Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), a “self-described” conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., happens to be a shareholder in Apple. NCPPR has not been happy with Apple’s environmental initiatives. According to Chris Taylor (Mashable), Apple has made great improvements “in its use of renewable energy” since Tim Cook took over as CEO. Taylor said, “More than three-quarters of the company’s facilities worldwide, including all of its data centers and its Cupertino HQ, now run on solar, wind, geothermal or hydro power, up from about a quarter under Jobs.” Just last year, Cook hired former EPA head Lisa Jackson “to lead the company’s sustainability efforts.”
In a written statement prior to Apple’s recent annual shareholder meeting, NCPPR’s general counsel Justin Danhof said, “We object to increased government control over company products and operations, and likewise mandatory environmental standards. This is something [Apple] should be actively fighting, not preparing surrender.” According to Fortune, NCPPR “was pushing a shareholder proposal that would have required Apple to disclose the costs of its sustainability programs and to be more transparent about its participation in ‘certain trade associations and business organizations promoting the amorphous concept of environmental sustainability’…” Bryan Chaffin (The Mac Observer) said that the NCPPR proposal was “rooted in the premise that humanity plays no role in climate change.” He also noted that there was language in the proposal that “advanced the idea that profits should be the only thing corporations consider.” During the shareholder meeting, NCPPR urged Apple CEO Tim Cook and the board “to pledge that Apple wouldn’t pursue any more environmental initiatives that didn’t improve its bottom line.”
According to Chris Taylor, Cook’s response to NCPPR was “blistering.” Bryan Chaffin said it was the only time he could recall that Cook appeared angry. Chaffin said Cook “categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR’s advocacy.” The Apple CEO insisted that the company’s environmental efforts make “economic sense.” He added that Apple does “a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive.” Cook said that there were many things the company does “because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.” Cook said that when the company works on “making devices accessible by the blind,” he doesn’t “consider the bloody ROI.”
Cook continued, “We want to leave the world better than we found it.” But Cook didn’t stop there. He suggested that anyone who had a problem with what the company was doing should sell their shares in Apple. “Get out of the stock,” he said.
Evidently, NCPPR was not too pleased with Cook’s response to its objections, advice, and shareholder proposal. Following the meeting, the think tank released a statement saying, “After today’s meeting, investors can be certain that Apple is wasting untold amounts of shareholder money to combat so-called climate change. The only remaining question is: how much?”
Good question. How much should companies/corporations invest in looking for ways to combat climate change?
And imagine this: The CEO of a big company who is concerned not only about the “bottom line”—but who also cares about doing things that are “right” and “just and that will leave the world a better place. If only his condition was infectious.
NOTE: NCPPR’s proposal was rejected by Apple’s shareholders. It received just 2.95 percent of the vote.
~ Submitted by Elaine Magliaro
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
SOURCES
Apple CEO: Climate Change Deniers Should Take Their Money Out Of Apple Stock (ThinkProgress)
Tim Cook to Climate Change Deniers: Get Out of Apple Stock (Mashable)
Right Wing Think Tank Wants Apple to Disclose Sustainability Costs (The Mac Observer)
Tim Cook Soundly Rejects Politics of the NCPPR, Suggests Group Sell Apple’s Stock (The Mac Observer)
annie,
Does it learn?
You should be able to correct this in the dictionary settings…
Ash Spill Shows How Watchdog Was Defanged
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/us/coal-ash-spill-reveals-transformation-of-north-carolina-agency.html?_r=0
Because a neutered watchdog is always the one that barks in the middle of the night?
Arggg, my Apple iPad keeps “correcting” fracking to tracking.
State warns residents near coal ash spill to avoid fish, contact with river water
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/25/us/n-c-coal-ash-spill/
Because Coal is so much safer?
This must be the result of ‘Clean Coal’… ?
35 million gallons of coal ash spilled into Dan River
http://rt.com/usa/dan-river-coal-ash-spill-897/
Oh noes… Russia Times… must be suspect… YES?
The PBS article I linked to, discusses shale oil production as part of the potential boom and states fracking has been documented to contaminate ground water only once. I find this hard to believe, I wish It were so, but we’ve heard so many cases of the awful environmental consequences of fracking and the disruptions in the lives of those who live near tracking sites.
IGotBupkis,
I haven’t even started yet…
… Next, Coal ash.
Understanding Radiation: Radiation types
http://www.tsukubascience.com/2011/04/understanding-radiation-radiation-types/
Fukushima Children Tested for Thyroid Cancer Risk
Radiation-Induced Thyroid Cancer
http://www.columbiasurgery.org/news/healthpoints/2012_spring/p3.html
Cesium: Radioactive Cesium & Nuclear Disasters in Japan & Chernobyl
http://www.worldhealth.net/news/cesium-radioactive-cesium-nuclear-disasters-japan-/
Thyroid cancers on the rise aporx. an increase of 4% per year.
Two causes of thyroid cancer are: Inheritance of bad DNA or radiation.
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroidcancer/detailedguide/thyroid-cancer-what-causes
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-thyroid-cancer-ess.html
BOTH articles refuse to mention cesium exposure… Odd, NO?
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/comeback-why-the-us-sits-at-th-1/
This sounds like good news.
@annieofwi. Details of the work conditions inside the Foxconn factories are missing from the articles in the links you provided. There are inferences, but no clear causal relationships appear in the articles linking employee deaths to working conditions. There is one mention of an investigation, but no report of the results.
There is detail of the long working hours for one employee, a single data point out of about 350,000 employees at the Foxconn site. Having worked enough consecutive weeks of 80 and 90 hours, I can personally attest to how wearing that is, but I am alive to write about it.
One social problem that both factory managers and the China Labor Bureau have been unable to resolve is the burning desire of young workers in China at all levels to earn as much money as they can so they can marry, buy a house, increasingly a car, and begin a family. The situation is exacerbated by the noteworthy fact that the #1 motivator across Asian populations is money. Research from 2002 published by Drake Beam Morin substantiates that fact. Many managers, regardless of their country of origin, are happy to take advantage of the motivation for money and let their employees work very long hours.
The Labor Bureau is caught between conflicting imperatives. One one hand, the driving imperative of the Central Government is to maintain a harmonious society. The ability to earn the money required to pay for middle class trappings, grandparents’ medical expenses, better education for children, and savings for retirement all result in a more contented population. On the other hand, the restrictive requirements of the overhaul of the labor laws a few years ago prevent, on paper, working very long hours and major overtime earnings.
The Labor Bureau seems to selectively enforce the regulations. Foreign companies, particularly Japanese, appear to bear the enforcement brunt as an arm of foreign policy. Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, the the foreign policy of the Central Government is to draw Taiwan closer to Greater China. Enforcing the recent changes to the labor law against Foxconn runs counter to the foreign policy objective. Thus, Foxconn has (is tacitly allowed?) a certain amount of leeway in how it manages its workforce.
Apple and other Foxconn customers have a major challenge to demand behaviors of Foxconn that run counter to Asian motivators and the imperatives of the Central Government. There is no simple solution. Unilateral legislation by the US to correct what we in the US perceive as labor ills will only exacerbate the already tense relationship with China.
Pretty good PR stunt. Been a user of Apple since 1990. Like what was stated earlier, it was Jobs who saved it. Especially when they decided they were no longer a computer company, but a software company. But a PowerComputing machine with the Mac OS, and it is still the hands-down best computer I ever had–hardware wise. Jobs came back and put an end to that in a hurry. I have a notebook that has died, a dying iMac, and 2 iPhones in the house with intermittent problems. The new Darth Vader trash can may make things different, but I am not sure. I was just glad to see “assembled in USA” on my new iMac box.
However, I do have to say climate change is pretty much the reality. I’m no scientist, but I can see where putting all that carbon on one spot of the carbon cycle is going to cause problems. But–there will always be flat-earthers. Heck, there was still one of those on TV recently. Didn’t someone on Professor Turley’s blog post about energy from Thorium a while back?? Sounded pretty good to me. Better than coal. And better than watching the beautiful Appalachian Mountains get chopped down. If you haven’t seen that in person, it is quite the spectacle. Chilling may be more the word.
IGotBupkis,
Sorry, I missed the links of the Wind spills…
Sorry, I missed your links of the Solar meltdowns…
Please link.
“The nuclear power industry is more than amply capable of making relatively fail-safe reactor designs”
Biggest line of B.S. EVER!!!
“More than capable…”
… Yet incapable to date.
Why haven’t the Mark V reactors in the USA been shut down?
Fukushima proves they are a Pinto. They go BOOM!
With ZERO containment…
Why haven’t the spent fuel pools in the USA’s Mark V reactors emptied, YET?
Three years, almost to the date. Still 40 fee in the air!
“My motto, the fact that you are abysmally ignorant of something does not change the facts about it.”
BINGO! Nuclear power continues to be abysmally ignorant, refusing to acknowledge the facts!
}}} If Apple did bring back it’s manufacturing to the US, they’d be on the road to putting that shameful Foxconn episode behind them, because Americans sure wouldn’t tolerate Chinese style work conditions.
Annie operates under the notion that there is any money — or jobs — in manufacture available any longer for a nation like the USA.
Annie, do you know how the USA’s manufacturing-only sector ranks in the world? Suppose the USA’s manufacturing sector alone was a nation unto itself… where would it rank compared to the nations of the world?
100? No.
50? No.
20? No.
THIRD. Yes, the USA’s manufacturing economy, all by itself, ranks tied with Germany’s WHOLE economy at third, behind only the WHOLE economies of China and Japan… They make LOTS of money, they just don’t hire a lot of workers any longer.
Because “actually making things” is not the route to money and wealth in the USA any longer… and if we are making things, it’s in robotic factories (seriously — as China’s economy ramps up, and the cost of paying workers goes up, a LOT of its manufacturing is coming BACK to the USA — do a search on “reshoring”…
Actually making the final product, that’s not a way to make money any longer.
.
.
Annie, do you know how much money the iPhone 4, “Made in China” paid China for Chinese workers? We’re talking out of a retail price of $600…
How much of that went to China?
$400? No.
$200? No
$100? No.
$50!!?!? Surely!?!? NO.
FIVE BUCKS. that’s what China got from Apple for the production of the iPhone. The rest of it went to various other nations for patents held and designs made.
Yes — FIVE BUCKS
Apple iPhone: Designed in U.S., Assembled in China
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/07/iphone-designed-by-apple-in-us.html
(original source:)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/technology/06iphone.html?_r=0
If you do bring production back to America, what is going to happen is not that production employment expands, here — what will happen is that a robotic factory will be built which employs few workers.
And that is as it should be.
In 1870, 90% of US workers worked on Farms. By 1970, less than 10% of US workers worked on farms. Did we scream about “lost farm work”? No. Because the factory jobs everyone had were better than those farm jobs. Anyone over 70 can tell you of people they knew as kids who had lost fingers and limbs because of some accident involving farm machinery. How many people do you know NOW who have lost anything as a result of employment. One? Two? More likely, if someone lost anything, it was some random accident. Nowadays, between 2% and 5% of all Americans work in the agricultural sector of the economy.
Now we’re in the same process — with robots taking the place of factory workers, just as mechanization did for farm workers. You can see it coming — a future when 2% to 5% of all Americans work in the industrial sector of the economy.
he future lies in “Service and IP jobs” — no, not “McJobs” — those are for people with only “McSkills”. The vast majority of new jobs reside in creative work of various kinds, much of it clerical and professional labor — two of the largest “future” jobs lies in software production and in legal paperwork… the demands for software professionals of all types — graphics designers, programmers, project managers — is going up sharply, and the demand for paralegals — the ones who do the “grunt work” of professional legal work — are also high.
Neither of those are low-paying jobs, either. And even base level clerical work typically pays in the 25k-30k for entry level positions. Project manager positions pay in the high five figures right now.
Manufacturing jobs… they don’t. And never will again.
“So you advocate in favor of solar and wind, both of which are extensively manufactured in… China.”
‘Tis a pity we outsourced manufacturing for better profits… EH?
“Geothermal is wonderful, but, as an energy source, it’s pretty much tapped out. We already have all the Geothermal energy sources of the USA under load.”
Yellowstone is tapped out? Really?
Or are you suggesting the Earth’s core is cooled off and that magma flows have stopped…
IGotBupkis,
So you refute the polling?
Or you refute the reporting of the poll?
Or, do you prefer ad homonym’s as your retort?
You did read the poll? NO?