A new report suggests the money that Big Tech companies keep in the banking system can do more climate damage than the products they sell. Illustration by Alberto Miranda Big Tech companies like Google and Salesforce have made strides in reducing the carbon emissions from their products, through efforts such as using recycled aluminum and planting trees. But, as Bill McKibben writes in an incisive piece today, these companies may have missed “perhaps the most important source of corporate emissions”: the money they keep in banks, some of which is lent to the fossil-fuel industry, and subsequently produces huge amounts of carbon. Recent calculations in a joint report released by three nonprofit environmental groups suggest that, in effect, Google’s carbon emissions would have gone up a hundred and eleven per cent overnight. It takes two to tango—and, for these companies to enact change, they’ll need to pressure banks to stop lending money to expand fossil fuels, a resolution that shareholders of several large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, have voted down recently. Read McKibben’s suggestion for how tech companies and banks could still forge a solution—or at least reach a compromise. As he asks, “If Apple’s C.E.O, Tim Cook, sits down with Chase’s C.E.O, Jamie Dimon, who blinks first?” —Jessie Li, newsletter editor If you like the New Yorker Daily, please share it with a friend. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here. |
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