Microsoft's Next Phase of Climate Lobbying

Microsoft has brought on the government affairs firm Lot Sixteen to lobby on sustainability and climate change, a newly public filing shows. From a report: While Microsoft has lots of in-house and outside lobbyists working on all sorts of things, it's the first time an outside firm will be lobbying only on climate and environmental topics, Microsoft confirmed. "The company made bold, new climate commitments this year. Adding a firm dedicated to this effort reflects this priority issue," said Kate Frischmann, a Microsoft spokeswoman. The company has made new environmental commitments and funding announcements this year including... in January, Microsoft pledged to become "carbon negative" by 2030 and announced a $1 billion fund for technologies and methods that pull CO2 directly from the atmosphere. They also set a goal of having "zero waste" from their operations, products and packaging by 2030.

Microsoft doing something right!?

[1s44c]

What happened to the world that Microsoft are the good guys here? This is weird and unfamiliar.

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[RightSaidFred99]

Don't worry, some grizzled 63 year old fat guy stuck in 1991 will be along to tell us any minute that this is all a trick and Microsoft actually wants to embrace the climate change fight, extend it, then extinguish it. They will proceed to post as if Bill Gates still runs MS, and then some other chucklehead will be along to tell us that Bill Gates is actuall a pedophile satan worshipper who drinks the blood of children.

1...2...3... DISCOURSE! Lol.

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[Darinbob]

Wait, I thought the old fat guy is going to tell us that it's a Gates and Soros plot to get us injected with ID chips that turn us liberal?

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[RightSaidFred99]

Well, there's more than one old fat guy. One just has more skin conditions than the other. Also, they will sneak something about 5G in there, something about Dominion and "stealing muh vote", and blather something about a Kraken.

Re:Microsoft doing something right!?

[cayenne8]

Actually not that old or fat, but my first thought is...who gives a fuck on this?

I'd rather a Microsoft that had software that didn't have all the telemetry on it. I'd rather have one with most consistency across the board on apps, etc....and to make their software easier to use to find things to configure.

Hell, there shouldn't be so many fscking hoops to sum through to get into outlook and make it stop putting "smart quotes" in for regular quotes...makes cutting and pasting linux strings a PITA....or having to dig through a bunch of crap that isn't really obvious to just have it skip to the next open email when you delete the one you're reading.

Sure, I figure how to do it, but it wasn't intuitive.

I'd rather MS spend their time and money making their OS and apps more refined and user friendly....and more unified.

Climate? Geez....not that worried about it myself, but there' plenty of better qualified folks to be worrying about that than MS.

Re:Microsoft doing something right!?

[GameboyRMH]

Perhaps by accident, from a pure greed perspective it makes sense for a tech company to push for decarbonization - gives various tech solutions behind telecommuting an advantage over travelling and face-to-face interaction, and data centers are the easiest things in the world to switch to renewable power.

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[GameboyRMH]

Pure greed certainly doesn't care about what happens after its benefactors are dead - likely not even about what happens after the next quarter.

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[EvilSS]

It makes sense though. They are, at their core, a software and cloud company. It's easy for them to do the right thing in this case. Their biggest target for going green is going to be their power consumption, and with rapidly growing renewable power generation around the world that's not going to be a hard target to hit. It gets them good publicity and doesn't drastically increase their costs (maybe even lowers them in some cases like packaging for the hand full of physical products they make). It aligns

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[1s44c]

Microsoft are at their core a sales and marketing company. They are simply awesome at that but haven't shown much aptitude at anything else.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a better link with more details: https://wtop.com/loudoun-county/2020/01/shhhh-leesburg-authorizes-microsoft-nondisclosure-agreement/ [wtop.com]

You first

[smooth wombat]

to lobby on sustainability and climate change

Unlike the Microsoft campus which is acre upon acre of steel and concrete and blacktop mixed with a few square feet of grass or trees.

So... wait.

[roc97007]

> "Microsoft has brought on the government affairs firm Lot Sixteen to lobby on sustainability and climate change"

My immediate thought was, are they for or against?

This is Microsoft, it's a valid question.