Guest aargh by David Middleton
Apple CEO Tim Cook’s Message to 2019 Graduates: ‘My Generation Has Failed You’
By Sissi Cao • 05/20/19
On Saturday, Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was recently acclaimed as an even better leader than the legendary Steve Jobs, carved out a morning from his very busy schedule to deliver a commencement speech for the 2019 graduates of Tulane University in New Orleans.
[…]
“In some important ways, my generation has failed you,” Cook said. “We spent too much time debating, too focused on the fight and not enough on progress.”
“You don’t need to look far to find an example of that failure,” he continued, pointing to an example that no one understands better than those living in the natural disaster-dogged New Orleans: climate change.
[…]
Observer
Tim Cook was born in 1960… his “generation” would be the “baby boomers”. Baby boomers and Gen X’ers did this…
And this…
Figure 2. Crude oil production in North Dakota
While undoing the failures of the previous generation…
Since New Orleans was “natural disaster-dogged” long before the invention of the internal combustion engine… And vehicles powered by fossil fuels now enable New Orleanians to get out of the way of natural disasters, rescue people from natural disasters and deliver new iPhones, maybe Tulane should have invited Harold Hamm to give the commencement address… He could apologize to the Tulane graduates for not making them freeze in the dark… because climate change.
…and your levee boards did a great job and your carjackers are just ordinary motorists.
I just replaced my third iPhone with a cheap fold up job Tim.
What utter nonsense. His generation, my generation, have not failed those who follow us. We have given them a world far better than we inherited. That’s not a slam on our ancestors; they could say the same. Rather I’m saying that we have continued that trend of innovating and improving the lives of all human beings. Not equally of course, for that is impossible, but it can’t be denied that the vast majority of the people on the planet today have it much better than in 1960. Tim Cook is a fool – an ultra rich fool who probably doesn’t feel he deserves all he has and feels guilty about it. So he projects that guilt onto an entire generation, which of course absolves him of any wrong doing because “everybody did it”.
Over the last 25 years I have watched the vacant field next to my property change from an area that could host several football games at once with only a mowing to an area that would take loggers and bulldozers just to make a path to walk through. In that 40 acres there are several hundred large tall trees that are 20 to 25 years old. Many more than 50 feet tall. All of this happened with no assistance or intervention for humans. That tells me that with the present rate of temperature change that the “warming” will just make the flora/fauna slowly move further north. I find it hard to believe that any area is going to switch from a natural forest into a desert in less than 50 years.
Why is that bad?
Now, where is all of the analysis of the MASSIVE deforestation of the northern US by those that lived here before we moved here as the cause of CC? Could it be that The white men actually killed the people that started the global warming?
Here are some links to that speech.
The quoted Sissi Ca article:
https://observer.com/2019/05/apple-ceo-tim-cook-tulane-2019-commencement-speech-climate-change/
The video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taLzKBs-Yu4&t=3m23s
The transcript of that speech:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2019/05/transcript-tim-cook-tulane.html
I couldn’t bear to watch the video with his head flipping back and forth between teleprompters Obama style. Doesn’t anyone know how to give a speech anymore?
Too bad he doesn’t understand climate change. Someone else could use parts of this speech to make an inspiring speech for climate change skeptics.
“no one understands better than those living in the natural disaster-dogged New Orleans”
——————————
Don’t mean to be nasty, but the above seems not properly true as put, from my perspective of considering the above.
I do not live or ever lived in New Orleans, but still can argue that the statement above could be closer to the truth if put something like:
“no one seems to understands the Katrina disaster-dogged New Orleans better then the guys who had to make the tough decisions then”.
In my understanding ” the Katrina disaster-dogged New Orleans” was a Constitutional Crises
disaster-dogged, man-made more than natural,
mainly dogged by the stand and the merit of the POTUS and Federal Government then,,,
a very nasty one disaster, created by a power void, due to the cowardice and the lack of responsibility from the elected leaders of New Orleans, who ran and abandoned the region faster than rats from a sinking ship, without accommodating the most basic and required act as per requirement of their most basic duty…
the transfer of power from local internal to external or federal, as per requirement of second clause of the bill of rights…
Really sorry if this happens to be a misunderstanding, or maybe even a grave one in my part,
but open to any argument and any clarification
in this issue… eager to understand it better… as it happens to be a very one interesting to me…from this perspective point.
cheers
When I worked in New Orleans, coworkers lectured and taught hurricane preparedness and which storms to fear, virtually nonstop from late May through November.
I was in New Orleans when Hurricane Andrew passed very close by to the West of New Orleans and hammered swamps and Baton Rouge.
A scarier storm back then was when Hurricane Gilbert came into the Gulf of Mexico and NO residents were afraid the storm would turn North.
Multiple coworkers, including people who lived in New Orleans East or Slidell, described surviving Hurricane Camille in their attics or standing on tables.
One of my coworkers came from a Cajun family.
He told me about his family and how his Grandfather knew a hurricane was coming by the weather.
They lived in the bayous and his Grandfather would load the family and a few possessions into their boat and head towards high ground.
Nowadays, people have TV, radios, internet access and doppler radar and are very complacent or gullible to ignorami making specious assertions.
New Orleans has along storied history of hurricanes, floods, broken levees,tornados, waterspouts, hail and severe storms with heavy enough heavy rainfall that one couldn’t get wetter swimming.
Back then, coworkers thought I was telling fairytales when I told them the ground would freeze hard every winter where I grew up.
ATheoK
May 24, 2019 at 5:49 pm
—————–
If it helps, as most probably the point in my comment may not have being very clear.
I do not think that people living in the natural disaster-dogged New Orleans really do understand how people like this guy failed and still keep persisting with their failed attempts.
Considering huge investments and sacrifices and very very costly projects in attempting somehow to stop natural disasters from happening, against any odds,
instead of investing working and caring more about building better stronger and enduring structures to protect shelter and offer help and relief during and after such natural disasters,
in my understanding consist as a clear failure.
And these failed “guys” keep playing it the same, even when themselves have openly come to
accept that they failed, but still this does not stop them from keep trying the same allover again.
Katrina, in my understanding shows also how bad these kinda of “guys” behaved on top of this kinda of failure…
Failing even worse, by too quickly abandoning the people to the mercy of the nature…
when the “shit hit the fan”…
Hope that this may clarify a bit more my early comment.
Thanks 🙂
cheers
The only failure I’m aware of is the failure to educate students about the scientific method, how science works (data, not consensus) and how to recognize scientific baloney when they see it. People like Apple-boy seem to think that students should not question anything they are told to believe, regardless if the data or formulas are incompatible with the theory they allegedly support.
They have been failed in that respect, yes. They’re undereducated and thus gullible to scientific hokum.
Compare that to what Steve Jobs said to Stanford grads in 2005.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/michael-knowles-tim-cook-gives-terrible-advice-to-graduates