In public, Apple champions fighting climate change – behind closed doors, Apple lobbies against climate change legislation

In public, Apple claims it supports legislation to combat climate change.

Jackson, now Apple's VP for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, released a statement asserting that the urgent threat of climate change is a key priority" for the company. Jackson called on Congress and the Biden administration to take urgent action" to pass climate policies that quickly decarbonize our electric grid." Specifically, Jackson said Apple supports the enactment of a Clean Energy Standard (CES) that would decarbonize the power sector by 2035."

However, now that said standard is actually on the verge of being implemented, Apple, behind closed doors, is changing its tune.

The goal of the Clean Energy Standard in the reconciliation package would be to reduce carbon emissions from the power sector by 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2035. It's the precise policy that Jackson said Apple supported in her statement.

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Given this stance, you might be surprised that Apple is part of a massive lobbying blitz" to kill the reconciliation package and its Clean Energy Standard.

Why, then, is Apple now suddenly fighting the very standard it was championing?

The ads focus on the funding mechanism for the package, which includes increasing the corporate tax rate by a few percentage points - from 21% to 26.5%. The rate would still be far lower than the 35% corporate tax rate in place prior to the 2017 tax cuts. In 2020, Apple had $67 billion in profits and an effective tax rate of 14.4%.

Ah, of course. Apple wants to be regarded as an environmentally responsible company, but only if it's free and doesn't cost them anything. Apple's hypocrisy knows no bounds.