s no excuse to not do it. That’s just how it goes when you let a handful of fossil barons dictate national policy for generations.

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Apple emissions…

Would that be from fruit fermentation? I mean fermentation is mostly CO2 after all.

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The beer industry needs to be included as the primary result of fermentation is production of carbon dioxide gas.

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Then there’s the methane produced after the beer is consumed.

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I just wish some of this stuff would make sense. Consider all the things we buy in and out of the grocery store that is packaged in plastic, yet I can’t have a plastic bag or a plastic straw??? Why not put some of the responsibility of these companies that use so much plastic packaging? For the record, I bring my own bags, always have, and don’t use straws at all. It just seems in the overall scheme of things one less plastic bag or a straw won’t do as much as can be done in other places.

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Life hack: I like straws, so I bought a set of stainless steel straws. They came with a few pipe cleaners and several colorful rubber sleeves. Been using the same straw since before COVID. Works great even for thick milkshakes.

I would probably not let a very young child use them, for fear of injury.

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I have those. Just got tired of straws period. I use a spoon for a thick shake.

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