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Microsoft Makes Ambitious Carbon Neutral Pledge
Qedward writes "Chief operating officer Kevin Turner says Microsoft will be 'carbon neutral across all our direct operations including data centers, software development labs, air travel, and office buildings' from July 1, the start of the 2012 fiscal year. Turner added: 'We are hopeful that our decision will encourage other companies, large and small, to look at what they can do to address this important issue."
..for a fucking software company. Wake me when a company involved in things like steelmaking, mining, transport and heavy engineering become carbon neutral.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
marketing: "how are we going to win with the tree huggers?"
ivy league nerd: "we have some trees outside"
ballmer: "what's a tree?"
marketing: "we have trees? that's carbon-neutral enough for me"
legal: "do we have a patent for trees? i've also seen trees at apple headquarters. we had better chop them down and then sue them for patent violation just in case. after we cut down their trees, marketing launch a fud campaign against apple for being a pollution chugging bad guy"
That means the modern-day indulgences to paid to the Church of the Environment, not actual carbon output reduction. A bunch of Al Gore's wealth is in such companies (makes you wonder why he pushes the issue).
But some of the stuff is just good ideas for energy efficiency that anybody should be able to get behind. We'll see how happy the shareholders are.
As far as your statement goes, this is a company doing it voluntarily. The various authoritarian types in NGOs and governments have been talking about FORCING companies to do this, FORCING people to abide by their new rules, and using our taxes to pay other countries to not pollute. There is such a thing as "liberal authoritarian" in the political ideology spectrum, and environmentalists tend to be the most authoritarian.
I think this is a great initiative by Microsoft. They have shown that they greatly care about the environment and common good. Not only that, but they spend lots of money on their R&D (Microsoft Research) which has come up with tons of great things that has made the world better. On top of that Microsoft's founder Bill Gates has spent most of his fortune to help the world, especially for healthcare and making the poor countries better. Even if you don't like MS products you have to have deep respect for them for this reason. Compare this to Google CEO's who spend their money on luxury yachts.
I have a better idea. How about stop raping the planet and exploiting the human inhabitants under wage slavery and see if food/medicine distriubtion doesn't improve. Sorry, but I'm not going to get all weak in the knees because some douche put the 50 billion he received by monopolizing into what amounts to a mutual fund where the profits go to vaccinating and helping people who never had to be in poverty in the first place, but for the inequitable economic system they were exploited under in the first place. Show me a poverty stricken country and I'll show you how it's capitalism and usually directly the US's doing. History goes back a long time, most of you seem to have a poor grasp of even current events. Take a look at what caused all this misery and you won't be so impressed by these generous foundations that are all the rage these days. And by the way, they're over reported (for a reason); most rich people sit on their money and leave it to their brats.