“Okay Google: is it safe to drink my own urine?”
IS IT POSSIBLE that when Google ditched its “don’t be evil” mantra it actually only abandoned the first third? A report in The Guardian reveals that while Google has been publically making sad faces about the future of the planet, its second face has been lavishly throwing money at climate change denying lobby groups.
The report highlights over a dozen organisations which have sought to push back environmental protections and to campaign against climate change legislation.
Google, for its part, treats the whole thing as some kind of quirky opposites-attract-style romcom. “We’re hardly alone among companies that contribute to organisations while strongly disagreeing with them on climate policy,” a spokesperson told The Guardian. We’re not sure how they managed to make an eye roll apparent in a text quote, but by God, they managed it.
No, instead Google and its anti-science friends meet in being big fans of deregulation, and they can just agree to disagree on whether the planet will be an unlivable wasteland by 2100. Potato/potarto – or more accurately unliveable desert/regulation-free paradise.
Amongst Google’s sugar babies is the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) which was said to have a heavy hand in pushing the Trump administration away from the 192 nations which signed up to the Paris Climate Accord, and onto a list featuring just war-torn Syria and Nicaragua. Both have subsequently signed up, leaving the US alone. In the pro column, however, the CEI has also opposed internet regulation and pushed back against the idea that Google has an anti-Conservative bias.
Also on the list of beneficiaries of Google’s largesse is the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center and the State Policy Network: a group that has a “climate pledge” website claiming “there is no climate crisis” and that “our natural environment is getting better.”
On the other hand, Google helped sponsor the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit last year, and has achieved 100 per cent renewable energy for global operations two years in a row, the company says.
So that’s all okay, then. µ