Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website • Hacker News Board

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#51

Post by mullingitover » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

yieldcrv wrote: post #48

mullingitover wrote: post #7

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.

> The US has maintained steep tariffs on solar panels. 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 productio…

The argument for tariffs on China's panels is that they're dumping.

However, really the answer to dumping is to exploit the dumper viciously, buy as much below market rate product of theirs as you can while they bleed money (especially a capital good like solar panels).

The US could be driving down the cost of energy nationwide with the dumped power generation equipment. Lower cost energy could then be turbocharging (nearly) every other industry in the country.

The only industry this harms is fossil fuels, and solar is being hamstrung to protect this legacy industry at the cost of all potential future industries.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#52

Post by yifanl » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:43 PM UTC

parthdesai wrote: post #6

barbazoo wrote: post #3

> “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…

AI is literally an existential threat to their business, what are you talking about?

If the only way to appease shareholders next quarter was to detonate an ICBM in Times Square, do you do it?

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#53

Post by lostlogin » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

yieldcrv wrote: post #48

mullingitover wrote: post #7

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.

> The US has maintained steep tariffs on solar panels. 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 productio…

> 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.

Tariffs leading to expanded US solar panel production might be one of the few things that would lead Trump to cancel tariffs. Solar is somehow offensive to him.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#54

Post by abdullahkhalids » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

_mlbt wrote: post #9

wnevets wrote: post #5

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?

There are none. But I don't want the economic system to be judged by its ability to do resource allocation. I want my economic system to be judged by its ability to improve metrics of human well being - and not even the median well-being, but the well-being of say the 10% percentile person in society.

Sure, resource allocation can be a instrumental to those goals of human well being, but not the directly optimized metric. So, for example, I care very little gdp/capita when you can just as easily measure life expectancy or food stress levels.

On such counts, capitalism has a mixed record. Today, for example, a lot of countries that are "more capitalistic" than others have poorer metrics of human development than those that are "less capitalistic".

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#55

Post by dotnet00 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

yieldcrv wrote: post #48

mullingitover wrote: post #7

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.

> The US has maintained steep tariffs on solar panels. 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 productio…

Just saying that the US should be doing it domestically and companies aren't interested isn't useful. It's kind of like saying "young people just don't want to work hard anymore!".

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#56

Post by frank_nitti » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:50 PM UTC

_mlbt wrote: post #36

kjkjadksj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those just invalidate totalitarianism. On the other hand, the US government uplifted itself from the great depression and won WWII thanks to a centrally planned economy. People like to forget about that fact though.

How do you achieve nation or world scale communism without totalitarianism? I am one of many people who know the history of communism’s failures and will never accept it willingly.

I would be more interested to see your response to the key point of their comment - that the US exemplified this on a large scale in recent history.

That would be more compelling than to simply claim to have a lot of knowledge of history

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#57

Post by munk-a » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

jm4 wrote: post #11

barbazoo wrote: post #3

> “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…

They have a fiduciary duty to shareholders. Bailing on AI because they can't do that and also be net-zero is a good way to get sued.

Never before have I heard of lighting a pile of cash on fire being a fiduciary duty. Post-GPT AI may eventually prove a highly profitable venture - right now the only people making money are the shovel sellers and most of the launched applications can't seem to attract users at a price point that's sustainable.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#58

Post by spencer-p » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #47

gjm11 wrote: post #19

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…

> There's more hedging around it now 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...

Amazon claimed their energy usage was "matched with 100% renewable energy" in 2023, while Google's goal is to actually "run on 24/7 carbon-free energy".

Google already claims to have matched 100% of their energy with renewables since 2017.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#59

Post by ajross » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #51

yieldcrv wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has maintained steep tariffs on solar panels. 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 productio…

The argument for tariffs on China's panels is that they're dumping. However, really the answer to dumping is to exploit the dumper viciously, buy as much below market rate product of theirs as you can while they bleed money (especially a capital good like solar panels). The US could be driving down the cost of energy nationwide with the dumped power generation equipment. Lower cost energy could then be turbocharging…

This is absolutely true. The strategic goal of "dumping" is to drive competitors (the example here being the US solar panel industry) out of a market, with the implied goal of raising prices at the end of the process. But it almost never works that way in practice.

Pretty much by definition, products that can be dumped are ones that can be manufactured with easily scaled production equipment at low margin and high volume. If you can dump your competitors out of business, so can someone else, to you.

And that's the way it generally happens (c.f. DRAM in the 80's). The "dumping" phase of a technology curve is succeeded not by a cartel with a tight grip on the previously competitive market, but by an extremely competitive market of producers all undercutting each other. Almost everyone wins, except the original high-margin producers. But they (c.f. Intel in the 90's) tend to move on to other products anyway. No one wants to make junk for a living.

Re: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

#60

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #54

_mlbt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example of an alternative economic system that is more efficient at resource allocation in practice, not just theory?

There are none. But I don't want the economic system to be judged by its ability to do resource allocation. I want my economic system to be judged by its ability to improve metrics of human well being - and not even the median well-being, but the well-being of say the 10% percentile person in society. Sure, resource allocation can be a instrumental to those goals of human well being, but not the directly optimized me…

[deleted]