Hmmm. This is the best argument I’ve ever heard for not using Apple products (besides the overinflated prices). Being flush with cash is probably why the CEO says he doesn’t care about the ROI (return on investment) and won’t make the costs transparent per a shareholder request. Seems like a sensible business request to me.
Some headlines/screencaps. FORTUNE magazine:
More: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/03/01/apple-cook-shareholders-sustainability/
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The Mac Observer:
More: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rejects-politics-of-the-ncppr-suggests-group-sell-apples-s
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Press release from NCPPR:
Tim Cook to Apple Investors: Drop Dead
Apple CEO Tim Cook tells Investors Who Care More About Return on Investment than Climate Change: Your Money is No Longer Welcome
As Board Member Al Gore Cheers the Tech Giant’s Dedication to Environmental Activism, Investors Left to Wonder Just How Much Shareholder Value is Being Destroyed in Efforts to Combat “Climate Change”
Free-Market Activist Presents Shareholder Resolution to Computer Giant Apple Calling for Consumer Transparency on Environmental Issues; Company Balks
Cupertino, CA / Washington, D.C. – At today’s annual meeting of Apple shareholders in Cupertino, California, Apple CEO Tim Cook informed investors that are primarily concerned with making reasonable economic returns that their money is no longer welcome.
The message came in response to the National Center for Public Policy Research’s shareholder resolution asking the tech giant to be transparent about its environmental activism and a question from the National Center about the company’s environmental initiatives.
“Mr. Cook made it very clear to me that if I, or any other investor, was more concerned with return on investment than reducing carbon dioxide emissions, my investment is no longer welcome at Apple,” said Justin Danhof, Esq., director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project.
Danhof also asked Apple CEO Tim Cook about the company’s green energy pursuits. Danhof asked whether the company’s environmental investments increased or decreased the company’s bottom line. After initially suggesting that the investments make economic sense, Cook said the company would pursue environmental goals even if there was no economic point at all to the venture. Danhof further asked if the company’s projects would continue to make sense if the federal government stopped heavily subsidizing alternative energy. Cook completely ignored the inquiry and became visibly agitated.
Danhof went on to ask if Cook was willing to amend Apple’s corporate documents to indicate that the company would not pursue environmental initiatives that have some sort of reasonable return on investment – similar to the concession the National Center recently received from General Electric. This question was greeted by boos and hisses from the Al gore contingency in the room.
“Here’s the bottom line: Apple is as obsessed with the theory of so-called climate change as its board member Al Gore is,” said Danhof. “The company’s CEO fervently wants investors who care more about return on investments than reducing CO2 emissions to no longer invest in Apple. Maybe they should take him up on that advice.”
“Although the National Center’s proposal did not receive the required votes to pass, millions of Apple shareholders now know that the company is involved with organizations that don’t appear to have the best interest of Apple’s investors in mind,” said Danhof. “Too often investors look at short-term returns and are unaware of corporate policy decisions that may affect long-term financial prospects. 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?”
The National Center’s shareholder resolution noted that “[s]ome trade associations and business organizations have expanded beyond the promotion of traditional business goals and are lobbying business executives to pursue objectives with primarily social benefits. This may affect Company profitability and shareholder value. The Company’s involvement and acquiescence in these endeavors lacks transparency, and publicly-available information about the Company’s trade association memberships and related activities is minimal. An annual report to shareholders will help protect shareholder value.”
Apple’s full 2014 proxy statement is available here. The National Center’s proposal, “Report on Company Membership and Involvement with Certain Trade Associations and Business Organizations,” appears on page 60.
The National Center filed the resolution, in part, because of Apple’s membership in the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), one of the country’s largest trade associations. In its 2013 “Retail Sustainability Report,” RILA states: “Companies will often develop individual or industry voluntary programs to reduce the need for government regulations. If a retail company minimizes its waste generation, energy and fuel usage, land-use footprint, and other environmental impacts, and strives to improve the labor conditions of the workers across its product supply chains, it will have a competitive advantage when regulations are developed.”
“This shows that rather than fighting increased government regulation, RILA is cooperating with Washington, D.C.’s stranglehold on American business in a misguided effort to stop so-called climate change,” said Danhof. “That is not an appropriate role for a trade association.”
For even more information on RILA, read “The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA): A Cartel that Threatens Innovation and Competitiveness,” by National Center Senior Fellow Dr. Bonner Cohen.
“Rather than opting for transparency, Apple opposed the National Center’s resolution,” noted Danhof. “Apple’s actions, from hiring of President Obama’s former head of the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson, to its investments in supposedly 100 percent renewable data centers, to Cook’s antics at today’s meeting, appear to be geared more towards combating so-called climate change rather than developing new and innovative phones and computers.”
After Danhof presented the proposal, a representative of CalPERS rose to object and stated that climate change should be one of corporate America’s primary concerns, and after she called carbon dioxide emissions a “mortal danger,” Apple board member and former vice president Al Gore turned around and loudly clapped and cheered.
“If Apple wants to follow Al Gore and his chimera of climate change, it does so at its own peril,” said Danhof. “Sustainability and the free market can work in concert, but not if Al Gore is directing corporate behavior.”
“Tim Cook, like every other American, is entitled to his own political views and to be an activist of any legal sort he likes on his own time,” said Amy Ridenour, chairman of the National Center for Public Policy Research. “And if Tim Cook, private citizen, does not care that over 95 percent of all climate models have over-forecast the extent of predicted global warming, and wishes to use those faulty models to lobby for government policies that raise prices, kill jobs and retard economic growth and extended lifespans in the Third World, he has a right to lobby as he likes. But as the CEO of a publicly-held corporation, Tim Cook has a responsibility to, consistent with the law, to make money for his investors. If he’d rather be CEO of the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, he should apply.”
“As in the past, Cook took but a handful of questions from the many shareholders present who were eager to ask a question at the one meeting a year in which shareholder questions are taken,” added Ridenour, “leaving many disappointed. Environmentalism may be a byword at Apple, but transparency surely is not.”
The National Center’s Free Enterprise Project is a leading free-market corporate activist group. In 2013, Free Enterprise Project representatives attended 33 shareholder meetings advancing free-market ideals in the areas of health care, energy, taxes, subsidies, regulations, religious freedom, media bias, gun rights and many more important public policy issues. Today’s Apple meeting was the National Center’s third attendance at a shareholder meeting so far in 2014.
The National Center for Public Policy Research is an Apple shareholder, as are National Center executives.
The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations, and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 96,000 active recent contributors.
=================================================================
h/t to “cincinatuschili”
UPDATE: Yes, he must have.
@wattsupwiththat Wonder if he's forgotten about all those coal fired power stations running his Chinese factories?
— Karl Bentley (@bentleykarl) March 2, 2014
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Well, It’s time to sell Apple (AAPL) since it’s clear the CEO has become distracted by non-core business matters.
I have never used an Apple anything that I can think of.
Apple is fashion and fad. Successful fashion and fad but marketing nevertheless.
Underneath all the hype, which is way down underneath, real engineering is at work at Apple.
So this is just to create a buzz…because there is nothing new at Apple and for growth you need something new. The dumb market will love his line….so then will the Apple BoD.
LOL ROFLMAO.
Let’s take a look at the climate campaigner and super hypocrite Al Gore and his investment company. What did they do?
SEC Filings
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1375534/000117266112000799/generation2q12.txt
Manfred, Apple caters to liberal guilt which is why they are never (rarely) attacked for their capitalist ways. Apple is the “good” corporation, even though just about every productive business on the planet uses Windows based platforms. The late Steve Jobs is considered a liberal hippy guru, thus the ideal of what a CEO should be, no matter how much of a dishonest jerk he was in real life. They make all pretentious over priced crap bought mostly by people who want to seem trendy or really don’t know how to use technology. For usability I give them credit but I don’t believe the extra cost is justifiable, especially when it comes with software restrictions that requires voiding your warranty (jail breaking) just to be able to do the same things on other platforms.
I have been using Macintosh computers since 1987. Though the gap has narrowed considerably, and although the Macintosh has had its own ups and downs, Macs were then in general have been vastly superior in usability to PCs running varieties of MS Windows. I also have an iPhone, which synchronizes with my Macs. I have and do use PCs as well, and in fact managed an office with about 20 of them, because the software we used was PC-only. That only reinforced my preference for the Mac OS and for Apple products generally.
That said, I have never been happy with Algore’s presence on the Apple Board, but in point of fact Steve Jobs always was an inveterate California liberal and I assume was responsible for the Goracle’s presence. Tim Cook is clearly subscribing to the Founder’s and the company’s preferences.
I have to take the same attitude that Rush Limbaugh does: Rush has always been an Apple/Mac champion, has spent many whole segments of his show discussing and extolling the virtues of the Mac, and is a great admirer of Steve Jobs and his entrepreneurial genius. Apple won’t advertise on his show, of course, but then, they don’t need to—Rush does it for free.
I dislike Google and its public leftwing, PC profile, so I avoid Google products. But I have to just look the other way when it comes to the Mac—it’s just better. I don’t own any stock, but sure wish I had bought some in the mid-nineties when it was about $20 a share and everyone was predicting the company’s imminent demise.
I expect that if government subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy disappear, you’ll find Apple’s management moving away from ‘sustainability’ rhetoric. So lets work at the government level to get rid of those ridiculous subsidies, and ignore the PC nonsense that permeates the highest levels of all too many American corporations.
/Mr Lynn
Apple Fanboys are so obsessive and easy to bait, some have been making an art of it for years,
… a representative of CalPERS rose to object and stated that climate change should be one of corporate America’s primary concerns, and after she called carbon dioxide emissions a “mortal danger,” Apple board member and former vice president Al Gore turned around and loudly clapped and cheered.
Hmm. Last June’s annual investment statement for CALPERS shows holdings of:
$1,250,338,249 in EXXON/MOBILE stock, and
$259,343,672 in CONOCO/PHILLIPS, for starters. Check it for yourself at:
http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/pubs/annual-investment-report-2013.pdf
CALSTRS (teachers’ retirement program) has something similar.
With unfunded liabilities looming, we retirees need to push for management changes before the present ideologues recognize the hypocrisy of their present practices and start divestiture proceedings.
So does this mean that Al Gore will have to divest his Apple stock? Or will he divest of the vast family fortune invested in the Oil and Gas sector instead?
Actually, Tim Cook comments and reasons are being distorted by both the Warmists and, sadly, now we skeptics. He was replying to suggestions of fair wages, working conditions, environmental concerns and other such. Not climate warming nor climate change. Those are words reporters are putting in his mouth. Indeed, we who question the religion of global warming can and should be for responsible environmental practices by corporations. Being environmentally sound has nothing to do with believing in global warming caused by humans. It has to do with not fouling our own nests. Go find the video or full transcript of the entire exchange. I can see the distortion loving Warmists twisting Cook’s statements, but now those of us looking at the facts.
My dislike for Apple goes back to 1985 and my first encounter with a Mac (9″ screen and all). I’d been working on minicomputers like the ModComp with the MAXIV OS, and Mini-and-MicroVAXs with VMS (loved that OS), so when the office brought in a bunch of Macs for doing our documentation and such, I was very interested to have at it.
It took me about one hour to decide I didn’t like it. Didn’t like the fonts, didn’t like the mouse, didn’t like the look’n’feel of anything. I switched to a PC running DOS 3.0 as soon as possible and never looked back. A few months later I tested Windows 3.0 (3.0!) and loved it so much more than the Apple, even with all its warts. Been a windows guy ever since, though I use UNIX a lot more at work. Would never own another Apple product.
Name a green company that has become anything in the long-run.
The worst investments on Earth are the ones that make no economic sense. That would be green ones as a sub-sample of the non-economic ones.
If Apple thinks it can become the first green success company, it might be time to divest it. Apple is about dirty electronic products that require all kinds of dangerous chemical reactions and dangerous chemicals in order to produce it and recycle it. Not anything else.
I got out of AAPL back in 2012 after enjoying a pretty good run. I’m taking a few of those realized gains and purchasing a Mark Steyn gift certificate. I’ll call it a capitalist off-set.
MrLynn, whatever usability advantages the Mac had, those have not been an issue since 2001 and Windows XP. If anything Microsoft went too far towards the Mac interface with Windows Vista/7. The only thing Macs are vastly superior to Windows machines is in the price.
Rush doesn’t know anything about technology and I turn his show off when he starts making nonsensical rants about it.
Avoiding using Google is like living in the Internet stone age.
The only “Apple” product I’ve owned was an Apple II knock-off made in Taiwan. Nice machine. Should have kept it as a collectors item maybe?
I think a (profitable) company has the right to do whatever they deem necessary to maintain their social license to operate and that includes avoiding unnecessary bad press by complying with energy efficiency measures and so on.
On the other hand the use of the word “denier” in this context is unnecessarily provocative for a person in Tim Cook’s position. Whatever his motivation for maintaining his a social license to operate it is pointless and lacking in pragmatism when selling products to unnecessarily insult those potential consumers who have a differing perspective.
Since I refuse to use a phone that’s smarter than I am, my own cell phone is a pretty basic no-name model…definitely not Apple.
I wouldn’t have one at all, but the wife insists I be nag-able 24/7. 🙁
The idiot should be doing what I and others are doing. Put up a global ban on all Russian IP addresses to prevent them from all internet commerce, information, and entertainment until the occupation of Crimea is ended.
Meanwhile he needs to read a good book on climate and I would direct his attention to Bob Tisdale’s work.
Note to moderator – Do we really need to have all of this pro-mac/pro-windows rubbish on this blog – there are plenty of other blogs where people who have nothing else to do can vent their spleen on that topic. Surely it’s off-topic.
[Reply: actually, it’s not exactly off-topic. ~ mod.]
Don’t tell Apple, but it turns out that the oceans are far healthier than anyone thought: http://pindanpost.com/2014/03/03/oceans-healthier-than-thought-and-that-also-changes-our-views-on-ocean-health/
Greenies will not be happy at this fantastic news.
I first bought an Apple 12 years ago, since then, I have bought 4 HP hard drives and 2 laptops. The Apple Mac was too much of a problem in the end. Another reason I don’t have an IPhone or ‘Ianything’. Goodbye Apple. Behaving just like Google!
Yes, but the number of (uninstallable) bloatware increases!
The new Samsung Galaxy S5 16GiB, soon on the market, have less then 8GiB available for the user. The rest are occupied by mostly bloatware. (I’m using at the time a S3 with simular problems. I don’t use any of the asocial and “share-with-Google/Samsung” apps, so there’s no sense for these to be running hidden in the background all the time stealing resources)
“We don’t want your money.”
Spoken like a very bad businessman.
“A Pew Research survey of 39 nations conducted between March and May (2013) found that 40% of Americans say climate change as a major threat to the U.S.,.. compared to a median of 54% in the global survey.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/27/most-americans-believe-climate-change-is-real-but-fewer-see-it-as-a-threat/
I know very few skeptics who don’’t believe Co2 has some effect on climate, so I guess all those deniers he’s talking about are those who don’t believe we should light ourselves on fire just yet, over “climate change.”
On that basis, in the U.S. going on two thirds of us could well be considered “deniers.” Globallly, close to half.
That’s a lot of iPhones.
If you want to hurt Apple have the local governments shut off water and power to Apples’ data centers in Oregon and NC. Or, have Apple build the centers and then condemn them under eminent domain and turn them into denier GCM server farms!
Poptech I still use XP, which is OK but IMO not a patch on OS X; Win7 is closer, but no cigar. I am not altogether happy with Apple’s moving the Mac OS in the direction of iOS, but to my mind it is still superior to anything M$ offers.
Back in the ’80s, the DOS command line interface mystified me. Then came the Mac, with a genuine GUI, and—wonder of wonders!—desktop publishing! I have never looked back. M$ attempted one steal after another of the Mac OS (Windows 3.1, Win95, etc.) but never really came close. And the Windows OS was full of holes that invited all manner of malware to the party—rarely a problem for Macs, even now, when practically every college student arrives on campus with a MacBook Pro or Air.
For the record, of the four active computers in the household, I have my two Macs, currently running OS 10.8.5, and my wife her two Dells, running Win7 (her company software is Windows—and IE–only; dinosaurs in my view). When I need to run XP, I use a virtual machine running in Parallels on my iMac. Works fine.
But, contrary to the robust disparagement of Mac users above, not all of us are yuppie cultists thronging Apple Stores. The Mac OS, going back to System 6 (in my experience) has always been vastly superior to anything else in the personal-computer market, and that’s why I stick with it. Obviously, YMMV.
/Mr Lynn
“They make all pretentious over priced crap bought mostly by people who want to seem trendy or really don’t know how to use technology.”
I disagree. We have Android and iPad here, and the iPad is certainly overpriced in terms of the hardware inside, but it also performs better than my Nexus 7 that’s theoretically four times as powerful.