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Why Apple Just Invested in Wind Turbines In China (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNN Money:
Apple's latest deal in China doesn't have anything to do with smartphones. The tech giant is investing in the Chinese wind power industry, turning to the world's most populous country to help it achieve its goal of getting 100% of its energy from renewable sources. The iPhone maker struck a deal this week to buy a 30% stake in three subsidiaries of Goldwind, China's biggest wind-turbine manufacturer... it's Apple's largest clean energy project to date and the first of its kind in the wind power sector, Lisa Jackson, vice president of Apple's environment initiatives, told state-run newspaper China Daily...
Environmental group Greenpeace has warned that electronics manufacturing uses a lot of energy in China, drawing on the country's high number of polluting coal power stations. Apple's moves into renewable energy are an attempt to compensate for this... The new wind project will add 285 megawatts of clean energy to China's grid, which Apple says will offset some of the other sources used by its operations and those of its immediate suppliers Foxconn, Lens, Catcher and Solvay.
Environmental group Greenpeace has warned that electronics manufacturing uses a lot of energy in China, drawing on the country's high number of polluting coal power stations. Apple's moves into renewable energy are an attempt to compensate for this... The new wind project will add 285 megawatts of clean energy to China's grid, which Apple says will offset some of the other sources used by its operations and those of its immediate suppliers Foxconn, Lens, Catcher and Solvay.
The reason is simple. If apple brought the money home and invested it in turbines in the USA, it would have had to pay taxes on them.
The bad thing about this is that apple is allowed to invest its money abroad while evading taxes in the first place. Yes, the pentagon wastes a lot of money, but that's no reason for not paying taxes.
Perpetual motion is quackery, but we use it every day with solar, geothermal, wind and hydroelectric sources. I'll grant you that "perpetual" doesn't really apply when applied to sources of energy that come from a giant ball of gas undergoing fusion, since it isn't technically perpetual. Nonetheless, it is free energy on a human scale. Let's support investing in collecting and using such free energy sources because it makes life better for all of us. I know Apple isn't without its faults, but each time humanity invests in this sort of thing, it also improves our lot as a whole.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.