Apple CEO Tim Cook chats with Christiana Figueres on climate change
We Mean BusinessWe Mean Business is an unprecedented collaboration between business groups working with the world’s most influential companies and investors to drive climate action. Demonstrating that business is serious about tackling climate change, the launch – ahead of the UN Climate Summit on September 23, 2014 – also featured the launch of the group’s landmark report The Climate Has Changed: Why bold, low carbon action makes business sense, which offers evidence for why low carbon investments are good for business.
Speaking at the event, Tim Cook said, “Apple has a core value of leaving the world better than we found it. There is no one out there that wants the planet to continue to go in the wrong direction.”
“The long term consequences of not doing anything for climate change are huge…We need to be one of the pebbles in the pond to create the ripple,” he added noting that climate action is “great for the environment and it’s also good for economics, it’s both.”
Stressing that achieving net zero carbon emissions by mid century are a real possibility if government and business can work together, Figueres asked the CEO to expand on how Apple was thinking through its carbon footprint and supply chain.
“We’re now turning our attention to the supply chain in a major way,” he said. “It’s not esoteric and theory, its real work and projects.”
The bottom line according to the CEO: “We’re very secretive about what products we’re working on… But on something like climate, human rights or education, we feel deeply about these. These are at the core of who we are. They are deep in our values. And we know that we will not make enough of a difference if we only solve our little piece of the world.”
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