Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Guardian is celebrating that Big Business jetted into a Miami Climate Conference, touting their 2050 climate plans and purchases of wind power. But in my opinion not everything is as it seems.
Top US firms including Walmart and Ford oppose Trump on climate change
- Big businesses appear at Miami summit to show progress on sustainability
- ‘We’ve been working on this for a long time, prior to this administration’
Richard Luscombe in Miami
Saturday 2 December 2017 03.32 AEDT
Since taking office, Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, rolled back numerous protections against environmental pollution and espoused coal as the fuel of the future, all in the name of job creation and ending what he sees as the “theft of American prosperity”.
Yet the big businesses he claims to champion are increasingly choosing to ignore the US president’s sceptical stance on climate change and press ahead towards their own environmental goals without him.
Several of the country’s corporate giants, including Walmart, General Motors, Ford and Mars, appeared this week at the second annual Companies v Climate Change conference in Miami to showcase their progress and reinforce their belief that sustainability and other green targets can be achieved irrespective of the policies and purpose of the White House.
“We were disappointed [the] US pulled out of Paris, but what’s so great is what companies can do to make a difference,” said Zach Freeze, senior director for strategic initiatives in sustainability at Walmart, the first retailer to announce science-based targets for emissions reductions and a key signatory to the We Are Still In declaration that followed Trump’s Paris withdrawal.
“We all have a lot we can do and should do, it’s becoming more and more of an imperative. We’ve been working on this for a long time, prior to this administration [and] we’re thinking about 10 years from now where we’re going to be. Regardless of what’s happening, this is something we believe in. If we do it the right way we will see progress.”
Walmart, which claims 260 million customers per week worldwide, and employs 1.4 million workers in the US alone, earlier this year announced its Project Gigaton initiative that aims to reduce CO2 emissions globally by one billion metric tons before 2050.
Other companies at the conference in Miami – a poignant venue following flooding from Hurricane Irma in September and the threat of obliteration from sea-level rise within the next century – touted their own achievements in defiance of Trump’s climate stance. For example, General Motors’ purchase of 200 megawatts of wind energy for its Ohio and Illinois plants achieves 20% of its target to use only renewable energy sources by 2050. Confectionery giant Mars, meanwhile, has launched a $1bn sustainability plan, targeting a 70% reduction in greenhouse gases.
…
As a small businessman I’ve noticed something about big business – they frequently seem to champion government initiatives which hurt small businesses, especially small businesses which are potential future competitors.
The Guardian claims President Trump is the champion of big business, but this is not true. President Trump wants to help all businesses, to create jobs and restore prosperity for the American people.
Many of those shuttered factories the President mentions in “theft of American prosperity” were owned by small businesses.
Plenty of small business people own factories, making a living and creating jobs providing a niche service. All of those small factory owners had the potential to grow into commercial rivals to big businesses – until the globalist green policies championed by their big business rivals shut them down.
I’m not saying big business green efforts are just a plot to hurt small business. Plenty of big business CEOs are true believers, they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. A lot of their customers also worry about the climate, they like to be reassured that they’re not harming the environment when they buy big meat packs for their next family BBQ.
Of course not every big business CEO is the same. Some big businesses courageously oppose anti-competitive government policies, often earning strident public criticism for their efforts, despite the short term advantage such policies would deliver to their own businesses.
The bottom line, it does not hurt the competitive advantage of most big businesses to support policies which increase the costs and time wasting bureaucratic burden on all businesses. Big businesses can usually absorb the extra bureaucracy and cost. Small businesses not so much.
The lie of GW is so deeply entrenched in these people that they are completely blinded to the truth. So sad…
They can do what they will with their own money, give away their house and live in a cave for all I care.
As long as they don’t try forcing me me (or President Trump) to follow them or require the taxpayers to fund their crusade.
I think that’s what is commonly referred to as: Freedom.
And you have squarely put you thumb on the main point. President Trump isn’t prohibiting big business to chose ‘renewable’ energy or have a ‘sustainable’ philosophy so big business isn’t defying anybody.
Well said!
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Except that it is not the CEOs money – the company belongs to the shareholders so we should be deciding on virtue signalling expenditure.
@ Gerry, England
Shur nuff, iffen that’s what you believe, …….. just like England or the United States belongs to all its legal citizens, …….. RIGHT?
Duh, unless you are a “shareholder” in a privately held corporation …… or a MAJOR stock owner in a public corporation, …… the only thing you get to “decide on” is whether to sell the “stock” you own or to purchase more of the same.
Yes, this is what the Guardian wilfully ignores every time it reports Trump/Paris.
There are plenty of good reasons for being more energy efficient and more “sustainable” and if big businesses think they can gain more customers by playing the green card, then they are going to do it. Fine. That does not come out of taxes.
The other lie they persistently repeat is that Trump has pulled USA out of Paris which he has NOT actually done. He has just stopped giving away US tax dollars to an unaccountable US slush fund.
Good point Rhoda.
Much of the leftist meeja thinks the failure to introduce a new subsidy (eg by the creation of the Tesla battery Target demanded by our Greens) is equivalent to prohibiting new technologies. And that the failure to dynamite perfectly serviceable new coal plants is the same as banning the “cheaper” wind that would otherwise step in and lower prices. (As soon as someone else builds them a grid.)
This addiction to Govt is killing the country, but no one is capable of arguing against Big Govt.
Progs are so steeped in their view of the world as only being able to function via central command and control that they just cannot comprehend freedom — it’s anathema to them.
It’s why they’re dangerous. It’s also their primary weakness, as we are seeing here in the U.S. — they have no idea how to counteract a decentralized resistance to their tyranny and so they flail about with tales of Russia and boogeymen, and parts start flying off all over the place.
No, it’s simply economics. The subsidies for building bird choppers is so great that it is profitable to build these things for the tax breaks and subsidies. Take away the government freebees and the wind turbines will be shuttered very quickly.
Warren Buffet: “Wind farms are useless; I only invest for tax credit.”
I always comment to friends about the windmills and solar panels that power the delivery vehicles taht take products form world-wide sources to all those Walmart stores! I’m sure that Josh could illustrate the concept. And GM’s welders of car bodies might suffer if a cloud comes over, or the wind subsides. Bu never mind! The planet will be saved!
Do you suppose Walmart will draft a fleet of sailing ships to get its products here from China? THAT would dedication. Buying credits for wind energy (meaning one is using the SAME electricity everyone else is, exactly the same) is just a lie. I can’t support companies that lie.
Its pretty simple really imo.
Big businesses, particularly retailers, are marketing driven so their marketing image is of votal importance. For the Green Blob that is the vulnerability especially in the age of (anti) social media.
Big business has its corpoate testicles in plain sight and easy reach. The loss of profits following from a negative campaign is leveraged into the great fat bonuses of the management regimes which only compounds the sensitivity. Ad to that the opportunities for the marketing industry whenever their great big corporate clients eally, really need them and its a lay down misere as to what will happen.
It is little wonder it is very careful or not provoking the Green Blob Mob.
Exactly. While dissing the deniers costs them absolutely nothing.
Even a dead fish can go with the flow …
And figure out a way to make money off it.
Even after a Century of repeated failure, many people still believe that Communism could be made to work in a free society. ‘CAGW – Global Warming Theory ‘ runs on the same lines.
+1
CAGW is a extravegantly devised trojan horse full of communists.
Sad, but true.
Majority of young adults think astrology is a science
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2014/02/11/Majority-of-young-adults-think-astrology-is-a-science/5201392135954/
Majority of young adults do not think.
How many are just mistaking “astrology” for “astronomy”?
Communism just needs to be tried ONE MORE TIME! And if that doesn’t work, try it one MORE time! And if that fails, repeat and repeat and repeat!
@ Horace Jason Oxboggle
HA, me thinks you have also accurately described the “promises” being made each and every election “cycle” by the Democrat Party (US) and/or all Democrat politicians vying to be elected or re-elected.
“One more time, …… just vote for me/us one more time, ….. and I’ll guarantee you we’ll “get er dun” next time, ……. next time, …… next time.”
Horace, you have to give the collectivists some credit; they serve to organize the otherwise disorganized individualists.
If ot weren’t for the collectivist socialists and communists (who differ, near as I can tell only by their choice of facial hair) the individualists would be quite happy just making decisions about which roads need to be repaired and for how much.
Both sides are right. President Trump does not want to pour Billions into the Paris Agreement. He wants to take care of America first. These companies in the article prove that they don’t need the Paris Agreement for their individual companies to decide that they are going to on their own reduce Carbon Emissions. They will do great things for America’s environment , and President Trump will do great things for America’s economy. In the end everyone wins!
Blindly reducing carbon emissions is a really stupid idea. Carbon emissions sustain the planet’s
life forms, in case you’ve never been inside a science classroom.
We will all be poorer for it, but it is their choice. Or rather their shareholders’ choice. Then again we’ve seen CalPers rate of return with their
greengreed agenda.If Walmart wants to go “green” all they have to do is stop buying from China. But then the shelves would be empty.
They will do very bad things for their collective bottom line. Unless they figure out a way to make the government pay for it, of course.
You would be correct if you said they are going on their own to reduce real pollution (particulate matter, NOx, “dirty water). But there is NO advantage to the environment in reducing CO2.
(Of course the dirty little secret, that the MSM doesn’t want you to know, is that Trump ALSO wants to reduce particulate matter, NOx, dirty water).
Sid
“President Trump wants to take care of Americans”
Please tell me how the proposed tax cuts that Trump wants differ from a UN green fund. Both methods siphon cash vertically away from everyday Americans, basically into the same hands but different accounts.
If he succeeds it will start a global realignment to stay attractive.
CAGW = Communism, how droll and lacking in imagination.
How many parallel universes is yours removed from ours?
Don’t allow tax deductions for windmills or you are taking it out of the hides of the poor.
Will they have the same attitude when subsidies drop off line???
I see that Germany will no longer give subsidies to Tesla.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-subsidies-germany/germany-removes-tesla-from-subsidies-list-as-too-pricey-idUSKBN1DV4SB
How many of these big companies don’t want to take the chance of hurting potential with the tree hugging, root kissing Euro-Weasels?
Good point! They’re catering to their clientele, wooing their customers. Very astute of you!
Guardian: “Big Businesses Defy President Trump on Climate Change”
Dream on..
I don’t recall President Trump telling “big businesses” that they couldn’t support “climate change”, however, I believe he is saying that the US Government isn’t going to tell them that they have to support it.
But you see, if a leftist doesn’t like something they stop anyone from doing it at the point of a gun, if a libertarian doesn’t like something they simply refrain from doing it.
Owen
Do you have an example.
Regards
From WACO to taxes, the examples are endless. Are you really questioning why Thomas Jefferson described government as a necessary evil?
ozonebust: Gun control is a good example. Lefties in the US can’t stand that citizens have the right to own firearms, because a few psychopaths use them to act out their murder-suicide fantasies. They want more and more government regulations — even though these would do nothing to eliminate psychopaths who want to murder people — to the point where some lefties have called for an Australian-style gun seizure by police.
A libertarian, believing that people should not own firearms, just wouldn’t buy any.
ozonebust: I would start with the EPA, the US Environmental Protection Agency. They have rules about a fish called the delta smelt that limits the amount of fresh water is available in California. They have restrictions on any patch of water bigger than a small puddle which can prevent building projects going ahead and then there is the clean air act.
http://www.westernfarmpress.com/blog/californians-lose-800000-acre-feet-water-305-minnows
https://thinkprogress.org/a-controversial-epa-rule-is-pitting-small-farmers-against-big-agribusiness-650061605b8b/
http://www.wri.org/blog/2010/11/what-are-limits-epa-clean-air-act-holds-answers
What about the gun point part, you ask: The EPA has “guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/10/epa-spends-millions-on-military-style-weapons-repo/
The only favorable spin that could be put on businesses claiming adherence to the green blob is uncertainty as to whether the political initiatives put in place by Trump will last. Fear of the Democrats, who have a large number of rabid greens, is reasonable. The Republicans have a very poor record of punishing people or companies that suck up to the opposition, so caution has been low-cost.
“press ahead towards their own environmental goals without him.” Fine. If they believe that is in their best interest, let them have at it. But don’t saddle those who can not afford or don’t buy into all the hype to comply with regulations that will put them out of business. Time will tell if the big businesses made the right decision. It only makes sense if they become energy self-sufficient.
“As a small businessman I’ve noticed something about big business – they frequently seem to champion government initiatives which hurt small businesses, especially small businesses which are potential future competitors.”…………absolutely
They listed only 4 ‘big businesses’ that attended……out of the tens of thousands there are that did not
….not a big deal when put in that perspective
Those businesses were doing presentations, not ‘attendees’.
The idiocy of all this (aside from its narrow minded stupidity) is that these businesses are supporting dopey, environmentally obscene power generation schemes like wind power. So they are therefore doubly stupid : in what they are trying to do, and in their method of doing it. Now that’s being comprehensibly stupid.
Wind is price competitive. See WSJ words in my comment below.
Not when correctly calculated. See essay True Cost of Wind at Climate Etc. for details.
The WSJ can make anything price competitive. That’s the miracle of selective parameter inputs.
WSJ words: = Erin Ailworth and Russell Gold
Sometimes, even on the same day, newspapers report opposite facts.
Go figure.
” comprehensively”
First of all, don’t believe anything printed in the guardian.
Second: Big businesses make their plans years, if not decades in advance of anything actually happening therefore, they are mostly by now reliant on AGW to suit their business model of the future, which they have already designed and implemented. Therefore their proclamations on the Paris Accord have nothing to do with the environment, it matters only that their profits are not affected by yet another change in direction.
And not that profits are a bad thing, merely that supporting a false narrative on climate change so doggedly will ultimately prove very expensive for them, their shareholders and their customers.
Nor is it climate change that’s affected Western business, it’s cheap labour. Clydeside shipyards crashed over a generation ago because of cheap South Korean labour.
The writing was on the wall more than 25 years ago, but we all ignored it, now we’re paying the price.
Hotscot
You must factor in Union influence and control in the UK, as well as the bloody mindedness of the yard workers to change.
Folks talk about the reducing unemployment in the USA, but a study of part or full-time and wage rates is not friendly commentary.
ozonebust
Fair comment, but if yard workers wanted to continue to run a shipyard and compete against the Koreans, they had to accept Korean wages. So whatever they did they were going to be broke. I don’t blame the unions for fighting for survival, I do however, blame them for their tactics such as Scargill during the miners strike.
And in the same vein, there are persistent objections in the UK to part time working, multiple jobs and zero hours contracts people must endure to make a living. But I’m sorry, at least these people have work, it might not be great work, but it’s up to them how they better themselves.
Ultimately, there is only so much wealth in the world. Up until a generation or so ago, the Chinese, Russians and Indians didn’t want to engage with commercialism (India less so) but there are now two, billion people continents wanting a slice of the pie. And they don’t really care about working conditions or human rights, they just work till they drop.
The rest of the world had better get used to it because these countries have only just woken up. When they come down to breakfast they’ll want their fair share of bacon. Which means less for everyone else.
Traveling on the underground in London I saw a man reading a newspaper covered with a towel, I asked my friend why, “simple he said, it’s the Guardian”
The virtue signaling is strong in BigB CEOs, they rather would look good than run their companies well
bonana fanna fynuts.
WSJ …
Electricity Prices Plummet as Gas, Wind Gain Traction and Demand Stalls
Texas is a microcosm of pressures facing power generators; ‘It’s too late’ for coal
The rapid rise of wind and natural gas as sources of electricity is roiling U.S. power markets, forcing more companies to close older generating plants.
Wholesale electricity prices are falling near historic lows in parts of the country with competitive power markets, as demand for electricity remains stagnant while newer, less-expensive generating facilities continue to come online.
[ … ]
In 2016, all of the new generation built in the Southwest Power Pool, a grid that covers an area from Louisiana to Montana, was wind, gas and solar. The vast majority of the retirements were coal and nuclear plants.
Wind is the fastest-growing source of power on Texas’ grid. Last year, wind generated 15% of the electricity in ERCOT, more than nuclear power, which accounted for 12%. By 2019, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute expect wind to surpass coal as ERCOT’s second-largest source of electricity.
“Solar and wind are now competitive with natural gas-fired generation,” said Curt Morgan, Vistra’s chief executive.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/electricity-prices-plummet-as-gas-wind-gain-traction-and-demand-stalls-1512043200
Renewables are price competitive so why not use them and brag about it.
s-u-b-s-i-d-i-e-s
Other peoples money.
What is the difference between immoral and amoral?
“Renewables are price competitive”. Not when they have massive subsidies. And renewables (wind and solar) require hundreds of times more land area to produce the same amount of electricity. Price is not the only parameter.
The purpose of the subsidies is to kill the competition. Big business subsidy farming.
Renewables simply can’t be competitive if they require 100% backup. It means duplication of capacity.
“Renewables are price competitive so why not use them and brag about it.”
Because they kill millions of animals every year. You want to brag about that? I wonder if those private American companies want to brag about how many American Eagles and other animals they are killing with their windmills.
Do they want to brag about how they have blighted the American landscape with those horrible windmills? Do they want to live near those horrible windmills themselves?
As for price competitive: Why is it that if windmills are so price competitive, the NextEra windmill company (and Exxon to a lesser extent) is all over tv trying to sell itself to the public.
That advertising must cost a lot of money. There must be a good reason why they are spending that money. They started out advertising early in the mornings, and now they are advertising morning and evening. Curious. One would think that if their services were in such demand, they wouldn’t need to spend money on advertising.
Agree 100%.
As I was told in consumer psyche class, even the Post Office advertises. Lack of competition is not a reason to forego advertising.
You left out the rising cost to the end user. See any electric bills get smaller?
Oh yay. Wind is perpetual now, and storage of power is solved. Where do I send all my money?
rovingbroker: You have fallen for the spin. Re-read this part: “The rapid rise of wind and natural gas …” The “wind” part is insignificant while the gas part is crucial. It is the reduction in the price of gas that has caused prices to fall. Countries like Germany and Denmark still rely largely on wind and still have some of the highest electricity prices world wide.
The second part to the spin is: “Wind is the fastest-growing …”. “Fastest growing” is a spin phrase that means “smallest”. If I had a business that had a turnover of $1 this year it would be very easy to have a growth of 100% next year. That would make all the Fortune 500 companies look sick on a percentage basis but would they think I was any competition? I think not. Electricity from wind still provides about 0% of the world’s energy to the nearest whole percentage point.
There are thousands of catastrophic predictions since 1984.
Can anyone tell of any that came true.
The record of success is abysmal and frightening because the poor are dying needlessly.
On any other subject their record of zero from thousands would have been seen as a a fraud after five or so failures.
How does this racket survive at all?
Selling lies and fear. An age-old method that is quite successful, no matter how technologically advanced society becomes.
Big Business does lots of “business” with Big Government. Follow the Money!
Marketing, ever hear of it. Sex sells cars to the macho and stupid. Green washing sells cars to an equally stupid demographic.
Socialists never understand that it is not what you want to do with your own money, it is what government wants to do with our money. If private businesses and citizens want to spend their own money on things, most of us don’t care.
Big business talks a good game because it is good PR.
Businesses know that Democrats think you need to ask permission from government to do anything and that Republicans are philosophically opposed to being gate keepers. So there a penalties for standing up to Democrats and none for standing up to Republicans. For most companies, particularly one like Wal-Mart which is regularly in the sights of liberal left, turning cost saving or revenue generating actions into virtue signaling pays dividends in dividing the left’s onslaught.
Good point, Sean.
Your Youngstown Sheet and Tube photo brought back old memories. My grandfather worked there until they found out how old he was and forced him to retire at age 75. I am sure that the harsh environment in that factory contributed to his untimely early death at 100 years of age.
My grandpa in his 70s could still heave big railway sleepers onto his trailer for firewood. He was a WW2 artillery machinist. Made them tough back then.
That awful, awful job environment, that raised a family of five on a singe income. Lol
Corporate America is that seriously out of touch with working America.
In 1950, the average US salary was $4237, and the average house price was $7354. Flash forward to 2016 and the average US salary is $56,516 and the average house price is $382,500. Back in the day, one could almost buy the average house on one year of the average salary. Now it would take almost seven years of the average salary to buy the average house.
Is the problem now low wages, or high costs?
Drat for not proofreading better. That should be “buy the average house on less than two years of the average salary.”
James: false choice. The problem is neither high cost nor low wages. It’s a willingness to pay for far more, in terms of both size and features, than previous generations. I grew up in the 1950s in a typical house – 900 sq ft, no central heat (central furnace), no AC, two bedrooms, one bathroom, no built-in appliances, no fireplace, no deck/patio/pool, no jacuzzi tub. Houses around here cost about $100/sq foot (WITH central air/heat). I suspect I could replicate my childhood home for not much more than one year’s salary.
Maybe the ex-factory could be used to house Greenies, to be supplied with animal dung on which to cook their meals, as is done in third-world countries? Or maybe the Greenies could move to the afore-mentioned third-world countries, and thir repalcements could be recruited from those same countries?
Does Wal Mart actually make anything?, I don’t think so. They will push this reduction downwards to the suppliers? Their biggest CO2 footprint is distribution, by selling the distribution arm the problem is not theirs. Smarter lighting and more efficient in-store refrigeration is a normal part of store upgrades.
Rooftop solar should be standard on all stores. Am I missing something.
Ford, how much of the raw materials component is supplied from out of the USA.
Walmart exported all their CO2 production to China in the 90s.
Walmart is saving CO2 by replacing checkout employees with robots.
Rooftop solar is a bust on installation costs alone, never mind if they give the panels away for free. You don’t make it up by installing more of it.
Does Wal Mart actually make anything?, I don’t think so. They will push this reduction downwards to the suppliers? Their biggest CO2 footprint is distribution, by selling the distribution arm the problem is not theirs. Smarter lighting and more efficient in-store refrigeration is a normal part of store upgrades.
Rooftop solar should be standard on all stores. Am I missing something.
Ford, how much of the raw materials component is supplied from out of the USA.
Historically, Walmart was credited with reducing inflation in the USA by three quarters of a percent annually by importing cheap goods from overseas, killing the jobs that Trump is trying to regain. Perhaps Pres Trump should impose on Walmart that 60% of goods must be USA manufactured, and take full ownership of the footprint for those goods.
“Does Wal Mart actually make anything?”
They make money, and employees miserable.
Anything else?
Remember when Sam Walton made commercials bragging how WalMart “would buy American whenever there was a choice of product? ” Those days are long gone.
So is Sam Walton.
JohnWho
December 1, 2017 at 4:35 pm
I don’t recall President Trump telling “big businesses” that they couldn’t support “climate change”, however, I believe he is saying that the US Government isn’t going to tell them that they have to support it.
I thought this comment was worthy of a repeat!
Some people (Liberals) cannot understand the concept of government NOT controlling business (or citizens)
SR.
SR
In general big business and the banks control the government. They have for some considerable time. The President does not control a helluva lot really.
You need to read about the attempted coup by DuPont etc after the WW2 of the USA presidency nothing happened to the conspirators, perpetrators.
Regards
General Smedley Butler, the plot to seize the Whitehouse.
These are the same people who think a tax reduction is a government subsidy.
Worthy of repeat only if you add this expenditure is not tax deductible, otherwise you and I are paying for it.
What they should do is give Ford 2050 tomorrow and cut the power off to them. As for Walmart, I don’t buy anything there anymore and haven’t for a long time now.
your virtue has been firmly signalled, thanks.
Everyone of the corporations attending are obligated to make a profit for their stock holders. If they fail in their fiduciary duties, tbey will be taken to court. So, we know they are making money for their stockholders. Most likely, at taxpayer expense. I seriously doubt any of the corporate heads attending buy into man-made warming anymore than German industrialists bought into NAZIism. They are simply following ithe money!
Having grown up on the South Side of Youngstown, Ohio and the adjacent suburb or Boardman, the photo of the now-defunct Youngstown Sheet and Tube building also brought back memories to me as another reader mentioned. It also brought back some sad memories of a more recent vintage.
The once thriving steel town is now a ghost of it’s former self with half the population it once had. My grandmother’s house in the south side neighborhood bordering Boardman remained in an aging, but still nice residential area as late as 1991 when I visited while moving from Upstate NY to Minnesota. When I went back to a high school reunion in 2005 many of the houses in the block were boarded up and most appeared to be run-down. A recent search with Google Earth revealed that in this block, 8 out of the 26 houses had be torn down (to eliminate squatters and “crack” houses) using money from a federal “neighborhood improvement” program. In their places are weedy, unmaintained vacant lots. The once imposing stone Lutheran Church at the end of the street is now a Lutheran mission and is the only maintained building around.
Very Sad!
Youngstown was a big steel town. Big steel was run by people who did not invest in plant and equipment and plants became obsolete compared to foreign competition. Executives put the extra money in their own pockets. The other culprit was big unions. Guys I knew had 16 weeks vacation and made very good money until their jobs disappeared. As a corporate executive I never had more than 4 weeks vacation and did not make as much as union high school graduates until I was in my 30’s even with my post graduate degree. But the bigger problem caused by the union was work rules making the companies extremely inefficient compared to competition. Youngstown was a democrat town with crooks in every crevice. Remember the congressman, previously sheriff, who tried to get reelected from prison? I do. Friend of some of those in my family.
JimG1
The large 3 bedroom house with dining room, large living room, breakfast nook, sewing room, full basement, large long lot with garden in the back and front porch across the whole front of the house was my grandmother’s that I talked about above. My grandfather was able to buy it by working in the Youngstown Steel Mills. He died before I was born so I always think of it as my Grandmother’s house. In those days he worked a 12 hour shift and considered himself fortunate if he could get a “double trick”, that is two back-to-back 12 hours shifts to make some extra money! Before that they lived across the state border in PA a few miles away and he was a piano tuner, but couldn’t support a wife and five kids on what he made, so he started commuting on the trolley to Youngstown every day to work in the mills. Finally they saved enough to buy the house and move into Youngstown. It was the American middle-class success story of that era.
There were reasons why the labor movement took hold back then. We can’t imagine back-to-back 12 hour shifts today. Also the steel companies had immigrant labor quarters near the mills with houses with 12 beds to support 24 workers on two shifts! Like most organizations and/or movements, however, once the awful conditions started to be remedied after strikes and labor contracts, the push for more benefits continued to keep the union leaders in power. Finally what I call a “labor entitlement” above all else mentality began to prevail that can be seen today. I also agree that the industry was too late in moving from the old Bessemer Converters to the new Open Hearth technology. This was largely managements fault plus the fact that the new competing steel industry in Japan, Korea and India was built on the new technology we supplied them after WWII. As with most things in history, no one factor can be blamed.
No matter what, looking at these “rust belt” cities is depressing.
It’s flipped around now. It’s the opposite, but as extreme as it was half a century ago. There’s a fascinating paper out there. It looked at educational requirements in job openings, then it looked at the actual educational attainment of employees in those positions. It found that in lots of positions that require college degrees there were lots of employees who didn’t have any and I mean 30-40% of employees.
The poor pay and working conditions transferred to places like China, India, mexico, Malaysia. Walmart capitalizes on poor outsourced jobs and anyone that shops there. Their newfound eco conscience is just smoke and mirrors looking at profit.
Walmart does not manufacture, but buys from cheap energy rich countries, such as China, to simply import.
Ford is a dismal case.
It keeps on closing down in the West and USA, building in Taiwan, China, Venezuela, and only assembling in the USA.
So there are plenty of jobs and emissions, they just don’t happen in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ford_factories
that’s right.
it trickled down to those who gave the most for the least
the customer made that decision.
korea makes really good stuff, too.
If these companies want to bet their future on this…go ahead. The objection is to government unilaterally imposing taxes and other costs on our behalf for the ignoble cause.
A lot of large retailers probably also think that they can do the virtue signalling and leave it up to their suppliers to make the changes, if the changes are made at all.
Also, once more, Sainsbury’s the UK supermarket has previously made some similarly foolish commitments about CO2 and their attempts to save the planet with wind and sunshine.
Then they announced they were installing (fossil fuelled) generating systems as backup against the increased likelihood of national or regional power cuts. One of their senior managers finally looked into the “green” abyss and didn’t like what he saw.
“Yet the big businesses he claims to champion are increasingly choosing to ignore the US president’s sceptical stance on climate change and press ahead towards their own environmental goals without him.”
These businesses are free to go their own way on climate change. Trump isn’t requiring them to toe any line.
As long as these companies don’t use taxpayer money, nobody cares what they do.
From the article: “The bottom line, it does not hurt the competitive advantage of most big businesses to support policies which increase the costs and time wasting bureaucratic burden on all businesses. Big businesses can usually absorb the extra bureaucracy and cost. Small businesses not so much.”
Excellent point.
I suggest, the companies employ a more “humanitarian” approach, if this is essentially image/PR oriented virtue signaling . .
Establish demonstration/testing communities away from a “grid”, with modest solar/wind generation capacities and rudimentary distribution infrastructure, in Africa perhaps, where a single dependable light one can read by, and cook by, etc. and a fan that can run in the heat of day, and a smart phone they could dependably keep charged, could bring a family into the . . twentieth century, within a few years, perhaps.
A system to power a small medical clinic, a schoolhouse, a few area lights, a nearby well . . and the beginnings of infrastructure that can be built upon as possible, and used for testing and training and feedback . . and we can be wowed by the amazing “sustainable” communities that these technologies can . . sustain.
And on the off chance that it’s not really gonna work for upgrading modern societies ; ) those folks will get a taste, and (if they wish) a start toward modernization . . and the companies get a great PR soundstage kinda dealeo, as do the “sustainable” power systems folks, . . ’till the new coal fired plants are built ; )
I spent a three years in Nigeria in the 1960s with the Geological Survey of Nigeria and seemed to acclimatize to the climate okay. Aircon was nonexistent and a fan in the living- dining room sufficed, none in my small office. Actually it wasn’t much different than a mid summer in Winnipeg on the plains where we could get over 100F and none had A/C – maybe a small fan which could be moved into the kitchen. I don’t know when we became such incubator babies?
These. Corps have little choice but to toe the line. It’s all public relations
Most large US corporations are crony crapitalst who depend on government: largess, contracts, favors, cutouts, tax loopholes, tax deferments, artificially low interest rates, and certain regulations that act as barriers to limit competition.
These trough-feeders agree to support Leftist causes like Gloooooobal Waaaaaarming As a form of quid pro quo. Many CEOs are Leftists and actually believe (or pretend to believe) in CAGW, which is a HUGE and costly error in judgement.
US corporations spend $2 TRILLION/yr in regulation compliance costs, which are then passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices,which is simply another form of tax..
Trump is doing a pretty good job at cutting needless regulations and is about sign a tax bill cutting corporate tax rates from 35% (the highest in the world) to 20%. The tax bill will also allow corporations to write off capital expenditures in the year they’re paid, which is “YUUUGE”.
Eventually, corporations will realize CAGW is a financial and scientific disaster, which lacks consumer support and they’ll stop pretending to advocate for for this CAGW sc@m…
This pretty much shows how whacky some of the sceptic arguments are here. They consistently deny climate change even though the big corporates are now accepting it as reality. This is an excellent study showing why sceptics come up with their own unattributed unscientific theories: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/nov/29/new-study-uncovers-the-keystone-domino-strategy-of-climate-denial
Another lie you peddle,Ivan.
The checklist from your stupid article:
Name Calling
Consensus fallacy
Personal attacks
Lies
claims of being intimidated
Being skeptical is wrong
Authority fallacy
Propaganda
and more……
This blog posted about that stupid study from 14 authors who clearly want to attacks freedom to be skeptical. Their attack on DR. Crockford is ugly and unethical,shame on you Ivan!
An ugly new paper shows why the climate policy debate is broken
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/30/a-new-paper-shows-why-the-climate-policy-debate-is-broken/
You didn’t comment there at all,but just sneak in this off topic Guardian garbage here late in the thread.
You are despicable.
Touchy touchy … perhaps this study has really got to you because it shows what a fallacy scepticism is now.
No,I exposed YOUR lack of critical thinking skill. You didn’t even try to counter anything I wrote.
Here is what she just posted in the thread you cowardly avoided:
“susanjcrockford
December 1, 2017 at 11:25 pm Edit
Brendan,
Amstrup is pissed off because I criticized his work. He and Stirling are not used to being challenged.
He and his colleagues had the opportunity to formally demolish my PeerJ preprint online for all the world to see but they didn’t. That might have drawn attention to the issues I raised. They decided it would be best to ignore me.
Except others who matter (for funding etc) clearly DID read the paper and found merit in my conclusions – that must be true or Amstrup and Stirling would not have concocted this paper. They are trying to demolish me instead of addressing the failed predictions exposed in my paper.
Characterizing a professional, respected scientist as an unqualified vengeful opinion writer is the same kind of power attack as rape. It’s meant to humiliate and intimidate.
But it’s too late. And your rants about me being unqualified and substandard are as groundless as theirs.
Colleagues have read my paper and found it to be fully acceptable as a piece of academic scientific work.
If that were not true, this desperately ridiculous Bioscience paper would never have been published. I have exposed Amstrup’s failure and this is the only way he could think of to stop me: he went to Michael Mann for advice, with predictable results.
This paper says way more about these co-authors than it does about me. Mark my words, it will come back to haunt them.
Susan”
The attack on her is ugly and stupid. Attack her research if you think it is wrong,not push the worthless narrative,she never did field work with bears argument. She is a ZOOLOGIST,which means she is well qualified to discuss Polar Bears and their life cycle.
I see that Ivan thinks skepticism is a fallacy,as he writes this silliness:
“perhaps this study has really got to you because it shows what a fallacy scepticism is now.”
You are very dumb and ignorant since being skeptical of claims is a valid way to promote a response to prior claims. Here is a quote from Scientific American:
“Science begins with the null hypothesis, which assumes that the claim under investigation is not true until demonstrated otherwise. The statistical standards of evidence needed to reject the null hypothesis are substantial. Ideally, in a controlled experiment, we would like to be 95 to 99 percent confident that the results were not caused by chance before we offer our provisional assent that the effect may be real. Failure to reject the null hypothesis does not make the claim false, and, conversely, rejecting the null hypothesis is not a warranty on truth. Nevertheless, the scientific method is the best tool ever devised to discriminate between true and false patterns, to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and to detect baloney.
The null hypothesis means that the burden of proof is on the person asserting a positive claim, not on the skeptics to disprove it. ”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-skepticism-reveals/
Skeptics play a valid role in the science research process.
““Science begins with the null hypothesis, which assumes that the claim under investigation is not true until demonstrated otherwise.”
That is exactly right. Any legitimate scientist is a skeptic first.
Do all leftists throw intellectually lightweight bombs by copying and pasting idiocy? Or are you special?
He is special because he is profoundly ignorant on how good science research runs. He still doesn’t understand what the NULL hypothesis is about or why the Scientific Method is a good guideline to draw from for good research.
He follows low quality newspapers for his science news,since he lack critical thinking skill to determine what a good science based article really is. He seems to prefer personal attacks,propaganda and name calling in his newspapers.
That is why he comes across as being profoundly ignorant.
Of course we now have to use the sceptic ‘leftist’ political fallacy, in that everyone who believes in climate change is a leftie. Don’t post this again please – it’s doesn’t merit a further response.
“Don’t post this again? ”
What a leftist thing to demand.
It’s pathetic trying to put a political slant on this. Either use the science to disprove it or don’t – stop trying to make it a political issue.
It isn’t a political issue, it is a junk science issue. Which explains why pretty much only leftists believe it.
Yes, Yes, yes. Just throw out the term ‘junk science’ and hope people catch on to this. You have no idea what you are talking about in terms of proving/disproving climate change do you. You just have it in your head that ‘Lefties’ support it so it is bad.
Ivan, I was in school during the coming ice age scare, and the green blob was demanding the same actions as they are currently demanding in a global warming scare, it often being the same people who pushed both. That sort of thing led me to conclude they were motivated by their politics, not actual science.
Yeah, Yeah, yeah. The majority of climate scientists around the world have suddenly realised they are all socialist sympathisers and so are using their scientific research results into climate change to create a socialist utopia. Pull the other one 🙂
It is a small group of scientists, and a much larger group of politicians who find their model useful. As the politicians control the funding. . .
Come off it Tom. The climate scientists are not all closer socialists who want to see Socialism take over the world. Don’t you see how absurd your statement is? At leasr keep politics out of this debate and stick to the hard science.
Ivan, global warming is mostly politics, both as general politics and the internal politics of the institutions doing the studies.
It’s got nothing to do with politics and you know it … except for the USA which is the only country to politicise the issue. If it was politics, half the countries would not have signed the 2015 Paris climate agreement. BUT THEY ALL DID.
Ivan, you are so used to socialists you do not notice them.
Oh no. We look at data and make up our own minds. But it’s fun seeing you guys try to prove you are so much smarter than anyone who would dare to disagree with you.
Keep up the good work. Can’t really see any country in the world being influenced by your data results – can you tell me which ones are? South Africa, China, Peru, Argentina, the Philippines, Mexico, Canada, France, Poland?
I should have specified “it is fun watching you guys become unhinged by anyone daring to disagree with you.” Sorry for the omission.
And yes, but America isn’t on your list.
Ivankinsman: By any chance, do you know what a religious cult is? I’m asking because you need to know that you are in one.
You are blindly faithful to a cult-like belief system and viciously attack anyone who dares to question it. The skeptics at this blog, especially those who are scientists with a PhD or another high level degree, are doing what is supposed to be done in science….namely asking questions and testing the robustness of the CAGW theory. That is standard scientific discourse, if I understand it correctly.
When you attack those who are applying scientific discourse to the CAGW theory, you are attacking science itself. Those attacks are standard behavior for religious cult members when their belief system comes under scrutiny. Those questioning the cult’s belief system are seen as like religious heretics who should be banished from the Church of Humanity for their heresy. The cult’s belief system is holy and is supposed to be beyond scrutiny….totally inconsistent with how science works.
You no doubt view the CAGW alarmists you trust and believe in as being infallible and incapable of being wrong, and that is consistent with how cult members view their leadership. No one in science is infallible and beyond questioning. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you may come to realize that you have been had.
This is a key finding from this study that shows the fallacies the sceptics based their arguments on. You talk about science, well this diagram aptly demonstrates that the the scientific evidence is directly contrary to the sceptics – IT IS STARING YOU IN THE FACE:
“Science isn’t on the deniers’ side
The study authors also examined 92 peer-reviewed papers on polar bears and Arctic sea ice and grouped them using the same categories as the denier and science-based blog posts. As the figure below shows, the scientific research (green triangles) is extremely consistent in concluding that climate change threatens both polar bears and Arctic sea ice, although a few papers (6.5% – the red triangles) suggested that polar bears might be able to adapt to their changing environment.
The science-based blogs (blue diamonds) cluster quite closely to the findings in the scientific research, while the denier blogs (yellow squares) are off in their own world denying that human activity is causing a long-term decline in polar bear populations and Arctic sea ice.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/nov/29/new-study-uncovers-the-keystone-domino-strategy-of-climate-denial#img-3
Indeed, the scientific research is quite clear that Arctic sea ice is in the midst of a rapid decline due primarily to human-caused global warming. Because polar bears rely on sea ice to hunt seals, global warming also threatens their species. While some polar bear sub-populations are stable thus far, others are declining, and that trend will only accelerate as sea ice continues to disappear.”
and
“the overwhelming body of scientific evidence supporting human-caused global warming and the threats it poses. Climate science isn’t a set of dominoes or a house of cards; it’s a towering structure built on a strong scientific foundation.”
I’m sorry Ivankinsman, but you are treating the authors of this study (and the authors of the papers they looked at) as religious cult leaders, and you seem to be trying to convince us that we all do the same thing. You believe that the authors of the paper you cite (and the authors of the papers they looked at) are all infallible authorities who must not be questioned. They are incapable of bias or corruption for the sake of money and politics.
You are treating their work on this “study,” their methods, their selection criteria, their procedures and their conclusions (the diagram) as holy gospel that are beyond scrutiny. And you are trying to convince the rest of us (demanding?) that we do the same. That is not science, it is religion.
You failed to address any of the red flags that Sunsettommy listed in his comment above, including the consensus fallacy (science is not a democracy) and the name-calling (deniers! deniers!), among others. The name-calling alone should lead anyone who understands scientific discourse to be suspicious of the authors of this paper. I do not believe that it should be treated as an insignificant behavioral issue.
All of this demonstrates, as was stated above, that you do not understand how scientific discourse works, and The Guardian is using your lack of understanding to take advantage of you. Please do yourself a favor and do some reading on how scientific discourse works and take some time to at least try and understand how it differs from the operation of a religious cult.
And please forgive me for my religious heresy.
Companies SELL. If lies, cheating, or deception results in more sales, many companies will engage in these practices. The goal is to MAKE MONEY and only to MAKE MONEY. If tomorrow it was beneficial to sales to install coal furnaces and avoid electric vehicles at all costs, that’s what would be happening. Every time you find yourself inclined to believe the lies and deception, repeat “make money, make money, make money” until your head clears and reality sinks in.
(EDITED) MOD
“Companies”—dang, my proofreading is really bad…..
@Sheri: The world is full of liars, cheaters and deceivers Sheri. If you somehow believe that such behavior is confined to the business world, the deeply regret having to inform you that it isn’t. EVERYBODY, businesses and individuals, is motivated by the profit/money making incentive in a free market economy.
If you are gainfully employed by a business that pays you for your work, you are doing your job for the exact same reason that motivates a business to sell its products or services–making money. When you criticize a business for being motivated by the same thing that you are, that is what is known as hypocrisy. In other words, it’s okay for you to be motivated by the money making potential, but not businesses.
Politicians are the biggest liars, cheaters and deceivers of all. They crave power, money and control that drive such behavior. I will suggest that they are better at it than are businesses. You could take lessons from them.
Wake up and smell the manure Sheri. Your criticism of businesses applies to a lot more of the world than you think.
Sorry, have no idea what you are talking about here…
Question; Who benefits from blanket condemnation of politicians, or corporations, or lawyers, or whatever class/grouping of people?
Answer; The worst ones
CD in Wisconsin: You misunderstand. I am NOT criticizing businesses for making money. I am criticizing them for lying to make money. I am well aware of money as a motivator. My point was you should be very vigilant about company claims. Walmart buying electric truck from Tesla is not out of concern for the environment. It’s to sell buyers and stockholders on how eco-friendly Walmart is, thus increasing sales and investor money input.
I know politicians are liars. I don’t support them, but I do understand the concept of “lesser of two evils”. I don’t vote for someone, I vote against someone.
I understand that people lie. It’s probably why I’m a lousy consumer and don’t play well with others. I’m fully awake, CD.
@Sheri: Thank you for your clarification. I apologize for any confusion at my end. I guess I too tend to get upset when I find that ANYONE has lied to me, not just corporations and businesses. However, it’s par for the course these days with way too many people in the world, so I just try to shrug it off.
I’ve always said that if everyone in the world was a Pinocchio, a lot of noses would probably stretch halfway to the Moon by now.
Big American companies typically sell to international as well a domestic customers. Thus, they have to meet the regulations and cater to the international customers regardless of the company view on climate change.
What these companies are doing in joining Gang Green is despicable, and I would argue, anti-American. I despise them for it. When mobsters whack someone, the claim is, “it’s just business”. Good going Wal Mart et al. You have reached a new low in moral depravity.
Not yet. They have yet to sink to the level of the NFL. One will note how well that is working out….
Make the expenditures non tax deductible!!!
It shouldn’t be deductible because it’s not business-related. Or is Walmart producing and selling electricity now?
Big business like Ford benefit from global warming scares at they can introduce new models based on a scare. Ford should be ashamed, As an ex Ford economist/analyst they do not seem to me to have done their homework.
Ford? FORD? If they really believed in fighting climate change, they’d close the company and pay reparations.
If renewables are so great please tell me which GOOGLE energy hog is 100%, with 0 utility back up?
Note, that means no wires whatsoever running to any commercial electrical power source or public/private utility. not even an onsite NG/oil powered DG generator. If Google can’t do it for one of their server farms how do they expect it to happen for a city, state USA?
steve mcdonald
December 1, 2017 at 4:57 pm
“There are thousands of catastrophic predictions since 1984.
Can anyone tell of any that came true.”
No catastrophic predictions have come true from the “modern” era since Malthus at the turn of the 18th century. Catastrophic predictions are those that are expected to occur due to man’s (careless) actions. Even in Hiroshima bombing, which certainly was catastrophic for the residents, radiation declined to background levels in under one year and there is a thriving city today. The Chernobyl nuclear accident killed about 75 people (UN was talking many thousands) and the “exclusion” zone is now a naturally generated game park that is Europe’s Serengeti (Tanzania). Of course Chernobyl was a Soviet, no safety design, disaster waiting to happen. Even at that the numbers killed represent 90% of all killed by nuclear power generators since inception in the 1950s.
I have a theory about human caused damage. Human caused “disasters” that inflict other than temporary damage over a fairly localized area are essentially of a scale to make them thermodynamically impossible simply because of the magnitude of the natural thermal regime vis a vis human energy output. Oh we could kill a lot of people if we went crazy and decided to nuke everybody, but the radiation would be back to background within a year and we would have a lot of new game parks! The planet has sustained the worst damages possible by natural forces – large bolides that have caused a number of mass extinctions of up to 90% of all creatures. But hey, the planet shakes that off as well!
There are no tipping points for the same reason. It is egregious that astrophysicists and other scientists who should know better are piping this kind of nonsense. A good example of how naive and ignorant they are is such pronouncements like those of Dr Viner who about 15 years ago said that in a few years children would not know what snow is in the UK (presently under a load of new snow). These science lites have been learning their craft by such self-humiliation for decades – Jim Hansen had the West Side Highway under ten feet of water by 2000 – it is impossible to see any difference in photos today relative to photos in 1988! Sea Ice was supposed to have been long gone in the Arctic and it appears to be recovering from its lows. The Pause with its obvious implications that natural variation has a bigger effect than any possible amount of CO2, resulted in the Climate Blues (a deep depression because of classic psychological D*Nile [the irony is rich] among an unknown number of climate scientists. Prominent ones we did know never returned to work – I guess those who had invested a dozen post grad years and half a lifetime of work or more gone for naught would be tough on strong individuals! The only game they have left is smear, ad hominem, and shrill ridiculous fear mongering. The worst to fear about climate is the probability of a repeat natural variation- a new deep glaciation, or such as the pistol shots fired at John Christy’s and Roy Spencer’s office building at the University of Alabama by activists.
ivankinsman
December 2, 2017 at 10:04 am
“..extremely consistent in concluding that climate change threatens both polar bears and Arctic sea ice,…”
You’re young and a new visitor here, recognizable by dragons already slain a decade or more ago. You should say to get it real: ” ..extremely consistent in COLLUDING that climate change threatens both polar bears and Arctic sea ice,
Did you know about climategate? -No, just the lame spin they gave out. It’s a good thing we don’t need our self preservation instincts much these days and can let our gullibility reign free. Your type would be thinning out rather steadily. However, Ivan, you are a few steps above the usual anti-sceptic (you probably don’t know that scepticism is a respectable word among real scientists – they are supposed to incorporate that into their scientific deliberations as had been done from the Age of Enlightenment until about 40 years ago) and that is because you at least come here – stuff eventually rubs off on you if you are truly interested in truth, logic and real science. You do know that science doesn’t work by consensus. Read about the the hundred scientists against Einstein’s theories, or about the consensus hounding of Wegener, the fellow who popularized “Continental Drift” and which took 40 years after his death to come around to be the main principle of the science of geology.
Heh, well lets go down the list:
Mars Company – The company is family owned and the family member’s are, in the main, politically far to the left. Its manufacturing base is small and not particularly energy intensive. And it’s in a niche market with little competition. Plus it’s not really that big. So who cares?
General Motors – Notice they’ve given themselves until 2050 (33 years) to meet their renewable goals. It’s older customer base is rural, conservative, and anti-green so, unless they’re suicidal (you can’t tell with GM) they are not likely to do enough to piss-off their customer base. All hype really, I mean they announce they bought 200 MW of wind capacity ? Hem… Only about 16% percent of that capacity is usable. (Basically they bought the equivalent of a 32 Mw generator). To top it off, the newer millennial familys auto purchasing habits aren’t exactly ‘green’. Millennial mothers, in particular, tend to prefer very large SUV’s. Much larger than those purchased by their baby boomers counterparts. What are the odds that GM renewable goals will be forgotten just as soon as being “green” isn’t cool with millennial ‘s anymore? The same goes for Ford.
Wal- Mart – A low profit-margin retail outfit in a very competitive field. The company’s forgotten the basics of retail. Bad service and high prices are not what built the business. Personally I think Sam Walton’s spinning in his grave. I already avoid going to the local store because it’s forced to shut-off its lights when the stores solar panels fail – an all too frequent event on cloudy days. Bad service gets noticed. Any plans it might have to put the squeeze it’s vendors will only drive store prices up and provide advantage to it’s competitors. Plus…. notice that 2050 deadline again?
Big biz loves climate change now that they understand it is huge straw into collective middle class treasury which they can join in the sucking as long as they capitulate to the wishes of global elites, you know, the planetary swamp.
“Walmart, which claims 260 million customers per week worldwide, and employs 1.4 million workers in the US alone, earlier this year announced its Project Gigaton initiative that aims to reduce CO2 emissions globally by one billion metric tons before 2050.”
Have no fear of meeting that 2050 target Walmart, Amazon will help you achieve that.
Eric,
Your point about regulation is so true but so many people don’t understand. Our company is of a size where we are just barely handling regulations. Europe and the US are both actively increasing the burden, regulatory ‘suggesting’ bodies like UL and SAE and dozens of others are all incentivized to increase requirements. With large C corps piling on wherever possible. The result is a lot of regulation which doesn’t make sense, is expensive to comply with, and is a significant barrier to entry which our company continually struggles with.
If Walmart really believed it would not sell petrol as it does here under the ASDA name. I have noticed that ASDA was no longer as good as it used to be before Walmart took it over becoming ASDA Walmart and this sort of stupidity o f ECO freak rubbish goes a long way to explaining the recent decline.
i will help them achieve their target by switching to LIDL, Tesco, Sainsbury tec.
Before the recession, at the start of 2007, Walmart had an average of 338 employees per store at its United States stores and Sam’s Club locations. Now, it has 281 per store, having cut the number of United States employees while adding hundreds of stores – a 17% drop. In pursuit of profits, they are seriously shorting customer service and OSHA Compliance – a slippery slope for a retailer. This ‘showcase’ of their climate consciousness is pure PR. I predict that, having dropped behind Amazon in retail sales, they will continue to follow KMart down the drain.