Are Big Tech’s Climate Pledges Too Ambitious?

By Felicity Bradstock - Apr 17, 2022, 

• Big Tech has been at the forefront of the corporate green energy push for years, and now it’s doubling down on its ambitious carbon goals.
• 
  
• Google and Microsoft have announced that all of their data centers will be 100% carbon-free by 2030.
• 
  
• Some have criticized the lofty pledges as a means of appeasing shareholders, but new policies could make the transition inevitable, whether the companies are ready or not.

Google just announced its aim for carbon-free data centers by 2030, but are these grandiose corporate carbon-cutting policies by major corporations all they’re made out to be? With a long history of greenwashing across several of these companies, how likely is it for them to achieve their climate goals over the coming decades?  Google announced this week that it plans to use 100 percent carbon-free energy in its data centers by 2030. This would be a huge feat considering it used  15.5 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2020. The company expects to buy this clean energy from the grid, improving efficiency across its operations to support the aim. 

But this is just the latest in a long line of companies making ambitious carbon-cutting pledges, alongside aims by national governments to reduce their carbon footprints in line with climate change policies. Companies are feeling increasing pressure both from new policies coming into force across several countries by the end of the decade and from their consumers, who now expect major corporations to improve their environmental practices. 

In 2021, Microsoft also made a pledge to make its data centers carbon-free by 2030. Chief environmental officer at Microsoft Lucas Joppa said “Moving forward we will be innovating our energy purchasing contracting to help bring more zero-carbon energy onto the grid and move more high carbon intensity energy off the grid, helping to rebalance the carbon intensity of any grid on which we operate.”

Earlier that year, 50 major corporations announced plans to become carbon-neutral by 2040, including Amazon, Walmart, General Motors, and FedEx. Companies are aiming high, wanting to achieve net-zero a decade or more earlier than stipulated in the Paris Agreement. FedEx’s chief sustainability officer, Mitch Jackson, stated “We talk to our customers pretty much each and every day about these issues.” And “Sustainability is not a discretionary thing anymore. I think it’s really become central to a lot of the considerations in thinking,” he said. 

Related: Russia’s War Highlights The Dangers Of Resource-Dependence

This begs the question, are major companies making these plans because of mounting public pressure, regardless of whether they’re ready to do so? Of course, it’s a step in the right direction, with many big corporations acting faster on their climate change targets. But is much of this simply greenwashing, hoping that they’ll achieve these ambitious targets with no real understanding of how to do so? 

As experts aptly remind these corporations, 2050 is closer than it appears, and many are aiming for even earlier. Studies across several major companies show that many are still on track to go beyond their “carbon budgets” – the total level of emissions they can release while keeping on track for 1.5C of warming  – over the next six years.  

Many companies worldwide continue to fail to disclose their environmental impact and climate change actions transparently, making tracking progress extremely difficult. In addition, while many companies have made ambitious, sweeping climate targets, many do not have interim targets. Without these, it is difficult to measure progress, and several are likely to fail unless they establish clear guidelines for climate progress over the coming decades. Many seem to be adopting a wait-and-see approach, intending to meet these carbon-cutting goals but without any clear strategy to do so. 

Climate pledges from major companies repeatedly fall short, according to environmental groups. In February, an analysis of 25 of the world’s largest companies, by Carbon Market Watch, showed that they avoid meaningful and immediate greenhouse gas emissions cuts. Many of these companies are using false or misleading carbon-cutting announcements. The report shows many of the top 25 are exaggerating their climate action through “greenwashing tricks, using loopholes and omitting data.”

While some are indeed aiming to dramatically cut their emissions by a set date, it does not mean they are taking meaningful actions to reduce their CO2 at present. By addressing climate change, companies keep their customers happy. But this may actually be a way of putting environmental action on the backburner while appeasing their consumer’s expectations. 

One promising development is that 338 large companies with science-based pledges decreased their combined emissions by 25 percent between 2015 and 2019, according to an SBTi analysis. Oslo-based climate analyst Ketan Joshi explains “companies are increasingly starting to understand that they’re losing their grip on the public relations hit of announcing a climate ambition and then doing nothing about it.” 

So, are the ambitious climate targets being announced by major corporations all just talk? While some are taking significant steps to address their downfalls and cut carbon emissions, others seem to be leaving it for a later day. Without clear strategies to meet interim climate targets before D-day, many companies are likely to fall short of their climate pledges. 

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

UK

Six arrested as climate activists scale Marble Arch and oil tanker

 

Holly Bancroft

Sat, April 16, 2022, 

Climate protesters scaled Marble Arch and climbed atop an 

oil tanker on the seventh day of co-ordinated demonstrations 

urging faster action to stop global warming.

A man and a woman climbed up pillars on Marble Arch to hoist a green banner, reading "End fossil fuels now", from the central London landmark on Saturday evening.

Six people were arrested after activists earlier climbed onto an oil tanker off Bayswater Road in London. British Olympic champion Etienne Stott was among those taking part, and said he was protesting to “disrupt the toxic fossil fuel industry”.

The action was part of demonstrations carried out by campaign group Extinction Rebellion on Saturday and followed protesters gathering in Hyde Park and parading through the capital's streets.

The Metropolitan Police told The Independent it had spent more than £565,000 policing the demonstrations since the beginning of the month.

Campaign groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion have been targetting fuel terminals in a series of co-ordinated protests across the country, which started on 1 April.

In other disruptive demonstrations across the capital over the past week, the eco-activists London’s main four bridges, occupied Oxford Circus, protested at Lloyd’s of London, and climbed on top of oil tankers.

Activists hang a banner from Marble Arch in London on Saturday (Gareth Morris/Extinction Rebellion)

The Metropolitan Police’s latest estimate of the cost of the protests is £565,824.45, according to figures obtained by The Independent.

This initial estimate covers from 1 April to 14 April, but is expected to be higher as the force tackles daily climate actions.

Summer protests organised by Extinction Rebellion last August and September cost the Metropolitan Police over £18m in total.

Police officers attempt to remove Etienne Stott, former Olympian, and an activist from Extinction Rebellion who occupied an oil tanker during a protest calling for an end to fossil fuels (REUTERS)

Stott, a slalom canoeist who won gold in the 2012 London Olympics, said: “I am aware that my actions will cause anger to many people and I am prepared to be held accountable. But our government should also be held to account for its decisions which are destroying our planet’s ability to support human civilisation”.

The Metropolitan Police said protesters walked through central London and “stopped at various locations along their unspecified route, causing disruption”.

Extinction Rebellion said that it was “experimenting with a decisive shift in tactics, with a move away from the use of large infrastructure and a renewed focus on people power and nonviolent civil resistance”.

Activists from Just Stop Oil block an entrance to a fuel terminal, during a protest in Grays, Essex on 15 April (REUTERS)

More than 600 people have been arrested over the past two weeks after activists blocked roads at oil depots across the UK.

Three firms involved in Britain's oil sector, including ExxonMobil, secured injunctions to stop protests this week.

But Just Stop Oil, who have taken part in the protests at oil terminals, said the only “announcement [that] will change our plans is a statement from the government that they will halt new oil and gas”.

Essex Police said last week that it had spent more than £1million dealing with demonstrations at oil terminals.

In Warwickshire, police charged nine Just Stop Oil activists for holding a demonstration at an oil terminal in Kingsbury on Friday.

The protesters were charged with obstructing or disrupting a person engaged in lawful activity.

Extinction Rebellion protesters block off Westminster bridge (PA)

Archbishop says UK's Rwanda illegal migrants plan goes against God

17 Apr, 2022 

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby leads the Easter Sung 

Eucharist at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent. Photo / AP

The leader of the Anglican church strongly criticised the British government's plan to put some asylum-seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda, saying "sub-contracting out our responsibilities" to refugees can't stand up to God's scrutiny.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby made the unusually direct political intervention in his Easter Sunday sermon, saying there are "serious ethical questions about sending asylum-seekers overseas".

He said "sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well, like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God who himself took responsibility for our failures".

Speaking at Canterbury Cathedral in southeast England, Welby said that while "the details are for politics and politicians, the principle must stand the judgment of God — and it cannot"

Britain and Rwanda announced Thursday that they had struck an agreement where some people arriving in the UK as stowaways on trucks or in small boats are sent 6400km to the East African country, where their asylum claims will be processed and, if successful, they will stay in Rwanda.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative government says the plan will discourage people from making dangerous attempts to cross the English Channel, and put people-smuggling gangs who run the treacherous route out of business. More than 28,000 migrants entered the UK across the Channel last year, up from 8500 in 2020. Dozens have died, including 27 people in November when a single boat capsized.

Refugee and human rights groups called the plan inhumane, unworkable and a waste of taxpayers' money. The UN refugee agency said it was "contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention".

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel.

 Photo / AP

Another senior Anglican cleric, Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, called the Rwanda plan "depressing and distressing".

"After all, there is in law no such thing as an illegal asylum-seeker," he said in an Eastern sermon at York Minster cathedral in northern England. "It is the people who exploit them that we need to crack down on, not our sisters and brothers in their need."

The deal — for which the UK has paid Rwanda £120 million pounds ($231m) upfront — leaves many questions unanswered, including its final cost and how participants will be chosen. The UK says children, and families with children, won't be sent to Rwanda.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby leads the Easter Sung

 Eucharist at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent. 

Photo / AP

Senior civil servants in the Home Office, the government department responsible for immigration policy, raised concerns about the plan but were overruled by Home Secretary Priti Patel.

The Home Office said in a statement that Britain had settled hundreds of thousands of refugees from around the world.

"However, the world is facing a global migration crisis on an unprecedented scale and change is needed to prevent vile people smugglers putting people's lives at risk and to fix the broken global asylum system.".

Alf Dubs, a Labour Party member of the House of Lords who came to Britain as a child refugee from the Nazis in 1939, said the plan was likely "a breach of the 1951 Geneva conventions on refugees". He said the Lords, Parliament's upper chamber, would challenge the move.

Johnson acknowledged Thursday that the plan would likely be challenged in court by what he called "politically motivated lawyers" out to "frustrate the government".

Political opponents accuse Johnson of using the headline-grabbing policy to distract attention from his political troubles. Johnson is resisting calls to resign after being fined by police for attending a party in his office in 2020 that broke coronavirus lockdown rules.

- AP

Sri Lanka's debt crisis is a warning to the world

As many as 12 developing countries could default on debt repayments this year

THE NATIONAL EDITORIAL

Sri Lankans protest outside the president's office in the capital Colombo. AP

For anyone trying to understand the widespread social anger seen in Sri Lanka in recent days, Gota-Go village is a good place to start. The steadily growing collection of tents pitched outside President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's office in the capital Colombo serves as a rallying point for thousands of people that have taken to the streets. On Monday, Christian nuns marched in protest by the site, as Buddhist monks and Muslim men joined nearby. All are expressing anger at high inflation, a lack of services and utilities, poor health care and a wider economic crisis.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President's brother, has offered to talk to protesters, but the situation is unlikely to improve soon. As of yet, no viable opposition can be found and faltering state institutions and wider mismanagement and corruption show no signs of abating.

Looming over all of this is an impending default on foreign debt repayments, which, if it happens, will worsen the crisis. The situation became more critical when the country's central bank governor said on Tuesday that Sri Lanka will temporarily suspend payments, so that its limited foreign reserves could be spent on essential imports.

Next week, the country will start talks with the IMF to ease the situation. More than Sri Lanka will be on IMF officials’ minds, however, as the fund confronts similar situations in emerging economies across the globe. The World Bank has said that as many as 12 developing countries could be unable to service foreign debt over the next year.

Demonstrators in Sri Lanka gather outside the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo as the country faces shortages in food, fuel and medicines after defaulting on its $51 billion debt. EPA

It is perhaps unsurprising. The World Bank also reports that Covid-19 caused global indebtedness to rise to a 50-year high. If the pandemic laid the groundwork, the war in Ukraine could become the perfect trigger for an acute crisis in a number of countries, as supply chains are further strained and commodity prices continue escalating. Developing economies account for 40 per cent of global GDP, heightening the risk of contagion to the rest of the world.

Without managing what they owe, at-risk economies will spend increasingly more of their already-low national income on debt repayments, not development. Once the burden becomes too great, escaping a vicious cycle of defaults becomes difficult. Lebanon, which defaulted in March 2020 and whose financial crisis continues to worsen, is a good example. The over-reliance on imports also makes the situation worse for many of these countries.

Solutions are complex and unattractive for corrupt or incompetent governments. At home, coffers need to be filled, often by raising taxes, which then have to be collected more efficiently from citizens and made harder to dodge by large companies profiting from lax regulation.

But outside their control are international financial systems that need to evolve to work better. First, expert-led advice should be offered early on to break unsustainable cycles and boost resilience in the face of unpredictable global crises. The operations of international organisations must also evolve. The IMF's debt service relief programme spent billions throughout the pandemic and helped 90 countries, hugely important in maintaining as much economic stability as possible. It should be extended as part of a longer-term assessment of where the world's economy is today.

It is clear that Covid-19 is still a health crisis, which is why it should still be considered an economic one, too. Gota-Go village might be a very local protest, but many of the problems that pushed people to set it up are replicated in a number of countries around the world. And if its organisers are not listened to, the ensuing economic instability from which they are suffering might go global, too.

Published: April 13, 2022,

The National Editorial
Insight and opinion from The National’s editorial leadership

Communist Party Urges Support for Xi as Anger Grows on Lockdowns

Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News April 17,2022

Xi Jinping in Beijing on April 8. Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images AsiaPac , Getty Images via Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper called on the nation to support President Xi Jinping’s Covid Zero strategy, showing any shift in policy is unlikely even as lockdowns in Shanghai and elsewhere threaten to hurt the economy. 

In a front-page commentary Monday, the People’s Daily said Xi’s strategy to snuff out the virus has proven “correct and effective” and China should be “uniting more closely around the party’s leadership with Xi Jinping as the core.” Citizens should follow the strategy “unswervingly and unrelentingly” with “earlier, faster, stricter and more practical” measures, it said.

“At present, it is the most difficult critical period for epidemic prevention and control,” the People’s Daily commentary said. China can “never let the hard-earned achievements of epidemic prevention and control be wasted,” it added.

China is struggling to contain a worsening outbreak that risks weakening growth in the world’s second-largest economy and disrupting global supply chains. The crisis has turned into one of the biggest tests yet for Xi, who is likely to seek a third five-year term during a Communist Party congress later this year. 

Tens of millions of people in the city of Shanghai and the northeastern province of Jilin have been barred from leaving their homes, fueling widespread criticisms of his government’s response to the highly infectious omicron variant. Residents short of groceries, medical care and patience have have publicly aired their grievances in rare displays of dissent against the Communist Party. 

More Chinese authorities are heeding Xi’s call to implement stringent movement restrictions to curb the virus. Over the weekend the western city of Xi’an came under a partial-lockdown for four days. The central city Zhengzhou also locked down its airport district for two weeks and started mass testing in the area on Monday. 

“Practice over the past two years has proven that the general strategy and policy of normalized epidemic prevention and control are correct and effective,” People’s Daily said. It ran a similar front-page commentary defending Xi’s Covid Zero strategy earlier this month, saying the policy is essential to saving lives and keeping the economy going. 

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Inside Shanghai quarantine: 24-hour lights, no

hot showers

17 Apr, 2022

The National Exhibition and Convention Centre in China was converted into a quarantine facility set up for people who tested positive but have few or no symptoms on April 15, in Shanghai. 

Photo / AP

Beibei sleeps beside thousands of strangers in rows of cots in a high-ceilinged exhibition centre. The lights stay on all night, and the 30-year-old real estate saleswoman has yet to find a hot shower.

Beibei and her husband were ordered into the massive National Exhibition and Convention Centre in Shanghai last Tuesday after spending 10 days isolated at home following a positive test. Their 2-year-old daughter, who was negative, went to her grandfather, while her nanny also went into quarantine.

Residents show "no obvious symptoms", Beibei, who asked to be identified only by her given name, told The Associated Press in an interview by video phone.

"There are people coughing," she said. "But I have no idea if they have laryngitis or Omicron."

The convention centre, with 50,000 beds, is one of more than 100 quarantine facilities set up in China's most populous city for those such as Beibei who test positive but have few or no symptoms. It's part of official efforts to contain China's biggest coronavirus outbreak since the two-year-old pandemic began. But it's also testing the patience of people increasingly fed up with China's harsh "zero-Covid" policy that aims to isolate every case.

Medical workers wearing protective suits chat as a resident takes a rest at the newly converted quarantine facility in Shanghai. 

Photo / AP

"At the beginning, people were frightened and panicked," Beibei said. "But with the publication of daily figures, people have started to accept that this particular virus is not that horrible."

Beibei was told she was due to be released Monday after two negative tests while at the convention centre.
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Most of Shanghai shut down starting March 28 and its 25 million people were ordered to stay home. That led to complaints about food shortages and soaring economic losses.

Anyone who tests positive but shows few or no symptoms is required to spend one week in a quarantine facility. Beibei said she had a stuffy nose and briefly lost part of her senses of taste and smell, but those symptoms passed in a few days.

On Sunday, China reported 26,155 new cases, all but 3,529 of which had no symptoms. Shanghai accounted for 95 per cent of the total, or 24,820, including 3,238 with no symptoms.

A temporary Covid-19 testing lab is seen in an arena in Shanghai, China. 

Photo / AP

The city has reported more than 300,000 cases since late March. Shanghai began easing restrictions last week, though a health official warned the city didn't have its outbreak under control.

At the convention centre, residents are checked twice a day for fever and told to record health information on mobile phones, according to Beibei. Most people pass the time by reading, square dancing, taking online classes or watching videos on mobile phones.

The 420,000sq m exhibition centre is best known as the site of the world's biggest car show. Other quarantine sites include temporary prefabricated buildings.

Residents of other facilities have complained about leaky roofs, inadequate food supplies and delays in treatment for medical problems.

Meal for the people in the Chinese quarantine facility in Shanghai. 

Photo / AP

"We haven't found a place with a hot shower," Beibei said. "Lights are on all night, and it's hard to fall asleep."

A video obtained by AP showed wet beds and floors due to a leaky roof in a different facility in a prefabricated building.

"Bathrooms are not very clean," Beibei said. "So many people use them, and volunteers or cleaners can't keep up."

Covid 19: Riots break out in Shanghai as

starving residents revolt against 'Zero

Covid' lockdown

9 Apr, 2022

By Frank Chung news.com.au

Riots have broken out in Shanghai as starving residents begin to revolt against the Chinese Communist Party's draconian "Zero Covid" lockdown more than three weeks in.

Disturbing videos emerging on social media show desperate scenes inside China's largest city, which has been placed under increasingly harsh restrictions as Omicron cases continue to break daily records.

Customers look through empty shelves at a supermarket in Shanghai, China, in late March. Photo / AP

Crowds of residents were seen looting food parcels in one video posted to Weibo, while other clips showed furious mobs clashing with PPE-clad Covid prevention workers as they tried to break through barriers erected across the city.

One video captured the sounds of screaming from apartment balconies as people run out of food, while in another viral clip a man was filmed hurling abuse at an apparent government worker over the phone.

"My parents are locked up by you for two months. How did they live for these two months? My grandmother lives alone, nobody takes care of her. You locked us up. What does she drink? What does she eat? You are driving [people] to death. F**k you! Shanghai city government, are they human? Driving ordinary people to revolt ... I don't care anymore. Just let the Communist Party take me. Where is the Communist Party? Where is communism? You bastards!"

More than 23,600 new infections were recorded on Friday despite Shanghai residents now suffering under the harshest Covid-19 restrictions anywhere in the world since the start of the pandemic, straining the regime's policy of total elimination of the virus.

Residents have been barred from leaving their homes even for essential items, leaving many warning they are running out of food as shops and delivery services collapse under the pressure and government deliveries of vegetables, meat and eggs struggle to keep up.

Shanghai residents are barred from leaving their homes in a strict Zero-Covid lockdown. Photo / Getty Images

"It is true there are some difficulties in ensuring the supply of daily necessities," local official Liu Min conceded on Wednesday.

It comes after a government worker was filmed chasing down a Corgi and beating it to death with a shovel because its owner was infected, in a horrifying video that went viral on Weibo.

The owner had released the dog onto the streets because he could not find anyone to care for it while he was in quarantine, China News Weekly reported.

"We hoped to let him outside and be like a stray dog," he wrote on Weibo.

"We didn't want him to starve to death. As long as he could live it would be okay. We never expected that he would be beaten to death the moment we had left."

When Omicron first emerged in Shanghai a month ago only specific buildings and complexes were placed under lockdown, but last week the government announced the city was being divided in two with different restrictions for each half.

On Monday, however, the full lockdown was extended to the entire city's population of 26 million.

The citywide lockdown is indefinite.

"The situation in Shanghai is scary," Michael Smith, North Asia correspondent for The Australian Financial Review, wrote on Twitter.

"Reports of millions struggling to feed themselves, elderly unable to access medicine, videos of small riots breaking out circulating on social media. Many households relying on inadequate government food deliveries. All this to contain a virus the Chinese government claims hasn't killed anyone in the city yet."

Workers labour at the site of a temporary hospital being constructed at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) in east China's Shanghai. Photo / AP

Mass daily testing is mandatory and anyone who tests positive is taken to a quarantine centre — a policy that even saw children removed from their parents into overcrowded facilities.

Shanghai officials were forced to respond to the public outrage by allowing parents to accompany their Covid-positive children to quarantine.

Jared T Nelson, an American lawyer living in Shanghai, has been sharing updates about the lockdown on Twitter.

He stressed that it was a "huge city" and circumstances were different everywhere.

On Saturday, he said rules for his building had been tightened again. While previously people had been allowed to go outside to get deliveries, residents had now been barred from leaving their apartments.

"Each day two volunteers from each building are allowed out to collect deliveries for the whole building (I'm a volunteer)," he wrote.

"We have to wear the full white suit during the process — mine was just delivered to me — and we only have a two hour window in the afternoon. If you have a delivery in the morning, for example of meat (if you are lucky enough to get that), it will sit at the gate until it is our time in the afternoon to get the delivery. The temperature in Shanghai right now, at 5pm, is 80F [27C]."

He added, "For my family, we had three deliveries that were booked to deliver today: two group purchases of meat/seafood plus one individual purchase of soap and shampoo. All three were cancelled."

Nelson said that on Friday night, several Covid-positive people from his community had been taken to a quarantine centre.

"From what we've heard, they didn't arrive until 2am and the conditions there are awful — no showers, portable toilets only, no hot water, and of course no privacy," he wrote.

China is one of the few nations still persisting with a zero Covid strategy, even though its full vaccination rate is approaching 90 per cent.

Other parts of China have been subjected to similar restrictions in the past month, including Shenzhen, Changchun, Xuzhou, Tangshan and Jilin. At one point in March, almost 40 million Chinese residents were under various levels of lockdown, according to CNN.

The US State Department on Friday said it was allowing non-emergency staff and their families to leave the Shanghai consulate due to the situation, while advising US citizens to reconsider travel to China "due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws and Covid-19 restrictions".

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says while it is not saying "don't go", Australians should "exercise a high degree of caution".

"Recent Covid-19 outbreaks in Shanghai and other large cities have resulted in city-wide residential lockdowns, closures of schools, businesses and suspension of public transport," DFAT says in its latest travel advisory.

"Access to medical facilities and other essential services has also been disrupted. Further Covid-19 outbreaks throughout China are possible and countermeasures including flight suspensions and re-routing, and mass testing may be imposed with little or no warning. Stay informed of local conditions, particularly if you intend to travel within China."