41–50 of 183 posts
To be somewhat pessimistic, these pledges always struck me as being fairweather, politically motivated, and deliberately gamed. That's not to say that it's meaningless there's definitely some good work being done, it's just that I don't think that work is all that connected to the pledges.
To be somewhat pessimistic, these pledges always struck me as being fairweather, politically motivated, and deliberately gamed. That's not to say that it's meaningless there's definitely some good work being done, it's just that I don't think that work is all that connected to the pledges.
And as the expression goes: who knows, perhaps the horse will learn how to sing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
More than any other company, Google needs to succeed in AI. AI chat has already replaced search engines for many people. Nearly all of Google’s revenue comes from advertising.
Funny enough, that was googles choice. And They made the search worst was consciously as a business strategy, because worst search meant more queries. And they forced ai on top of search because they wanted to.
Meanwhile China is on track to install as much solar power in the past year as the US has in its entire history . The US has maintained steep tariffs on solar panels. Clean energy isn't even some virtuous thing, it's just no-brainer smart energy policy. The only reason for Google to be backpedaling on its pledge is political. It's in a backsliding petrostate and it has to play the political game.
Importing solar panels from China is a security risk. Like when Europe depended on Russian gas... Edit: US has no competitive way to manufacture panels, and with cheap imports, it never develops such industry!
Meanwhile China is on track to install as much solar power in the past year as the US has in its entire history . The US has maintained steep tariffs on solar panels. Clean energy isn't even some virtuous thing, it's just no-brainer smart energy policy. The only reason for Google to be backpedaling on its pledge is political. It's in a backsliding petrostate and it has to play the political game.
In the case of geo-politics if the US wanted to install solar to cover its energy load it would essentially be a massive payment to China for the solar arrays since there isn't productive capacity in the US. It would also end up being a long term dependent on future purchases of solar from China when they would need to re-up every 30-40 years at end of asset life.
I think there's less to this than meets the eye. Previously, on https://sustainability.google/operating-sustainably/ : "We've set a goal to achieve net-zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain by 2030." and, in a table later, "Reduce 50% of our combined Scope 1, 2 (market-based), and 3 absolute emissions by 2030. Invest in nature-based and technology-based carbon removal solutions to neutralize our…
This is reasonable, it's a nearly impossible goal to achieve.
Meanwhile: "Amazon meets 100% renewable energy goal 7 years early"[1]
[1] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/sustainability/amazon-renew...
Meanwhile China is on track to install as much solar power in the past year as the US has in its entire history . The US has maintained steep tariffs on solar panels. Clean energy isn't even some virtuous thing, it's just no-brainer smart energy policy. The only reason for Google to be backpedaling on its pledge is political. It's in a backsliding petrostate and it has to play the political game.
Because the US should be doing it domestically, just like China is.
The incentive to do is partially based on tariffs, but the incentive hasn't spurred the private sector and supply chain maintainers into action, and a more comprehensive strategy would need to be done. There is no consensus for further subsidies from the national government to spur this production either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism is the most efficient system for resource allocation or something.
Do you have an example of an alternative economic system that is more efficient at resource allocation in practice, not just theory?
Before capitalism and communism was a thing, we had normal economics. And the worst part of this in some places was the bourgeoisie. They kept the resources in their control. And communism was supposed to be a banging of the piñata that shook the tree. Capitalism was a response to communism, yet installed a basic transition to a socialist education system and for educational wealth to be added.
I guess a good antidote to bad actors is for a wealth tax. Unused or underutilized wealth gets taxed until the net tax is reduced to whatever financial return it has.
> “Running the global infrastructure behind our products and services, including AI, takes considerable energy,” said Google in its Environment 2025 report, which explained that it will be almost impossible to meet its erstwhile net-zero ambitions, partly due to its expansion in AI. Greed, greed, greed. They'd rather see the world burn than not be first in AI whatever that means. They could still achieve net zero, th…
Can anyone shed any light on the difference between net-zero and what they will actually be able to achieve? Will be hard given that the workloads for AI have sucked up all available energy resources. I have to think at the margin it is getting very expensive to acquire those resources.