Amid the liveliness - threateningly urgent climate crisis , it ’s bad enough to pollute the planet with greenhouse flatulency . But to add insult to hurt , some of the people and firms responsible for that contamination have tried to dress themselves up as climate heroes . You experience the type : the one who spent 2020 hiding behind gentle , Earth - friendly language to enshroud their terra firma - destroying agendas . These are some of the biggest climate grifters of 2020 .
Jeff Bezos and Amazon
Ah , Amazon , a truthful climate sub . Most recently , the companysigned onto a letterdemanding the U.S. rejoin the Paris Climate Accord — not just a bold move , considering Biden ’s already said he would do that . But let ’s be generous : Earlier this year , the company also announcedshiny new commitmentsto phase out its atomic number 6 pollution andponied up $ 2 billionfor what ’s essentially a neat Energy Department speculation cap effort . Its founder , Jeff Bezos , started a$10 billion climate fund , which wouldvirtually doublethe amount American philanthropists spend on mood efforts . It even nominate ahockey arenathe “ Climate Pledge Arena . ” Wow !
Here ’s the thing , though : these efforts are pretty garbage . For one matter , while Amazon and Bezos boast about how sustainable they are , Amazon is retain tohelp oil and gas companiesmore efficiently extract fossil fuels with its technology .
Bezos ’ clime fund is debatable , too . As Iwrote back in February , we should n’t be relying on billionaires to situate the clime for us . They should just compensate their taxes so we can democratically plow climate change . Meanwhile , the company ’s venture Washington fund is snuff it to fellowship thatmight do some good things , but those moonshots could end up sequestering more wealth in a few manus . Ultimately , substantial clime military action requires ending the fogey fuel manufacture , but since Amazon does business with those firms , it ’s pretty improbable that anything its beginner assign money into will race counter to the interest group of the fossil oil and gas industry .
Congrats to Elon Musk, one of 2020’s top environmental grifters.Photo: Britta Pederson (Getty Images)
Amazon is also in thetop 200 most polluting firmsin the world , but you ’d never know that from register one of its public press releases . And when its employee have seek to point out that contradiction in terms , Amazon has been extraordinarilyhostiletoward them . Please take money and great power away from this climate defrauder .
https://gizmodo.com/climate-polluters-write-a-letter-asking-to-be-lightly-r-1845800033
ExxonMobil
Exxon ’s have a no - good year . This autumn , Chevron overtookExxon as the big energy troupe in the U.S. shortly after , Exxon analystssaidit was facing financial losses for the third one-fourth in a dustup , and leaked documents show that analyst reckon itmay never recoverfrom the damage wrought by the covid-19 oil colour smash . It almost feels wrong to kick the company while it ’s down , but frankly , they merit it . The firm hasprotected its shareholderswhile cutting its work force .
It is true that , for the first time , the companyacknowledgedthis year that “ the risk of clime change is real ” and said it is “ committed to being part of the solution . It evenpromisedto cut its methane emission and reduce its gun burning . But the company ’s actions tell a wholly different story .
intimate documentsleaked in Octobershowed that in the next five years , the oil colossus design to up its carbon pollution by 17 % . The additional pollution would be equivalent to the annual discharge of all of Greece . Exxon ’s 2020grant - making reportalso demonstrate that it give $ 690,000 to eight clime science denier radical in 2019 , just a 10 percentage drib from 2018 . The right amount of donation should , of class , be $ 0 .
Of course , no oil color society is a last - trade good for the climate — fossil fuels are warm the satellite in the first place . But even as far as energy majors go , Exxon sucks . ASeptember studyshowed that its climate plans were among the worst of any major fossil fuel house .
“ ExxonMobil ’s burden business is drilling , digging , and sell the fossil oil and gas that is causing the mood crisis — and there are no signs that the caller ’s leadership has any plan to change this any time shortly , ” David Tong , senior campaigner in the energy transitions and futures team at Oil Change International who was an writer on that news report , said . None of the oil party occur nigh to meeting the destination of the Paris Agreement , but as Tong says , “ ExxonMobil was [ among ] the bad of a bad cluster . ”
Coca-Cola
Coca - Cola is an environmental nightmare . It churns out some3.3 million tonsof fictile packaging per year , theproductionanddisposalof which both put C of million of loads of major planet - warming and health - threatening befoulment into the atmosphere and in waterways around the world . But this year , it tried hard to cover up for that fact .
At the start of 2020 at the World Economic Forum — perhaps theleading venuefor clime grifts — the troupe ’s sustainability chiefsaidthat it will persist in to trade its products in exclusive - use plastic containers . Rather than let in that decision is to preserve their business model , dude had the temerity to say that it was because people just loooove charge card , despite the fact consumer everywhere are actuallyincreasinglydemandingcompanies move away from the material .
Since then , Coca Cola has been gruelling at body of work on the half - measures . It boasted that it rolled out100 % recycled credit card packagingin 18 market place globally andswitch to newspaper holdersfor cans and bottle in all EU markets and Switzerland by 2022 . That ’s all nice , but it does n’t get to the magnetic core problem : The man just ca n’t address any more charge plate .
“ The company is still increasing the number of plastic bottles it give rise , at a time when the science is clearer than ever that we must move off from individual - use charge card to protect the health of our ocean and our communities , ” John Hocevar , ocean campaign director at environmental protagonism arrangement Greenpeace USA , pen in an email . “ Coke produce about 110 billion charge card bottle a year , all designed to be used for a few min and then discard . ”
Most of those moldable bottles are tossed into incinerators or landfills , which produce planet - thawing and health - threatening emissions . Those that do n’t get landfilled or glow up often end up as litter anywhere from the side of the highway to the midriff of the sea . In December , Coca - Cola was appoint the existence ’s most charge card - contaminate firebrand for thethird year in a rowin an audited account led by the Break Free From Plastic coalition . For the audited account , the group counted and documented the brand on fictile waste product found in communities across the globe . Of the 346,494 composition of plastic from 55 nation they collected , they find out 13,834 branded Coca - Cola plastics in 51 nation , which is more plastic than the next two top global polluters combine .
This model is the reason the caller has grade as the satellite ’s bad shaping polluter for three long time in a words in audits of trash hoard from beaches and communities around the creation . As of last October , Coke had about 9 % recycled content in their charge card bottles , and that figure does not come out to have changed much since then . Even for plastic nursing bottle that do get recycled , it is just a brief break on the fashion to being dumped or burn . Single - economic consumption credit card are very rarely reuse more than once .
conservationist are contend intemperately to rein in Coke ’s plastic befoulment . In February , environmentalists sued it , along with other major plastic defiler like Pepsi and Nestlé , in Leslie Townes Hope that a court will order those companies to pay up to clean up polluted areas and to blockade labelling products as “ reclaimable ” since many are not in reality recycle .
Tesla and Elon Musk
Tesla has a green vibration thanks to create solar panels and galvanising vehicles . But that does n’t make it an environmentally friendly company . In fact , it ’s the definition of a climate grifter .
To be clear , we absolutely need sporty mogul . But we need to be heedful that producing itdoesn’t harm biodiversityor mass , and Tesla simply has n’t been doing its due industriousness . A2016 Washington Post storyfound that Tesla ’s supply Ernst Boris Chain relies on polluting source of graphite from China and Li and Co mine in Argentina and the Democratic Republic of Congo , severally , that have both been accuse of horrific human rightfulness and labor abuses . That is not a sustainable room to run away a party .
Then there ’s electric vehicles . Yes , EVs are honest for the satellite than traditional diesel gondola . But they still run on the grid , the immense bulk of which still run on fossil fuels . So the most sustainable way to use EV technology would be for public transit , to turn down the amount of energy necessary for each trip .
Musk is not down with public transit . He has , in fact , criticized it . Sure , Tesla is developing something that looks like public transportation : It ’s tunnelgoes a unretentive aloofness under Los Angeles . The caller receive almost $ 50 million to bring about it . But the matter is plan for cars , meaning it ’s fundamentally further people to drive instead of taking a more planet - friendly coach or train .
By promote the use of personal vehicle , Musk is also implicitly endorsing making more roads to beat back those cars on . And studies show that when you build new road , mass will meet them . That will create more emissions of major planet - warm up carbon and air defilement from cars . inquiry also shew thatroads themselves produce strain pollution , so this is doubly big .
Then there ’s the question of Tesla ’s awful treatment of doer . Earlier this year , Muskdefied lockdown ordersto keep Tesla factories open amid the rapid spread head of covid-19 . The business firm also has a account ofabove - average rates of workplace injuriesand though itsaysit ’s clean up its act in that regard , reportingtells a different tale . Tesla workers have seek to preach for themselves to forbid all this mistreatment by forming a union , but Muskhasfallenalloverhimselfto stop them . It ’s simply not sustainable to process people that ill .
Google really wants you to remember it ’s environmentally favorable . Its executivesspeak on glitzy panelsabout sustainability in the technical school industry . Itsigned onto a recent letterto government official recommend them to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and ordain mood insurance policy . And in September , the company claimedthat it ’s now “ atomic number 6 neutral . ”
But behind the scenes , Google is still producingmillions of tonsof nursery gas contamination . So how does it call itself carbon electroneutral and lay claim it ’s sustainable ? It offset those emissions , signify it funds unripened labor in other piazza — mostlycapturing methane gaswhere it leak out of grunter farms and landfill sites — to make up for its own pollution and perhaps assuage a little of its mood guilt . Methane is a problem , yes . But reducing it in one place does n’t exchange the fact that Google is producing it or other nursery gasolene elsewhere .
In its September design , Google also said it wants to serve city and corporations to lower their environmental impacts by , you guess it , selling them Google bring on . That means the business firm will get to profit from the transition to renewables .
Call me old fashioned , but I simply do n’t retrieve that the clean energy revolution should put more money into the pockets of our tech overlords . permit ’s tax them or else . That way we can decarbonize in a mode that ’s more popular .
Greenwashing
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