Why Big Tech companies got quiet on climate change

    https://www.fastcompany.com/91525419/big-tech-talks-climate-change-less-ai-data-centers

    Posted by _fastcompany

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    1. _fastcompany on

      Google’s sustainability webpage once specifically mentioned the company’s goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2030, and included a subpage titled “operating sustainably.”

      But that pledge has disappeared from the main page, which now highlights the company’s commitment to artificial intelligence. The subpage was renamed “our operations.”

      Google maintains that it is still aiming for a 2030 goal, though executives have acknowledged that the growth of AI makes it challenging.

      Still, the change to the sustainability page is an example of how tech companies are being a bit quieter about their climate goals as they expand their use of AI. 

      The explosive growth of data centers to support the AI surge is “calling into question” whether the major tech companies—Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon—can meet their pledges to reduce emissions, according to a 2025 corporate responsibility report from the NewClimate Institute.

      Already, companies are reporting emissions increases in their annual sustainability reports. 

      Along with complicating their climate goals, the AI push seems to be changing how Big Tech talks about, and even considers, the climate.

    2. EqualityWithoutCiv on

      Fossil fuel companies (as an industry that should now be obsolete, but are panicking to stay relevant) depend on right wing billionaires to boost their ilk, they take over big tech and much of media. Now they’ve taken over entire governments, and lots of people’s hearts and minds.

      Stop making Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania drown, boil and explode before you start complaining about mass migration. You started making them cook (not in the cool way), you’re responsible for making sure you take them out of the oven you subjected them to.

      The end of past civilizations look tame and tragic compared to what we have right now – too big of a scale to avoid for the *world*, infuriating for how it’s preventable, but NO, colonial and other 19th century wet dreams got in the way. If that’s the only system allowed to have any meaningful say over things, then your free speech campaign is a LIE.

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