Even with all those caveats, its still an impressive milestone and a step in the right direction.
Totally separate things.
The parallel that I'm drawing is that recycling was largely touted in the 90s as the solution to the world's pollution problems, but what ended up happening is that people's impression of recycling and their actual implementations turned out to be woefully out of sync. One can argue that the long term damage of this discrepancy is that people will mindlessly buy plastic bottles of coke, ultimately contributing to the microplastics problem because they've been largely trained to think that recycling plastics works (instead of a hypothetical alternative reality where people might instead bring reusable containers to stores to buy things).
On the contrary that's not how i remember it - everyone was talking about how recycling was the worst out of reduce, reuse, recycle.
However people want to clear their concious for free, so they chose recycling above all else.
Curious to hear some of these examples.
If you look at Japan, for example, they obsessively went all in on recycling. Look at how many different types of recyclables they have, the new electronics craze, the apartment complex obasans that would bring your unsorted garbage back to your unit door as a form of passive-aggressive social peer pressure, etc.
I distinctly remember being taught about recycling in school, and reading about it in children's books, but reduce and reuse were at best afterthoughts, if mentioned at all.
Governments spend a considerable amount on recycling education (e.g. pamphlets about what can and cannot go in a recycling bin), but the taxation incentives I'm aware of don't really paint a super convincing reduce/reuse-oriented strategy.
Separately, one of the things that gets to me with companies like Google claiming a zero carbon footprint is that if you look at its corporate headquarters, it's mostly parking lot, and some building. The first time I visited Google's HQ, my first impression was just all the parked cars and no way to get to the HQ without Uber/Lyft. Same with Facebook. That picture alone seems wrong to me from an environmental standpoint. Why isn't there a train station there with electric trains instead of a parking lot?
(Google's Boston (Cambridge) office, on the other hand, is right across from a subway station which totally feels right.)
It aint perfect, but still seems to be in the right direction towards getting to where we need to go.
Its not like this is a new problem - regulation of markets for fake goods has been a thing for a long time.
And also, 10 miles is a really long distance. Most people consider anything more than 1 mile un-walkable for a commute, so what about all the people between 1 to 10 miles?
And what about visitors, contractors, interviewees, partner company employees, and everyone else who can't take the bus? Why aren't the buses a part of the local transit agency, and why does the local transit agency not even bother running frequent route anywhere near Google, Apple, Facebook, et al.? Why aren't there air-conditioned express Wi-Fi VTA buses, or better yet, fast (>80mph) electric trains, plying up and down 101 and 280 serving all the tech companies in one go, stopping at each HQ, considering they are almost all right next to either highway? That would be a low-carbon world.
Also, one of the inherent problems with employee shuttles instead is that they compete with public transit, and also reduce the flexibility for employees to go to other places after work. I've known many employees regularly go to FLAG companies via the shuttle but drive to work on days they have dinner appointments with friends. To a great degree this also propagates the cycle where public transit becomes progressively worse in coverage and maintainence, and progressively more for low-income individuals only.
Compare to many other public-transit-first countries which have trains/buses that are actually fast, clean, nice, comfortable, and not worse than taking a company shuttle + you have the flexibility to go whenever you want, as well as wherever you want after work.
You are describing something close to the original vision behind BART [1] that was proposed in 1956, but bear in mind that a significant number of people - predominately in the wealthy suburbs - opposed such a vision for a variety of reasons, and many of those same voices hold sway today.
> Why aren't there air-conditioned express Wi-Fi VTA buses, or better yet, ultra-fast electric trains, plying up and down 101 and 280
Rather than 280, they should serve 880, which goes to more affordable housing in the East Bay.
1. https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/This-is-what-BART-...
And as sibling comment mentions, climate change is bad for business too, so that's the incentive for net-negative.
Can't help but note, flood or wildfire insurance (for people in risk areas) has climbed in cost a lot more than $375/yr.
$375/household/yr sounds downright cheap to me, if it gets us out of this hurricane/wildfire/drought/flood cycle.
But speaking a bit more broadly, you'd get a good idea from the Wikipedia page on corporate ethics. It's a whole field of study.
Mostly, it does.
> think of the clean air act and a host of others (e.g. OSHA)
Those laws are at odds with capitalism, because they limit the control of private capital owners over the application of that capital in favor of social direction or limitation by the State on others’ interest.
Now, you can support that as necessary for the good of society or oppose it as an infringement on the liberty of owners, but in either case you shouldn't mistake it for capitalism.
Like how my computer is technically a regular expression because the universe is finite so it can be simulated by a large enough finite state machine.