Apple: “We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it.” April 21, 2015

As the Koch funded climate denial group ALEC found out, if you literally lie about the greatest threat to life on this planet, companies are now going to be fleeing from you.

No large company is going to want to be seen on the wrong side of this issue.

Responding to Climate Change:

Investors representing nearly US$2 trillion in assets have written urging the US financial regulator to act on climate risk. Global efforts to slash greenhouse gases could hit fossil fuel demand and therefore the value of oil and gas companies, 59 institutions warned. Shareholder activists succeeded on Thursday in persuading oil major BP to disclose how its portfolio could be affected by climate regulations. But Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Canadian Natural Resources are failing to seriously analyse the threat, according to the letter coordinated by advocacy group Ceres. It called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to demand better reporting throughout the industry. “By failing to hold the fossil fuel industry to the same disclosure standards as other industries, the SEC is allowing the sector to hide its true level of risk,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres – See more at: http://www.rtcc.org/2015/04/17/investors-urge-us-regulator-to-force-action-on-climate-change-risk/#sthash.J1i0iXu5.dpuf

Huffington Post:

Apple on Monday released its 2015 Environmental Responsibility Report, underscoring its commitment to lessening the environmental impact of its products and operations. “We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it,” the company stated in the report. But Apple still has a long way to go when it comes to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, cutting down on paper use and eliminating the amount of toxic substances in its devices. The report said Apple’s overall carbon footprint increased between 2013 and 2014, in part because the company is selling more products. It also noted that Apple is working to make products less carbon-intensive to manufacture and use. The report went on to say that renewable resources power 100 percent of Apple’s data centers, corporate offices and retail stores in the United States, as well as 87 percent of its global facilities. In addition, all of its U.S. data centers have been powered with 100 percent renewable energy since 2012. Yet the report says that the energy used by Apple facilities in the 2014 fiscal year represented only 1 percent of the company’s carbon footprint. By contrast, manufacturing accounted for a whopping 73 percent of the company’s 34.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. While the new report doesn’t address the volume of paper products used for packaging, it does says that during the 2014 fiscal year, “over 80 percent of the paper and corrugated cardboard used in our iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, and Apple TV packaging came from certified sustainably managed forests, controlled wood sources, or recycled materials.”