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https://medium.com/climate-conscious/accounting-tricks-wont-save-the-planet-79c6559c1a05>
"Pretty much every major corporation has a page buried somewhere on its website
touting its efforts to combat climate change. Usually, this takes the form of a
“net-zero” pledge. The net-zero pages are usually larded up with a particular
kind of vaguely positive but not legally actionable corporate-speak:
* McDonald's promises, “As a global brand, we are embracing our unique
opportunity to mobilize the entire McDonald’s System to act now. We are
collaborating with Franchisees, suppliers and producers to catalyze change and
help create a brighter, better world for the future.”
* Delta Airlines says, “Last year, we became the first carbon neutral airline
on a global basis. We’re committed to carbon neutrality from March 2020 onward,
balancing our emissions with investments to remove carbon across our global
operations.”
* And ExxonMobil assures us that “we are developing comprehensive roadmaps to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our operated assets around the world, and
where we are not the operator, we are working with our partners to achieve
similar emission-reduction results.”
Apparently, these corporations are hoping that we’ll read statements like these
(or, who am I kidding, skim the headline at most), and take comfort in the
impressive feats of corporate stewardship that these companies are engaging in.
We’ll feel much better about buying their products, knowing that our friends at
McDonald's or Delta are taking care of all of that tricky climate change stuff
for us.
The problem, of course, is that each year, McDonald's sells a billion pounds of
beef, Delta’s planes make 200 million trips, and ExxonMobil pumps over 1.8
billion barrels of oil.
The core products of each of these companies are powerful engines of climate
change, and they have no plans to stop selling them. These companies are
obviously part of the problem, no matter how much they claim to be part of the
solution."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
