Saturday, October 02, 2021

HYPOCRITES
Amazon, Apple, and Disney execs secretly back anti-climate reform lobbies


“Major corporations love to tell us how committed they are to addressing the climate crisis and building a sustainable future, but behind closed doors, they are funding the very industry trade groups that are fighting tooth and nail to stop the biggest climate change bill ever.”
Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.USA

Supakrit Tirayasupasin/Moment/Getty Images
Andrew Paul
10.1.2021 

new investigation from The Guardian in conjunction with analysis provided by the watchdog group, Accountable.US, links many of the country’s most powerful execs to lobbying efforts against the Biden administration’s climate change reform bill, despite their brands’ supposed commitment to combatting ecological crises. Companies including Amazon, Apple, Disney, and Microsoft all proudly tout various green goals, but their decision-makers’ membership in numerous anti-climate reform groups show their efforts to be clandestinely hypocritical at best, and actively harmful at worst.

“Major corporations love to tell us how committed they are to addressing the climate crisis and building a sustainable future, but behind closed doors, they are funding the very industry trade groups that are fighting tooth and nail to stop the biggest climate change bill ever,” president of Accountable.US, Kyle Herrig, said in a statement. Boasting supporters like the CEOs of Apple, Alphabet Inc., and Amazon, groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, and the Rate Coalition are funneling millions into watering down — or even preventing — congressional climate reform efforts.


MediaNews Group/The Riverside Press-Enterprise via Getty Images/MediaNews Group/Getty Images

NO ONE IS DENYING IT — One of the most unsavory aspects of the new report appears to be the response from many of these businesses to the revelations. Of the many contacted by The Guardian, not a single one of them would “rebuke the stance of the lobby groups they are part of and none said they would review their links to these groups.”

DO AS THEY SAY, NOT AS THEY DO — Although companies like Amazon and Microsoft have recently pledged to become carbon neutral within the next few decades (already a commitment that’s too little, too late), it should surprise absolutely no one to see concrete data linking their most powerful players to these lobbying groups. It is by these corporations’ very nature to constantly operate with the largest possible profit margins in mind after taking public scrutiny and opinion into consideration.

It’s good to see such major companies hypothetically pledging to work against eco-collapse, but much of it will always be canceled out by clandestine decisions like these lobbying group memberships.


Apple, Amazon and others back groups trying to kill US climate legislation





Kris Holt
·Contributing Writer
Fri, October 1, 2021

Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Disney are among the major companies backing corporate lobby groups and organizations that are battling a US climate bill, according to a report. That's despite those companies all making pledges to reduce their impact on the environment.

The United States Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the Rate Coalition are three of the lobbyist and business groups that oppose the Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget bill, which includes measures to fight climate change. The Guardian reports that watchdog Accountable.US analyzed the groups to learn which companies have connections to them.

The Chamber of Commerce, the biggest lobbying group in the US, has said it would "do everything we can to prevent this tax-raising, job-killing reconciliation bill from becoming law.” The group's board includes executives from the likes of United Airlines and Microsoft.



The board of the Business Roundtable includes Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google and Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. The group has said it's “deeply concerned” about the bill and the increased taxes it would lead to for the rich. Google has also made political contributions in the past to individuals and organizations that have denied climate change.

The report notes that The Rate Coalition is set to release attack ads against the bill. That body's members include Disney and Verizon (Engadget's former parent company).

The support of lobbying groups that are attempting to kill the bill conflicts with the tech companies' attempts to tackle the climate crisis. Apple, Google and Microsoft have all backed the Paris Agreement, for one thing. Apple and Microsoft promised to become carbon neutral and carbon negative respectively by 2030.

In 2019, Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos launched the Climate Pledge, which has a goal of hitting net zero carbon emissions by 2040 and meeting the Paris Agreement benchmarks a decade early. Microsoft is among the 200+ companies that have joined the pledge. Disney, meanwhile, is aiming to reach net zero emissions for its direct operations by 2030.

Engadget has contacted Apple, Google and Microsoft for comment. The Guardian said that none of the companies it contacted rejected the stances of the groups they're members of. None of them said they would re-assess their connections to those bodies either.

On Friday, Amazon expressed support for the infrastructure bill and the climate aspects of the Build Back Better reconciliation bill. A spokesperson provided the following statement to Engadget:

Amazon believes both private and public sector leadership is required to tackle the global issue of climate change. That’s why we actively advocate for policies that promote clean energy, increase access to renewable electricity, and decarbonize the transportation system. In addition to advocating for these issues on a local, state, and international level, we have a worldwide sustainability team that innovates sustainable solutions for both our business and customers, as well as co-founded The Climate Pledge - a commitment to be net-zero carbon 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.


Amazon has made bold commitments to reduce our carbon emissions, and we continue to encourage other companies to join us. We support investments in the Infrastructure and Build Back Better bills to lower emissions in key sectors like energy and transportation, and we believe these investments will help advance America’s carbon reduction goals. As we said earlier this year, we support an increase in the corporate tax rate to pay for things like infrastructure, and we look forward to Congress and the administration coming together to find the right, balanced solution that maintains or enhances U.S. competitiveness.


Update 1/10 12:22PM ET: Added Amazon's statement.

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