Which is worse - weak claims by wealthy or media cheerleading it without scrutiny?

What is a lay person to make of claims of wealthy companies to go carbon free? Of course it sounds great but when you look a little closer you will see it is not as tall as it is made out to be. Not just that, I suspect even many technically and financially adept people will think this is a big deal especially and when you have media houses like CNBC cheerleading such claims without proper scrutiny one cannot but lose trust and view every media claim with cynicism.

The specific issue that led me to write this was a request from a CNBC reporter as to what I thought of Google's claim to go carbon free and the CEO reported to be losing sleep over it. I wrote back saying you probably are not going to like what I have to say for it is a nuanced point which is this: Google and big tech are not the reason we face carbon issues and while their trying do such things is ok, it is really not a big deal for them. She wanted to hear more and so I shared the below and much more. 

This was my simple argument, which I call a smell test

• Google's annual revenues ~ $200 Billion
• Total annual google data center energy consumption ~ 14 TWh (tera Watthour). I got this from a presentation by Google employee here 
• Assuming a generous cost of $0.15 per kWhr, the energy cost of data centers = 14 TWh*0.15 $/kWh ~ $2 Billion
• Therefore, the energy cost share of their business (in terms of revenues) ~ 1% 
• Not only that, in all likelihood, switching to renewable electricity might even lower their cost for there are tax credits and even carbon credits to be sold if they build their own renewable facilities. Let's be generous and say their energy cost increases 50% or doubles and becomes 2%. Would a $200 Billion business which is a practical monopoly have to lose sleep over it? Give me a break!

However, a convenient weakness CNBC used was that my claim about their energy consumption was from an online search and not trust worthy. I cannot but help recall a line from perhaps the greatest political satire ever, the BBC's Yes Prime Minister, in which the Minister when his civil service secretary rejects his idea for raising taxes on cigarettes sky high  responds my statistics are mere statistics but his statistics are facts (Snippet here with the statement on statistics coming at t=3:19). What's more the reporter ran the numbers by Google who was supposed to responded that I am confusing matters of net zero and carbon neutrality or something like that. Therefore, nothing I said was trustworthy or useful for them such as my suggestion that would Google consider offsetting the energy of all the devices it expects to sell such as mobile phones and offset the emissions of their employees commuting to work and commit to zero landfilling of their devices. Of course, this is the real inconvenient truth. I found the Google presentation with their energy information only today.

So why does Google CEO have to lose sleep over this piddly stuff and why does the media choose to buy this greenwashing outright and fool us? And let's be clear, Google is not the reason we are facing an environmental crisis and what it wants to do is fine, but to say this is something great doesn't pass the smell test.

Coming back to the question of what is a lay person to make of the claims you hear about net zero claims of wealthy (companies, people and governments) - please don't just lap it up. I spent a couple hours to read, collect the above information above and spend time writing elaborate emails to the CNBC reporter who wanted me to help her understand what to make of this. Unfortunately, my facts didn't fit the story CNBC wanted to tell and as with these requests they can easily harvest respectable people whose views might pose less discomfort. While I am disappointed that I wasted time trying to help the writer and did not some much as get a mention, this is one more data point that the media is doing society a great disservice.

So if you ask me which is worse - claims made by companies of how much good they are doing or media cheerleading it without scrutiny, it is a no contest. And likewise we should also be a bit skeptical of media claims of harm caused by companies.