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Ah jeez, the New Yorker recently released a big fat article based on an even bigger fatter report that unveils how current estimates for Big Tech’s carbon footprint is over one hundred percent bigger than what we thought. Turns out it’s all about where the money is. There’s definitely a silver lining, and very real opportunities that don’t seem entirely far fetched to believe in, but it’s pretty nuts. Are you sitting down? 

The issue at hand

New research by the Climate Safe Lending Network (CSLN), The Outdoor Policy Outfit (TOPO), and BankFWD makes it possible to calculate the emissions generated by a company’s cash and investments. This is what would be considered ‘scope 3 emissions’ (this just means the emissions are theirs, just not obviously. An example is flying on a plane. You’re not burning that fuel that creates the emissions, but you’re responsible for a part of it since you’re on the plane and have mass (sorry, yes, you do have mass)).

These organisations examined the financial statements of the most massive companies in the world to find out how much cash they had  in the bank, and then calculated how much carbon each dollar may have generated. This is a direct quote from the article written by someone far smarter than me (the bold typeface is my addition): 

‘According to these calculations, Google’s carbon emissions, in effect, would have risen a hundred and eleven percent overnight. Meta’s emissions would have increased by a hundred and twelve per cent, and Apple’s by sixty-four per cent.‘

And this is a direct quote from the report on which the article was based: 

‘the emissions generated by [Microsoft's] $130 billion in cash and investments were comparable to the cumulative emissions generated by the manufacturing, transporting, and use of every Microsoft product in the world.’  

Waaaaa. I know right. And these are conservative estimates because the folks doing the calculations couldn’t know the exact amount of money, in which exact banks, in which exact countries these companies use.

Now, of course the money does not generate the emissions directly, no one sits there burning the money, and this doesn’t even represent the energy needed to run the servers on which the money is recorded, that’s already accounted for. These are the emissions generated by where that money ends up going. Banks don’t just sit on money, they look at the numbers on their screens, and lend it out with interest. And where does (a lot) of that investment go? Well into the fossil-fuel industry of course.

According to Banking on Climate Chaos, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo have together disbursed more than a trillion dollars to the industry since the Paris agreements in December, 2015. This includes companies developing new projects that scientists, indigenous leaders, and climate activists have decried, from the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines and new fracking fields to drilling in areas of the newly melted Arctic.

The silver lining, hopefully

This sounds bad, really bad. But, it’s first important to know that some of the biggest companies in the world have been trying to reduce their emissions for a long time. They’ve calculated how much carbon emissions they generate from their data centres, their employees, their offices, their travel expenses, their events, their employee vehicles, heck, just about everything. And have taken very real steps to reduce their emissions. Google, for example, is one of the world’s largest purchasers of renewable energy. And has teams and departments getting paid a lot of real money to reduce their footprint further. This, is wonderful.

When these big companies with impressive people at the helm of their sustainability initiatives found out this information I imagine it was a sucker punch. But, I also imagine they see it for what it is, an opportunity. 

The emissions these companies produce are the same as they were before, that’s an important distinction, they’re not actually producing more, it’s just that now we can see that they are producing more than we thought. But if we can measure it, we can do something about it. 

Since the dawn of capitalism the banks have been some of the wealthiest institutions in the world. But, in recent history, the Oil and Gas industry caught up. Boooo. And in even more recent history, ‘Big Tech’ caught up too. Yay? To the un-economically educated minded, like myself, it’s frustrating to think that the banks do this, (invest in the fossil fuel industry) despite the obvious detriment it has on the planet. 

But, if I think about it from their perspective, they have unfathomably large numbers on their computer screens that represent how much money they have, and they want more. So where is the best place to get more? Well from the other most wealthy places, Oil and Gas, so they invest the money. But who’s money is it actually? Well a lot of it these days is coming from Big Tech. And Big Tech, whether for moral, legal, or political reasons, have to pay attention to their emissions.

If I’m Google, and I’ve spent so much time and effort and money reducing my emissions and now I realise the banks where I’m putting my money are spoiling it for everyone, well wouldn’t I go and talk to the banks? Yes, and I would bring my friends. 

If these companies that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars start applying pressure to the banks to not invest in the fossil fuel industry, holy moly that could change the game in a very real way. And if they went a step further and started applying pressure for the banks to invest that money into industries or ventures that are having a positive impact on the climate, well holy fuck, we might have a chance. 

Realism

The oil and gas industry cannot just stop, that’s not only unrealistic but would be a disaster for everyone. But what could stop is the expansion of the fossil-fuel industry. Jason Opeña Disterhoft, a senior climate and energy campaigner for the Rainforest Action Network, put it explicitly: ‘No opening new oil and gas reserves for extraction, no exploring for new oil and gas reserves, no new or expanded pipelines, LNG terminals or other midstream infrastructure, and no new or expanded gas-fired power, refineries or other downstream infrastructure.’ If the banks stop investing in the bad stuff, the bad stuff stops growing. 

Now of course, for the big banks, this is easier said than done. They have these deals in place, they have been doing this for so long now, and it's been working. Banks are investing in good stuff, it seems like climate or sustainability start-ups get huge investment rounds every other week, but they don’t discriminate between the good or the bad, it’s just good and bad investments to them, the morals aren’t involved. So perhaps what they need is a push. A push from their biggest clients. Big Tech. 

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