Apple, which made news in environmental circles recently with its new approach to environmental accounting, took another high-profile action on climate change Monday when it resigned its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the group’s environmental policies.
Apple became just the latest defection from the business lobbying group. And given that Apple’s every move generates buckets of publicity, the action may serve to thrust the climate change issue into greater focus for the buying public.
Last month three big power utilities — Exelon Corp, PG&E Corp and PNM Resources Inc — said they were leaving the Chamber over its stance on global warming legislation. Nike last week resigned from the board of the Chamber, which has pushed for public hearings to challenge the scientific evidence of manmade climate change.
Apple made its resignation in a letter to Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue:
“As a company, we are working hard to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions … We have undertaken this unilaterally and without government mandate, because we believe it is the right thing to do. For those companies who cannot or will not do the same, Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort.”
“We would prefer that the Chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a constructive role in addressing the climate crisis. However, because the Chamber’s position differs so sharply with Apple’s, we have decided to resign our membership effective immediately.”
The iPhone and Mac maker last month unveiled a new method for assessing its environmental impact. It now calculates what it calls its entire carbon footprint-–from design to production to the emissions generated by those who use it products.
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K3n, calling me a liar is tentamount to stupidity!
Just GOOGLE my first sentence:
“The average temperature of the earth’s surface has risen approx: 0.74°C on a global basis”
and see what comes up!
- Posted by Jean HofstéThere are some good points on this board but there are also a lot of misconceptions and broken arguments. The first thing I would like to point out is that the average temperature of the globe and its standard deviations is not a very useful metric in defining the problem of global warming. A previous post labeled the term \”Global Warming\” as misnomer and I agree. A more useful term is \”Climate Change\” or \”Climate Shift\”. Regions that were cold could be become very hot and at the same time hot regions could cool down and the average temperature would not change a bit. However, the impact on society would be tremendous. Civilizations developed in a certain climate with certain food and water supplies would be put in disastrous situations.
- Posted by EnlightenedWhich brings me to my next point. Climate change is by definition a man-made problem. It is man-made in the sense that the problem does not intrinsically lie in that the climate is in fact changing but rather in mans ability to cope with it. Critics of climate change point to the extreme climate fluctuations in the earth\’s history, often and loudly, and they are not wrong. But the point is that these fluctuations occurred before there were 6 billion people on the planet. Even the fluctuations in human history have been relatively easier to bear. Humans coming out of the ice age just moved to new areas to find food once migration routes changed, but its much easier to move a tribe than it is to move New York City. As humans we have developed an incredibly complex civilization which currently does not have the capacity to cope with the most extreme consequences of climate change.
My last point is to those who think that our emission of carbon dioxide has a tiny effect on the climate of the earth. What utter nonsense, but for arguments sake lets assume that its true. The problem with this argument lies in the fact that weather and climate are case studies for the concept of a chaotic system. Chaos is defined as extreme sensitivity to infinitesimally small changes in the initial conditions. I hate to break it to you but the carbon footprint on human civilization is far from infinitesimally small.