Apple, Google, and Microsoft Among Companies Signing New White House Climate Pledge

Monday July 27, 2015 7:03 AM PDT by Mitchel Broussard
Apple will join twelve other companies from across the country today at the White House in support of the American Business Act on Climate Pledge, which aims to tackle climate change head-on thanks to the backing of partners like Apple.

The new pledge will cut nearly 6 billion tons of carbon pollution through the year 2030, "an amount equivalent to taking all the cars in the United States off the road for more than 4 years." Apple's addition to the pledge doesn't appear to include any projects debuting exclusively for the new initiative, but the company will seemingly continue to heavily support a positive environmental message, now in partnership with the White House.

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Apple, already running all of its U.S. operations on 100% renewable energy, will bring an estimated 280 megawatts of clean power generation online by the end of 2016 through investments in Arizona, California, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon and Sichuan Province, China. Since 2011, Apple has reduced carbon emissions from its global corporate facilities, data centers and retail stores by 48%.
The other companies signing the pledge include: Alcoa, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Cargill, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, PepsiCo, UPS, and Walmart. By signing on as a partner, the companies are voicing support for a "strong" outcome for the climate negotiations in Paris this December, and promising an "ongoing commitment" to positive environmental action.

In total, the American Business Act on Climate Pledge amounts to about $140 billion in environmental investments, with all of the participating companies estimated to generate more than 1,600 megawatts of new renewable energy. As the White House points out, the partnerships announced today "are only the beginning," with a second round of pledges expected to be announced sometime this fall.

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142 comments


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logicstudiouser
53 months ago
Jeez! It is 2015 and anything related to climate change still has to be put in the restricted section. Ridiculous!
Rating: 17 Votes
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AngerDanger
53 months ago

The new pledge will cut nearly 6 billion tons of carbon pollution through the year 2030, "an amount equivalent to taking all the cars in the United States off the road for more than 4 years."


Regardless of what you think of climate change, those numbers seem really impressive (as is the $140 billion being spent on this).
Rating: 11 Votes
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Renzatic
53 months ago

There is no such thing as an ideal temperature for the planet, the planet does not give a crap about us.


Nailed it. This isn't about us slapping on our Birkenstocks, slathering ourselves in patchouli, and writing beat poetry about Mother Gaia. The Earth was a big ball of molten lava and sulfur just a few billion years ago, a 10C change in average global temperature won't do a thing to destroy it.

But for us, it's an extreme change that could mean a truncated food supply, flooded coasts, and unpredictable extreme weather patterns. Things that could ruin our economy, and throw the world into a moderate panic. Global warming concerns aren't about the Earth, it's about keeping the status quo.

By its very definition, it's the ultimate conservative platform.
Rating: 10 Votes
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iBlazed
53 months ago

Am I the only one who has a problem with these climate change people going from "Global cooling" to "Global warming" to..... "Climate change"??

No, there's plenty of poorly informed people in the world. You're in good company.
Rating: 9 Votes
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Renzatic
53 months ago

Snip


This is a strawman argument if there ever was one. "We can't predict when volcanoes will erupt, ergo we can't predict temperature. Therefore, global warming is FUD".

...which you're halfway right. No one can predict future temperatures with 100% accuracy. But that's not what all the alarm is about. What they can predict are previous trends, look at the current data, and extrapolate from there. For the last 2000 years, the average global temperature has fluctuated only +-1C, then suddenly, starting around 1900, we see a HUGE spike in global average temperature.



Now what caused that? If it wasn't man made, what environmental or solar factors would explain it? No matter what you believe to be the cause, the evidence that the earth is warming up tremendously is all but set in stone by this point.
Rating: 8 Votes
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oneMadRssn
53 months ago

Regardless of what you think of climate change, those numbers seem really impressive (as is the $140 billion being spent on this).


Despite the attention we give them, passenger car's actually account for a pretty small percentage of greenhouse gas emissions overall. (transportation is 37% ('http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/05/ghg_by_source/bd024f780.jpg') of greenhouse gas emissions, and passenger cars are 43% ('http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/climate_change/mitigation/publications_and_tools/ghg_handbook/images/ch2fig2.jpg') of that; so passenger cars are ~16% of greenhouse gas emissions.) Industry, construction, heavy shipping - those are the big polluters.

Not saying this isn't a good step. But doing the equivalent of taking all cars off the road for 4 years isn't very impressive when put in context.
Rating: 8 Votes
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chucker23n1
53 months ago

Am I the only one who has a problem with these climate change people going from "Global cooling" to "Global warming" to..... "Climate change"?? Like they couldn't figure it out, so they just say it just has to not stay the same every year and that's bad?


No, sadly, you're not the only one. Also, I'd say education is free, but it's really rather pricey in the US, so there you go…

Combating climate change...


While we're doing graphics…



Climate change has ****-all to do with whether it's cozy in your living room.
Rating: 7 Votes
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iBlazed
53 months ago

Apple should stick to fixing their crap cloud services. Time to focus on what users want, not Obama's agenda. Gay rights and climate B.S. can wait until they stop sucking at software.

Obama's agenda?? Seriously? Climate change and gay rights are far from being solely Obama's agenda. Sorry if responsibility and human decency are considered a liberal agenda for you people. Like it or not, this is how it's going to be.
Rating: 7 Votes
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iBlazed
53 months ago
I knew this would quickly devolve into a right wing bitch fest full of people who don't know enough about any given topic pretending like their uneducated opinion on climate change is equivalent to scientific fact. Good times.
Rating: 6 Votes
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Mtmspa
53 months ago
Apple should stick to fixing their crap cloud services. Time to focus on what users want, not Obama's agenda. Gay rights and climate B.S. can wait until they stop sucking at software.
Rating: 6 Votes
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