Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt is not being shy about how he feels about global warming skeptics, going as far as to describe them as liars.
Google has been doubling down on asserting itself as an environmentally aware company and recently ended support for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a known anti-climate change organization.
"The company has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts, what a shock, and the facts of climate change are not in question anymore," Schmidt, who is now chairman of the company, said in an interview. "Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people. They're just literally lying."
While Google did support ALEC on other grounds, a growing concern over climate change led to the company dropping funding for ALEC, a move likely done to remain in good faith with customers who largely are aware of the facts surrounding climate change.
Google was a member of the ALEC Communications and Technology Task Force along with a number of other companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo. All of these companies have withdrawn support from ALEC.
"It is unfortunate to learn Google has ended its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council as a result of public pressure from left-leaning individuals and organizations who intentionally confuse free market policy perspectives for climate change denial," said ALEC in a statement following the news that Google was ending its support for the council.
Despite this, some suggest that it is strange that Google, a technology-based company, would reject scientific skepticism that questions a hypothesis. While global warming is largely accepted as truth in both the scientific and nonscientific community, some suggest the climate ideology exists for other reasons.
"The ideology exists to protect a grand scheme to transfer fabulous riches to owners of renewable energy producers from all of the electricity users," said a report by a website called the National Legal and Policy Center. "This results in a highly regressive tax on all electricity users for no economic purpose other than to originate tax-paid income streams for these producers."
Despite this theory, it seems as though many tech companies are moving toward largely backing renewable energy, which not only helps the environment, but also is also likely to boost consumer confidence in such companies. Only time will tell, but it is likely that more tech companies will make moves toward renewable energy.
