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.
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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
“Another reason for avoiding crApple. But given the gimmicky toys are crap, incompatible with anything else and cost twice the going rate, weren’t there enough reasons to buy anyone else’s products already”.
+1
makes me feel good apple products are banned in our household. of course, the kids (and their friends) got to use them in school, and ‘fondly’ referred to the school computers as macintrashes. after my android phone got wet and doing research on how to save it, I was given another reason to be glad I didn’t purchase an iphone. if an iphone get’s wet, you have to buy a new one because you can’t take it apart to dry it out. I was able to dry out my android phone, and save several hundred dollars not having to buy a new phone.
If the problem is not listed as a known issue, it is likely a software/hardware issue with your phone or the PC you are attempting to update it from.
Haha, nice …an actual reason to buy an iPhone, just for your app.
is it the writer, Philip Elmer DeWitt who used the term “denier”, not the Apple CEO? just asking, because this story is sparking off another round of denier abuse:
2 Mar: UK Independent: Apple’s Tim Cook: Business isn’t just about making a profit
by Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith
But Apple chief executive Tim Cook has shocked some in the US with an impassioned attack on the single-minded pursuit of profit – and a direct appeal to climate-change deniers not to buy shares in his firm.
Eyewitnesses said Cook, who succeeded Steve Jobs as boss of the technology giant in 2011, was visibly angry as he took on a group of right-wing investors during a question-and-answer session at a shareholders’ meeting…
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/apples-tim-cook-business-isnt-just-about-making-a-profit-9163931.html
as viewed from another perspective!
3 Mar: Greenbiz: How GE and Apple shareholders became tools for climate deniers
By Joel Makower
Last week, the National Center for Public Policy Research, a group “dedicated to providing free-market solutions to today’s public policy problems,” claimed credit for a “major concession” by General Electric, “that the international conglomerate will no longer engage in any environmental project solely to address so-called climate change concerns.”…
“For years, GE has been the poster boy for crony capitalism and corporate America’s green energy cheerleader,” the center declared in a press release. “Now, GE shareholders have confirmation that the company’s strategies will henceforth be led by true market forces and not by blind adherence to global warming zealotry.”
Has GE and ecomagination, its nine-year-old marketing campaign, suddenly turned tail?
Not so much. While the company changed the language on its website — possibly based on pressure from NCPPR, although the company won’t say — it claims it hasn’t changed its policy or operations one bit. It still unabashedly is focused on tapping what it sees as a massive business opportunity for renewable energy and other cleaner and more efficient technologies, aimed at addressing some of the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges, including climate change.
“Nothing really has changed here. We clarify different policies all the time,” Seth Martin, GE’s director of financial communications, told me. “We’ve always said that these projects have to make business sense, that this is a business strategy.” He noted that the new language it posted “didn’t reflect a change of position or anything along those lines.”…
NCPPR seems to be engaging in a clever and effective version of the old question “Are you still beating your wife?” — in which the climate deniers win no matter what. If a company “clarifies” its policies, as GE did, to reflect something it had been doing all along, NCPPR takes credit for a “major concession.” If a company refuses to respond or, as Apple did, commits to actions it deems in the public interest but which don’t necessarily have a visible financial return, NCPPR castigates it as anti-shareholder. It’s a lose-lose game.
Greenpeace could not have done it better.
http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/03/03/how-ge-and-apple-shareholders-became-tools-climate-deniers
I did a write up awhile back re: Apple here:
http://dailybail.com/home/links-apple-patent-could-transform-wind-power-industry.html
You missed the meaning, the Catch 22 question was, “When did you stop beating your wife?”
Is not a failure of transparency to stockholders a failure of legal obligations to stockholders?
“When a complete non-tech like me can choose from maybe a dozen flavours of Linux he particularly likes (out of hundreds he might or might not like) and use the system free on a hundred dollar machine bought off ebay, and have it all running fast and fine…”.
Pclinuxos dual booting XP on a Lenovo X61 works for me.
I an not impressed in some Apple jerk lecturing me on “sustainability”.
A company that specialises in hype and marketing to make sure your
device is expensive and obsolete as quickly as possible.
And still zombies line up at midnight when a new toy is out…
I will bet most of those hipsters at the protest in front of the White House in the previous post had Apple products. Apple sells an image, which is why their products have few, if any, screws or removable batteries or anything else that makes it look put together. Image costs money, lots of money. And where do these hipsters get their money? I promise you it isn’t by working hard.
Apple is also sitting on hordes of cash, unwilling to pass any along to shareholders. They are also one of the worst, if not the worst, patent trolls out there. Most companies sue patent violators to get back royalties; Apple sues so that your product cannot be sold. While Apple makes a good product, it is because of their unethical behavior that I avoid anything they sell. Apple also has a cult following. Apple could sell iDirt and people would swear it is better than regular dirt and then pay twice as much for iDirt as they would for regular topsoil.
They are the perfect company for the eco-loons and hipsters. In fact, Apple follower and eco-loons go together like macaroni and cheese, peperoni and pizza, and peanut butter and jelly. Both are rich and both have believe their cause can do no wrong.
In the same vein as stockholders in the great financial meltdown where not told that their investments were at the mercy of corporations blackmailed by community organizers and the politicians at their beck and call?
I owned an iPhone 3GS some years back, I came to the conclusion that iTunes was Steve Jobs way of punishing consumers stupid enough to buy Apple products.
I ditched it and got a Windows phone, several phones later I’ve never looked back.
would someone please add to the 3 comments at this link, by posting the link to the 30 holocaust denier quotes (or whatever the latest tally is):
1 Mar: Scholars and Rogues: Brian Angliss: Roy Spencer attacks Anti-Defamation League for denouncing his use of “global warming Nazis”
The Anti-Defamation League clearly understands that a “denier” is someone who denies the truth of something. Unfortunately for his credibility and legacy, Roy Spencer does not.
Last week I wrote a post cataloguing six significant issues with Spencer’s original rant that sounded “more like paranoid ramblings than the words of someone who should be a respected elder statesman of climate science.” …
In his ADL diatribe, Spencer repeatedly wrote that the word “denier” was meant to invoke the Holocaust…
Just because Spencer repeatedly asserted that the word “denier” automatically invokes Holocaust denial doesn’t make the assertion true. As I’ve pointed out before, the word “denier” does not automatically invoke Holocaust denial. It simply means that someone is denying something. If Spencer wants to continue claiming to be a victim, he would do well to offer evidence in support of his claim, something that is in short supply in both this and his original rants. Emotional appeals and crocodile tears are not evidence…
http://scholarsandrogues.com/2014/03/01/roy-spencer-attacks-anti-defamation-league-for-denouncing-his-use-of-global-warming-nazis/
Crony Capitalism NEVER ends well for the people.
There are occasional well-publicized vulnerabilities, which Apple issues patches for. But the vast majority of Mac users are able to run with no anti-virus software at all, without problems. That’s not true in the PC world. I installed Sophos anti-virus on my Macs a year or two ago, after the scare you linked to, and so far all it has found are numerous Trojans that infect Windows machines, not Macs.
/Mr Lynn
artwest, even better why are batteries for Apple devices almost never user replaceable? Apple devices contribute more to landfills thanks to their idiotic “designs” that Fanboys think are “genius”, Ooooh, make it minimalist and white! So trendy and forward thinking. Jobs was “brilliant” and I too shall learn from him how to use my friends and rip them off.
http://gawker.com/359590/woz-ok-so-jobs-stole-from-me-but-he-also-made-the-ipod
Timmy, they are YOUR boss. Apple is dead.
RE: pat at 6:18 pm
I agree with pat here. “Denier” does not appear in the Philip Elmer-DeWitt column text. Nor is the word used in the NCPPR release. Nor in the Mac Observer.
The denier label seems to be a non-quote invented by a fortune.cnn editor who controls the headline.
pat says:
March 2, 2014 at 6:18 pm
Very interesting links. Thanks for posting them.
So according to Cook we cannot be critical of the global warming religion but it was OK for Steve Jobs to believe in alternative medicine to treat cancer?
http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortune/index.htm?
Pat, I posted the link to the now 37 quotes there but it was deleted,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/02/skeptics-smeared-as-holocaust-deniers.html
I don’t deny that the photograph makes it look like Tim Cook is sucking a lemon.
Samsung makes better phones and tablets. Any 64bit quadcore AMD powered PC is a better deal than a Mac.
crosspatch says:
This pretty much spells the end of Apple. Once they go from concentrating on great technology with a great user experience to doing things for ideological reasons, they’re gone. Jobs is not there anymore to keep them focused. They have just alienated a large portion of their potential customer and investor base.
Good comment as usual. But I don’t think Apple is going away. They just need someone focused on the bottom line. Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, and he is causing grief for shareholders by not concentrating on profitability. Shares are down about 40%. Looking at the numbers, that just shouldn’t be the case.
Apple has a history of having a good CEO, then an inept CEO, then a good CEO… let’s hope they get a good CEO next time around. Because Tim Cook doesn’t have his eye on the ball.
Apple Loses Overall Market Share Despite iPhone Sales Boost
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/apple-loses-overall-market-share-despite-iphone-sales-boost.html/?a=viewall