How Sustainable Are Tech Companies, Really?

We have another special episode! Today, Rollie from @ClimateTown joins us to discuss clean energy and the climate crisis. Specifically, he helps us understand some of the promises that big tech companies companies like Apple and Google have been making when it comes to the climate. Like what is a carbon credit? And what the heck is a Duck curve? We hope you learn as much as we did in this fun chat!

Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:31 Climate Town backstory
08:49 What are Carbon Emissions?
25:08 Visible (Sponsored)
26:54 What is Clean Energy?
47:40 Netsuite (Sponsored)
48:52 Recycling
01:08:11 Quick Hit Questions
01:11:00 A Race to Z with Rollie
01:20:52 Outro

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Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

[ClimateTown]

thanks so much for having me on the pod! Sorry to drag David’s mom's house into so many metaphors.

[LUISGONZALEZ-ddrn]

UNDERRATED COLLAB. 100% didn't expect this. Shoutouts to the team for connecting with Rollie.

[alexanderpurcell]

I love Climate Town!! What a fun cross over!!

[ChunkyBunny]

This is one collaboration I never would have expected!! Big fan of both of your channels.

[Idefilms]

This crossover seems so obvious in retrospect, but it truly feels like one of those moments where you bump into two people and go, "Wait, you KNOW each other??"

Diving into this right now!

[coleockerse]

Rollie should become a recurring guest of the show every time a tech company comes out with some big 'sustainability' news.

[carylittleford]

I've always been troubled by the fact that when tech reviewers recommend a product to buy they're almost never talk about the ethics and impact of the company that make them as well as their repair ability and companies attitudes to sustainability etc. I've worked as an ethical IT purchaser for government and business for many many years and do not understand why tech reviews seem to refuse to inform their audiences of the ethical side of their recommendations. Recommending you buy a product based on its features alone without considering the environmental sustainable and repairability aspects just seems

[chriskiripolsky]

Fun fact: I was one of the engineers tasked with doing a hydraulic analysis of the Niagara River leading up to Niagara Falls (they were replacing a pedestrian bridge on the American side). Power plants from both America and Canada take a certain amount of flow each day from the river to power lots of things. To make Niagara Falls look nice, during peak visiting hours (weekends during the summer) these plants don't take any flow from the water. We had to account for this in our analysis of the worst case scenario (in terms of volume of water). Thought it was kind of interesting.

[therapyseshpod]

These extra episodes are spoiling me and I love it and thank the team 🙌🏽

[harrisonwheat]

Rollie is my hero man. So funny and so intelligent. The way he fuses teaching and comedy is a true gift.

[segraham]

Long term MKBHD/Waveform fan, found Climate Town just this year. A mixture of two great things!
Just started listening to The Climate Denier's Playbook podcast and highly recommend it!

[ian-wilson]

Find an excuse to bring Rollie back! Love the episode and discussion!!

[PixelShade]

The absolute core environmental problem in society is consumption. No matter how we twist and turn it. We live in a world where our financial system promotes consumption exploitation by creating short-term products, that are either low-quality, break, become old, or are unrepairable. If that's not the case, corporations will exploit human psychology to want the latest thing through marketing and influence, even though very little has changed. They might update the design on the latest phone with rounded corners instead of flat to make the device appear a bit different, and then add a feature or two and sing their praises. Apple are masters of this kind of behavior so I honestly don't care about apple's recycling claim or carbon neutrality. To me it sounds a lot like green washing, to make people feel good about continuing purchasing their products, and for them to continue the unsustainable route of exploiting consumerism.

[Young.Supernovas]

There's an inherent conflict here between the notion of sustainability, and the consumerism of a tech reviewer channel like MKBHD.

[suny]

I work at an Amazon warehouse and was asked to help out for 40 minutes at this place where packages needs a human touch to make sure they are placed onto the conveyor label side up. The amount of single item, plastic shopping bags I’ve seen, in that short amount of time. Should be illegal. I always knew how much plastic bags Amazon goes through but to see it first hand, I was stunned

[lackoliver]

Thank you David. Can't tell you how many times I've seen people get stuck on a word in conversation and ask "Is ____ a word?" I always, as well, just say "Words aren't real." If I understand what information you're trying to translate from brainwaves to human sound patterns. Guess what? You succeeded.

[brandondo]

I have a forestry degree the stuff said about logging and burning is false information. Forest management involves cutting trees like a person getting a haircut to keep it from being overgrown and unhealthy. Prescribed burns are another method of forest management where control fires burn dead leaves and other materials that could act as fire fuel on the forest floor. Stopping these practices will led to more severe fires in the future that will produce more carbon emissions than normal management practices. Not all harvesting are using a clear cut method. Most of the time it is a thinning method which once it's done you can barely tell there was a harvesting operation was done in that stand. Even so with clear cutting operations it is done with species like Douglas fir that love the method. It gives them open space to release their cones. Regeneration for Douglas fir is quick after clear cutting operations turning it into essentially a tree farm. Harvesting operations allow for more regeneration and completion after its done as new open space is available for seedlings to grow and not be shaded by old growth tree. Apart of "forest protection" as mention not to do in the podcast but is indeed how to protect the forest is prescribed burns and harvesting operations to keep the forest nice and healthy. In general there is a misconception about the whole logging industry and forest management in general as most people automatically think cutting down a tree is bad. There is a lack of public education for forestry practices.

[tanninarceo]

Just want to mention how I love that you guys do bonus episodes when you have a guest rather than the guest episode replacing the normal format! I mean I loved this episode and Rollie was a great guest, but it's just nice to know we still get to hear the regular squad banter later in the week 😅

[tentenbits]

Rollie!!! unexpectedly getting more Climate Town content from MKBHD!

[JamesonHuddle]

Can't reccomend climate town enough, the deliver and editing style is top notch (the research and education is pretty great too :)