Meanwhile, Google sits on the board of the Business Roundtable, one of the most powerful business lobbies in the country. The Business Roundtable is squarely opposed to the Biden infrastructure/BBB bill. Why? Because they'd have to actually pay taxes.
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The report highlights the discordance between companies’ public-facing climate commitments and the actions of their lobbying groups. Amazon, for example, in 2019 unveiled plans to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions 10 years before the Paris Agreement deadline of 2050, and later renamed a Seattle hockey arena after its ostentatious “climate pledge.” But its CEO, Andy Jassy, sits on the Business Roundtable, a group that has called the budget bill’s tax provisions “troubling” and has mounted what it calls a “significant, multifaceted campaign” to oppose them. Apple, Google, and Microsoft also have CEOs on the Roundtable.
Much opposition targets the package’s tax policy, including proposals to increase the corporate tax rate to 26 percent from its current 21 percent, and to increase the capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 25 percent. According to the Chamber of Commerce, such tax increases — which Democrats want to use to fund the expansion of the social safety net and allow for a substantial rise in climate-related spending, including a program to incentivize utilities to transition to clean energy sources — would “halt America’s fragile economic recovery.” The Business Roundtable agreed, adding that it would “dramatically” increase inflation.
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Joshua Bolten, CEO of the Business Roundtable, told Grist that all of the group’s members support climate action but that there was “no policy reason to link strong action to address climate change with unrelated, harmful tax policy,” which he said would make climate investments more difficult. Bolten’s statement did not address the fossil fuel industry’s alleged influence over the organization’s policy positions.
This isn’t the first time that leading companies have been criticized for the chasm between their actions and their public-facing climate pledges. In January, a report from the nonprofit InfluenceMap found that the so-called “Big Five” tech companies — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft — had spent only 4 percent of their 2020 lobbying dollars on climate-related policy at the federal level, despite significant rhetorical commitments to sustainability. The tech companies’ advocacy for climate policy has actually dropped off since January, according to a September update from InfluenceMap, meaning that some of the world’s most powerful companies are doing even less to realize the climate-safe future they have so heavily advertised with their pledges to go “carbon neutral” and “carbon negative.”
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Neither Apple nor Google responded to Grist’s request for comment. Microsoft referred to its blog post on the spending package, and an Amazon spokesperson said the company supported the package’s investments “to lower emissions in key sectors like energy and transportation,” and that it would be willing to pay a higher corporate tax rate.
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https://grist.org/accountability/corporations-talk-green-but-helping-derail-major-climate-bill/
But in the mean time, here's an app. Here's some green-sounding press releases. Here's a picture of our employees planting trees. Here you go! We really care, see?
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