Autodesk and coal mining
autodesk.earth
autodesk.earth
Autodesk is like a hammer, it's not the hammer manufacturer's fault in how their product is used. Do we want hammers to be restricted to only those whose political ideologies align with ours? The dangerous part is, we already see essential services such as payment processors taking political stances (blacklisting customers based on their political beliefs).
Autodesk's PR response is awful, to be completely honest if they were going to go down this route, they should have just remained quite. Their real mistake was to have a commitment to environmental impact. It could have been re-worded to have a green company infrastructure and to actively support green projects with tools and grants. We should all look to change ourselves before trying to change other people - lead by example and others will follow.
This is an epic false equivalence that tries to suggest everyone has an equal impact and an equal voice. That's obvious nonsense. People who are good asking people who are bad to stop what they're doing is quite reasonable, especially on an objectively measurable topic like the environmental impact of mining.
Honestly, the suggestion that software shouldn't be treated as a political issue is something I never thought I'd see being argued in a relatively intelligent and enlightened community like HN. Software runs the world. It's obviously political. From governments embargo'ing the sale of strong encryption to companies EULA'ing their products to stop them from being used to design nuclear weapons how could you possibly imagine software as "just a tool"? Of course it isn't.
If someone really, really wants to treat their software as political and restrict how their software can be used, that's their right, I don't like it but that's permissible - however, if someone (like Autodesk in this example) wants to treat their software as an apolitical tool that's free to use for any purpose, good or bad, by all people, good or bad, then that is also their right, absolutely morally permissible and to my mind morally preferrable to trying to politicize the tool and trying to limit its use.
> This is an epic false equivalence that tries to suggest everyone has an equal impact and an equal voice. That's obvious nonsense.
That's obvious nonsense. Where does GP suggest that everyone an equal impact or an equal voice? Nowhere. What is wrong with asking people to follow the same maximes they are requesting others to follow? Don't we all expect the police to uphold and follow the law exactly because they ask others do the same.
> everyone has an equal impact and an equal voice.
The message "improve yourself before improving others" is really such a controversial thought? Winning hearts and minds is really the most effective method for making large impactful social changes.
Idealistically, equality across the board. But various social dynamics mean that yes, some people do have more social influence than others. But I'm not entirely sure what your point is here...
> People who are good asking people who are bad to stop what
> they're doing is quite reasonable, especially on an
> objectively measurable topic like the environmental impact
> of mining.
I think where this generally breaks down is that Autodesk is not "good" or "bad", it should be (and is acting like) a neutral body. The people within it are political, the activist is political, you're political, I'm political, but Autodesk itself is not. We shouldn't want companies to become political, the company's best interests (generally to maximize profit) does not align with those of the average person.
As political entities we can influence politics, where regulation could prevent mining that destroys the environment. In terms of efficiency, rather than convincing * every * commercial 3D tool to drop support for them and then somehow stop them using open source tools or developing their own, this method seems better. It also allows for an open discussion in the public sphere, rather than bypassing the democratic process.
> Honestly, the suggestion that software shouldn't be
> treated as a political issue is something I never thought
> I'd see being argued in a relatively intelligent and
> enlightened community like HN.
Now you have. I do like the way that an argument that opposes your own must be unintelligent and unenlightened. I remember a time when diversity of opinion was celebrated.
> Software runs the world. It's obviously political.
I'll remember to ask my smart-bulb what it thinks of Trump (/s). It's not obvious at all that software (or the company selling it) is political. I think there are very good arguments for companies not to be political.
> From governments embargo'ing the sale of strong encryption
The politicians obviously act politically.
> to companies EULA'ing their products to stop them from
> being used to design nuclear weapons how could you
> possibly imagine software as "just a tool"?
Companies acting in such a way might be acting politically, or they might have a special version that they sell specifically at a higher price. Companies can act politically, but out of all the licenses I read, very few have a political position on nuclear weapons.
The question is, do you really want every company to take a political stance on everything? Say for example you are an environmental activist, do you want banks to take a political stance supporting oil companies (which they do), and therefore ban you from using their services?
The truth is, what you actually want is companies (software or not) to be political when it aligns with your interests. When it doesn't, then what?
This is called a "Faulty analogy" or "False analogy": https://examples.yourdictionary.com/false-analogy-examples.h..., https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definit...
In this case, you've equated two things because they can both cause some amount of harm, but have ignored the quantity of harm, the existence and quantity of positive benefits, and the presence of stated intent.
It's very possible (I'd argue probable) that operating a single, large-scale coal mining operation causes more total harm than bashing a single person's skull in with a hammer.
> existence and quantity of positive benefits
Coal as an industry is unnecessary at the scale it exists at today, so any added efficiencies in that industry due to the use of Autodesk products most likely count as a harm rather than a positive benefit.
> presence of stated intent
From the press releases on the page linked by the OP, it seems that Autodesk is well aware of the activities of the coal companies using their software, to the point that they use it as a selling point for their products. Perhaps the first moment they began selling to those companies they were unaware, but at this point they have explicitly advertised to the public that they know what those companies are doing.
* Edited to fix line breaks
For example, if a company makes nuts and bolts, it is true that they can be used to make bombs or oil rigs, but they are also used to make hairdryers and ovens and many other things. Additionally, nut and bolt manufacturers usually do not sell directly to the end users of their products, they sell through a long supply chain. If a supplier sells nuts and bolts to an oil company or arms manufacturer, that supplier is more responsible than the bolt manufacturer because they are the final step in selling to the business of dispute.
If the company makes nuts and bolts which are only useful for making bombs, then the manufacturer responsibility increases because they know what their product is going to be used for. Basically, if you can answer the question "what is this product going to be used for?" before you distribute it, you inherit responsibility for that use, because you could have chosen not to have distributed it, and therefore prevented that use of the product.
In the case of Autodesk, their products have a wide variety of uses, but they supply directly to their customers, so they know who they are selling to and therefore what each particular license will be used for, and therefore they incur some responsibility.
For the consumer not to be impacted, the critical step would be for the actual cost of "green" energy to go down. This is done by allowing coal and "green" energy to compete in a relatively unregulated manner[2].
[1]Scare quotes are in place to remind people that we are using a binary label to describe the ecological impact of an energy source, when in fact that ecological impact would be better described in scalar or vector terms.
[2]yes, I know the energy sector is heavily regulated.
In general I agree, but it's much harder to do that if the other people are already (deceptively) acting like the are a good example.
Yeah, why not? If you're a hammer manufacturer, then you should absolutely concern yourself with whether or not you're dealing business with ethical consumers.
I think if you commit yourself to your ideal, you're either going to end up being complicit in some really nasty stuff, or end up drawing a very arbitrary "line" where you stop being apolitical.
> concern yourself with whether or not you're dealing
> business with ethical consumers.
What if their idea of ethics doesn't align with your idea of ethics? What if all left/right wing people are banned from using a tool? Or some other arbitrary internal measure of ethics? You're only willing to follow along with this line of thinking whilst it aligns with your interpretation of ethics.
> [..] you're either going to end up being complicit in some
> really nasty stuff, or end up drawing a very arbitrary
> "line" where you stop being apolitical.
Being neutral doesn't make you complicit. The moment you take action (for either good or bad purposes), then you become complicit.
Do you want a hardware store to have a "free fertilizer for white supremacists" sign?
Sorry for the extreme example. Point I'm trying to make is, at a certain point, yes, we want to restrict things based on political ideology, and always have.
The question is where and how to draw that line, and, the process we currently use to do that is public discussion, civil society, and democratic government.
So I think it's perfectly appropriate to talk and think about this.
That would be explicitly promoting an ideology through commercial action, which is pretty much the opposite of what I see the OP advocating for.
> Point I'm trying to make is, at a certain point, yes, we want to restrict things based on political ideology, and always have.
Who is this "we"?
> commercial action, which is pretty much the opposite of
> what I see the OP advocating for.
Exactly. There is a major difference between neutrality and support.
But let's re-imagine this. The person walks into the hardware store and expresses aloud "I plan to use this for dubious purposes". Then this person has expressed illegal intent and the store owner should inform the authorities, if nothing else for their own safety.
> Who is this "we"?
Somebody who believes they are in the category of being a "good" person. Almost everybody believes they are in this group, not matter what "side" they are on.
I agree, though I'm not sure I have good words to describe an operating principle that would allow one to sell a hammer to an coal company but would allow one to deny a hammer to someone declaring their intent to commit assault with it.
You could say something like "I will sell to anyone for any lawful purpose", but then you get into questions like "what about lawful behavior that I consider to be a grave wrong?". The devil is in the details.
In general, I think the solution is free association. The problem I see is that there are some very cynical third parties out there attacking their ideological foes at an economic level, by using social manipulation to direct other people's free associations in a coordinated manner to push those foes out of normal economic life altogether.
I say these third parties are cynical, because if Autodesk did stop working with the coal industry these third parties would defend Autodesk's right to "free association" in that choice, but those same third parties would happily use force of law to ban Autodesk from doing business with the coal industry if they could.
>> Who is this "we"?
> Somebody who believes they are in the category of being a "good" person. Almost everybody believes they are in this group, not matter what "side" they are on.
This pretense of consensus is one such rhetorical device of the social manipulators.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colo...
The point I’m trying to make is that because these things are complicated, I think that discourse around them is valuable. And “we” - members of a relatively democratic society and citizens of a relatively democratic government - are a part of that discourse, although I suppose we can choose to remove ourselves from it if we want.
As I’m pretty sure that every person has moral beliefs of one kind or another, and politics is a tool for enforcing consensus on human society (even if it’s a negative consensus not do do something - like, not limit speech), thus, on one level or another I think it’s fair to say that every person has a series of moral and political beliefs - an ideology.
So if someone doesn’t want the government to place any restrictions on who can buy what, that is a political ideology they would like to see established in law.
I suppose maybe certain Buddhists or people with a very well developed philosophy of deliberate disengagement from human society may not fit the bill.
But otherwise, I stand by my “we” statement which, I hope it’s now clear, isn’t a rhetorical trick about consensus, unless that consensus is that human beings live in societies and believe things and societies figure out ways to create rules based on some of those beliefs.
For the purposes of the discussion “we” is everyone. Or all US citizens if you prefer to focus on a political entity.
Even total libertarians want to restrict others from restricting them, no?
I don’t think that last bit is a challenging statement. Think about it. I’m pretty sure pretty much everyone believes there should be some sort of law, though there’s disagreement about what laws should be. And any law is ultimately an expression of a political belief. Politics in the sense of society deciding how to regulate itself.
Dishonest because they point out that Autodesk, a publicly traded company, has a portion of its stock owned by Blackrock, one of the world's largest investment companies. Not only does Autodesk have no control over who its investors are (anyone can buy stock!), but Blackrock owns pieces of lots of things, and is not primarily in the business of owning fossil fuel companies.
Confused because this is such a weird and unproductive way to go about advocating for fixing climate change. Let's think this out, since the activist chose not to. Suppose Autodesk does what he wants and says "we will not sell you Autodesk products." What will the mining company do? They have many options. They may hire a mechanical design company that already has Autodesk licenses to do the work for them. They may use a different CAD package. (The activist suggests this is an invalid point, but doesn't explain why; there are many CAD packages available and it's clear they can choose another one.) There is no endgame in which this writer's ultimate goal, even if it were wholly achieved, makes any positive difference to the environment. What's the point? It's a waste of time.
Advocate instead for systemic change that stops coal mining from being cost effective and will cause systemic diversion of capital away from coal and toward greener sources of energy. That can take the form of carbon taxes, or regulation on toxic mining effluents, or advocating for subsidies of green energy, et cetera. Each of those has an endgame that, if successful, makes a meaningful and positive impact on our planet's climate.
Unlike this effort.
Blackrock and Vanguard are a promising, scary, and potentially very effective way to go about climate change change.
Blackrock has, in the past, taken a passive approach, not exerting its ownership to change the direction of companies. That is changing.
>Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity – a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect. But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.
>Given the groundwork we have already laid engaging on disclosure, and the growing investment risks surrounding sustainability, we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them.
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry...
As others have said, talk is cheap, we will see how they act on their new strategic direction. Maybe they continue to be their own version of a vampire squid or giant refrigerator perpetually keeping us unchanged and frozen in the past, or maybe they will be an NGO that both offers shared ownership of capital and votes wisely for the preservation of the planet.
I will bet that a large number of green energy plants (solar, wind, etc) are designed using Autodesk tools, and a large amount of sustainable manufacturing as well.
Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing. Autodesk probably has provided services and tools which make this coal mine more efficient than it would have been otherwise, too - many of their products are designed to make engineering and manufacture more efficient.
I do agree, though, that their PR department and their actual response to the issues have been poor. I am thankful that we don't judge ever business merely by their PR; most are not that good.
disclaimer: I do not work for autodesk but I do own some small amount of autodesk stock because I like their products and use Fusion360 for free as a hobby machinist and woodworker.
We're literally talking the end of life on this planet as we know it. The companies you mention are also complicit in creating the upcoming climate-caused world wars and their executives should similarly be held responsible.
If you think this position is extreme, you are not paying attention.
I agree that accountability is a good thing, and we need to be doing more as a society to protect the planet. But at some point one has to come to terms with the idea that they're building a generic tool and simply can't be responsible for how others use it.
(I'd argue the blame primarily belongs on the plant itself, those who buy coal from it, and the government that allowed it to operate.)
they're building a generic tool and simply can't be responsible for how others use it
AutoDesk is undoubtedly aware of its sales with a massive coal plant, unless they are a horribly run and incredibly lucky company. Beyond that, it seems like AutoDesk has gone as far as promoting their involvement in developing the excavators, no?
Would you sell hammers to a sweat shop?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology
[2]https://www.wassenaar.org/app/uploads/2019/12/WA-DOC-19-PUB-...
Software as a service gives technology companies incredible power, and it is possible that in a world of potential existential risk to humanity, it is power they should leverage. Possible. I have no idea if it is a good idea.
What I do think is more problematic, is when the company goes out of their way to help develop the tools specifically for questionable industries, which is exactly what they are highlighting in the linked PDF (which is still a hotlink to Autodesk servers...).
It is great when companies act, but it is not sufficient. If we are to solve the climate crisis, we need to put in place government regulations and price incentives to solve it. It is the only thing that has ever worked and we are not trying it.
None of these individual actions stopped white-only rule in South Africa. Nor did anyone involved in the process think it would. But it was part of a worldwide movement that did ultimately lead to US sanctions and the end of apartheid.
In fact, one of the things that encourages government action is seeing that the change being suggested has become mainstream. Businesses boycotting the oil and gas industries could be an effective part of that.
Edit: Another good comparison point would be the Great Depression. Was that a (temporary) "end of life as we know it", in your view?
It seems just as likely to me that the economic deprivation caused by an end (or dramatic reduction of) fossil fuel consumption would also lead to world wars (and likely vast ecological destruction). How does one effectively weigh those risks against each other?
There's plenty of opportunities for money to be made by abandoning fossil fuels. Russia and Saudi Arabia might disagree, as well as the Kochs and their friends.
More than that, I don't want companies selling products to get to decide if I can use them based on what my business is. A product for sale should be available to all, regardless of why you don't like me today. If you don't like making money from me, you can always set up a MFFAM policy: Morons Funding the Fight Against Morons. (So named by Nearly Free Speech). Basically take the profit from my purchases to work against me, but don't deny my purchases.
Anyway, even if you won't sell to me directly, I could likely setup a straw purchase, which is just wasting resources.
I can't resist pointing out the irony in your concern over the health of the software ecosystem, when it is the health of the our ecosystem that we depend on for life that's being discussed : ).
Which is not necessarily a critique of your comment, but, in a way you could argue that you just successfully argued against yourself ; ).
As trust in the government has withered away and civil society (along with God in the public sphere) has perished, business in America remains booming, perhaps it is time to rethink corporations as amoral capitalist rational actors, but as moral agents that must coexist within society as a whole, not just the market. So we will see more and more cases where businesses are forced to take corporate responsibility seriously, and not just perform acts of woke capitalism.
They're the biggest investment company by NAV, so of course they're going to be invested in fossil fuels. This is the same blackrock that says they would begin to exit certain investments that "present a high sustainability-related risk" earlier this year[1], so I'm not sure why the hate.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackr...
I'm still in the camp of "I'll believe it when I see it".
> Fink doesn’t own that $7 trillion of assets, he manages it as a fiduciary for others, and it is obviously wise for him to say that this initiative is client-driven. But it’s also helpful for him if that’s true. This letter will get attention, and if BlackRock’s biggest and most vocal clients think it’s bad then they might take their money from BlackRock and give it to some other, less environmentally committed manager.
Or the investors don't actually think that it _is_ good, just that it _looks_ good to publish such a statement (and not actually enforce it), the same way that Autodesk is just parading "sustainability" as a marketing statement.
To make matters even worse, every time you scroll, it pushes a new page onto my history. Author is not making it easy to consume the info they are providing.
But Autodesk shouldn't be the target of this anger, and this seems like a ton of effort just to vilify an incredibly small component of the problem. Instead, focus on the companies actually responsible, and the governments who both let them do this and refuse to make meaningful investments in deploying green technology.
> Autodesk is partly owned by fossil fuels investor BlackRock (8.3%).
This is straight-up propaganda. Blackrock, like Vanguard, owns a large portion of every public company. But, I bet they singled out Blackrock because Coal is a black-colored rock, and someone who wouldn't know any better may mistakenly think Blackrock is some company that specifically invests in non-green technology.
Software is a tool. It is the responsibility of the user not the writer of the software. If we get away from that principle, we would do ourselves great harm.
Do you want the word processor companies to be responsible for what people write? Do you want encryption software companies responsible for what people encrypt?
To the extent Autodesk is a service, it's up to the company whether they want to provide, for example, cloud services to fossil fuel prospectors or coal mining operations.
Scrolling worked fine for me. I'm using chrome on a samsung phone if anyone is interested :)
Also, as many others have pointed out, this site is bad. I wasn't quite sure initially this link was posted to call Autodesk's policies into light or as an example of terrible web design and scroll capture gone horribly wrong.
An example would be that if you need to haul away a lot of dirt, you pay per truck. Better estimating the amount of dirt means you don't accidentally book too few or too many trucks, this saves cost both in timing - avoiding delays, and in budgeting.
There are several companies in the market that use either drone footage or in some cases just a phone camera to estimate volumes of piles of stuff.
Edit: looks like it's from an independent designer based in Europe.
Hence moral outrage is an effective tool for mass manipulation.
And what is wrong with invoking morals? If people think that acting "sustainable" is important according to their morals, why not alert them that someone is deceiving them in that aspect?
If a competitor has put significant effort into actually being sustainable, while Autodesk is just using the term like that, publicizing it in this way just adds transparency for decision making. If a competitor is just as bad as Autodesk, publicizing it would just sensitize everyone to the problem and likely blow up into their face later.
Why do you think it would make a difference if a competitor pushes the message (as long as the message is true)?
Because then it comes off as a cheap-shot to gain more clients and not an antifragile movement to make headway in the current climate disaster. It has the potential to corrupt and cause real long-term damage to such movements if they are only used as means to profit financially in the short-term. Again this is totally hypothetical in this case. I think vigilance is required even in what are facially "morally pure" causes.
> It has the potential to corrupt and cause real long-term damage to such movements if they are only used as means to profit financially in the short-term.
If they are only claiming to support the movement, and don't act according to it (like Autodesk does), that's what damages the movement. I don't see how a company that acts exactly like the movement wants to is damaging it.
There are attempts to work around this like the JSON license "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.": https://json.org/license.html
A commercial company selling licenses, and therefore profiting off "bad things" is a bit less neutral, as this website shows.
But what if an OSS developer accepts a patchset from a "bad guy", what then? That contributed code has value... but we're getting into the whole "how was it created", which could invite comparisons to other scientific results produced in morally questionable ways, like through animal or involuntary human testing.
Ethics is hard.
- who owns this page
- what's their proposal for replacing coal
As such, hard pass.
Yes, coal is bad. Yes, we have to replace it. But, at a minimum, be frank about who you are, and what's your end game. Otherwise we can think this is a hit piece by the competition.
Another interesting read that confirms that none of the policies are actually enforced, and autodesk attempts at "sustainability" is just PR as a smoke screen. CEO is actually misleading customers, employees and investors.
Feel free to ask me any question or precision.
edit: read a few lines down on the wikipedia article and it says the factors for determining bad faith are:
> Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark;
> Whether the registrant registered the domain name to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, if the domain name owner has engaged in a pattern of such conduct; and
> Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or
> Whether by using the domain name, the registrant has intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, internet users to the registrant's website, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark.
I think he should be fine
There should be a site like this for every corporation and government that is significantly contributing to environmental degradation.
Perhaps Autodesk should stop supporting car manufacturers who produce internal combustion engines. Perhaps Autodesk should stop support modeling single-use products. Perhaps Autodesk should only support its products being used in countries with "democracy". Perhaps Autodesk should open source all of their software, otherwise Autodesk could be a front for the NSA.
/s
If people want actual change in the world, the correct solution is to try to shame large companies, smaller companies will just take their place. Instead work on technologies that make "unethical" practices obsolete.
As a blanket statement that is false. The purpose is whatever the founder(s) wants. If shares are sold then agreements have to be made which may or may not involve changing the purpose.