Corporate Virtue Signaling on Climate Has Its Costs and They Now Exceed the Benefits, So Bye-Bye Net Zero

The leadership of globalist corporations have been very fond of doing climate virtue signaling. It’s been a wonderful way to burnish their images as companies that care and satisfy their personal need to look good among cocktail set peers. But, everything has its downsides and trade-offs, doesn’t it?

Virtue signaling on climate was cost-free at the outset and all the risk-adverse corporate lawyers and the phony PR mush generators saw it as a wonderful opportunity at first; a way to greenwash past pollution and inoculate companies from any criticism from the left (although that never works).

Today, though, things are different. Much of the public is onto the carbon offset game, which is phonier than a jackalope. They know greenwashing when they see it. Moreover, the lies told by Big Pharma and all its enablers in government, medicine and Big Tech during the Wu-Flu have destroyed almost all faith in the credibility of big business today. No wants to live by those lies anymore.

Then, there is the failure of net zero across the globe as the Energiewende has shot electric prices to the moon, done nothing for emissions and is gradually deindustrializing Germany. California, despite being in the American vanguard of climate political correctness, has the highest gas and electric prices among the lower 48 states. New York has California envy and is headed the same way. It’s all been an unrelieved disaster, even after four decades of promises from renewables advocates that feasibility without market-distorting subsidies is just ahead, over the next knoll.

Finally, there is AI, of course, and bitcoin. Forbes just published an article on the subject and here are the choice tidbits:

As AI’s energy demands surge, many corporations are abandoning their previous commitments to carbon neutrality. Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, had claimed carbon neutrality since 2007, by purchasing offsets to counterbalance emissions from its operations. But in 2024 it ended its programme, citing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, which caused Google’s greenhouse gas emissions to rise by 13% in 2023 alone.

Over the past five years, these emissions have surged nearly 50%, leading Alphabet to change its plans, towards reducing absolute emissions and investing in more expensive carbon-removal credits. This shift represents a significant departure from earlier sustainability goals, as the drive to advance technologically begins to overshadow earlier environmental pledges.

Similarly, Microsoft’s emissions have grown by 29% since 2020, primarily due to the construction of new data centers to support AI development​. Despite its ambitious 2030 carbon-negative “moonshot,” Microsoft has acknowledged that these goals may be unattainable given the current trajectory of its AI strategy as it continues to announce new data center projects worldwide.

This challenge is not unique to the tech giants. Other major corporations are also reevaluating their sustainability strategies, particularly around the use of carbon offsets. The growing concerns around the effectiveness of carbon offsets and the risk of reputational damage if commitments are not met have prompted several companies to shift focus.

Shell, for instance, has abandoned its 2035 target of a 45% reduction in net carbon intensity, citing “uncertainty in the pace of change in the energy transition.” This target was a key milestone towards Shell’s broader goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

The same goes for luxury fashion house Gucci, which once committed to carbon neutrality through verified carbon offsets and in May 2023, quietly removed its claim of being “entirely carbon neutral” from its website. Nestlé has also shifted its focus, moving away from reliance on carbon offsets and instead prioritising the reduction of actual emissions within its operations and supply chain​.

Even EasyJet, a significant player in carbon offsetting since 2019, announced a strategic shift in September 2022, scrapping its carbon offsetting scheme in favour of direct emissions reductions by investing in more efficient aircraft, sustainable aviation fuel, and operational improvements​.

As the head of the corrupt U.N. mentally reaches for ever harsher adjectives to attach to global warming as if it were a crisis (it’s anything but), the whole scheme is starting to unravel and the surest sign is the fact roughly half of Democrats in this country now favor nuclear power for the first time in decades. Yes, they like solar and wind more, but their rapidly growing support of nuclear tells us they also know green energy is the only real path to net zero in the end.

Still, it’s highly unlikely it will have the slightest impact on demand for fossil fuels. That’s because we need both to satisfy the exploding energy demands of our modern world.

Nuclear, too, has its downsides, which include high costs of construction, the development time required for new projects, and a growing appetite for government subsidization in one form or another. It is the alternative to solar and wind, not to fossil fuels per se, although Democrats and other elements of the hard left will want to think of it that way. The foreseeable future is a blend of fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Net zero isn’t going anywhere but into fantasy land and my grandchildren will learn of it only as a strange passing fad in human history.

#Climate #VirtueSignaling #NetZero #GreenEnergy #EnergyTransition #AI