How Sustainable Are Tech Companies, Really?

We have another special episode! Today, Rollie from @ClimateTown joins us to discuss clean energy and the climate crisis. Specifically, he helps us understand some of the promises that big tech companies companies like Apple and Google have been making when it comes to the climate. Like what is a carbon credit? And what the heck is a Duck curve? We hope you learn as much as we did in this fun chat!
Climate Town KZbin channel: / climatetown
The Climate Denier's Playbook: / @deniersplaybook
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:31 Climate Town backstory
08:49 What are Carbon Emissions?
25:08 Visible (Sponsored)
26:54 What is Clean Energy?
47:40 Netsuite (Sponsored)
48:52 Recycling
01:08:11 Quick Hit Questions
01:11:00 A Race to Z with Rollie
01:20:52 Outro
Links:
Apple: www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/0...
Google: www.google.com/about/datacent...
MKBHD Tesla Solar Roof: • Tesla Solar Roof Revie...
Shop the merch:
shop.mkbhd.com
Instagram/Threads/Twitter:
Waveform: / wvfrm
Waveform: www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast
Marques: www.threads.net/@mkbhd
Andrew: www.threads.net/@andrew_manga...
David Imel: www.threads.net/@davidimel
Adam: www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17
Ellis: / ellisrovin
TikTok:
/ waveformpodcast
Join the Discord:
/ discord
Music by 20syl:
bit.ly/2S53xlC
Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

[@mkbhd]

BONUS EPISODE

[@humbleinthejungle.]

MKB(ONUS)HD 🎉🎉🎉

[@charlesdamien5849]

I love to see Waveform highlighting these underground, lesser known channels.

[@andremacedo8757]

Those bonus episodes are awesome!!

[@adriendesentenac]

So this is not Friday? 🥲

[@esgee3829]

there are even examples of DOUBLE counting in carbon offsets. along the lines of "saving the forests that were already saved" which rollie fingers discusses. see nature conservancy.

[@ClimateTown]

AYYYYYY, thanks so much for having me on the pod! Sorry to drag David’s mom's house into so many metaphors.

[@RollieWilliams]

Yeah dude, that was pretty out of line.

[@ClimateTown]

Okay you need to calm down,@@RollieWilliams

[@JonasLekevicius]

Is that @RollieWilliams, the world-famous billiards influencer?!

[@alysoncovin]

Omg this is hilarious 😂

[@umairshaikh3682]

@@RollieWilliams its rollie from kamui!

[@LUISGONZALEZ-dd8rn]

UNDERRATED COLLAB. 100% didn't expect this. Shoutouts to the team for connecting with Rollie.

[@greggbonti4952]

For sure. Rollie is awesome. "There's like a million of those people and they've all seen Mad Men" 🤣

[@alexanderpurcell1683]

I love Climate Town!! What a fun cross over!!

[@ChunkyBunny2]

This is one collaboration I never would have expected!! Big fan of both of your channels.

[@coleockerse5473]

Rollie should become a recurring guest of the show every time a tech company comes out with some big 'sustainability' news.

[@AMonitorDarkly]

MKBHD’s Senior Climate Science Correspondent

[@4lc441]

Am I the only one who didn’t enjoy this episode? He didn’t really give meaningful answers to most of the questions he was asked. I feel like they’ve already discussed these issues with more detail/nuance in previous episodes than they did here.

[@ElusiveTy]

@@4lc441 I've been looking for someone to say this. He seemed nice and wasn't unpleasant but I did find many times where I had to sigh and the awkwardness coming from the rest of the podcast, especially David (which you can see on his face a few times when the camera cuts), really got to me. His answers weren't really clear... Like when he was asked about whether pot-able/recycled water was a real thing and he went on talking about the Latin root of the term... That... That wasn't what he was asked. Or at the beginning when he even realised he went on a completely unrelated tangent and Marques' scoff was my reaction exactly at that point.

[@AngelicHunk]

​@@ElusiveTy The Latin root thing was a joke you didn't catch. His comedy is a kind of dry humor.

[@4lc441]

@@AngelicHunk Well yeah but he still didn't actually address the question right. He pivoted to other topics or jokes instead of actually talking about anything substantial.

[@Idefilms]

This crossover seems so obvious in retrospect, but it truly feels like one of those moments where you bump into two people and go, "Wait, you KNOW each other??" Diving into this right now!

[@therapyseshpod]

These extra episodes are spoiling me and I love it and thank the team 🙌🏽

[@chriskiripolsky6151]

Fun fact: I was one of the engineers tasked with doing a hydraulic analysis of the Niagara River leading up to Niagara Falls (they were replacing a pedestrian bridge on the American side). Power plants from both America and Canada take a certain amount of flow each day from the river to power lots of things. To make Niagara Falls look nice, during peak visiting hours (weekends during the summer) these plants don't take any flow from the water. We had to account for this in our analysis of the worst case scenario (in terms of volume of water). Thought it was kind of interesting.

[@critiqueofthegothgf]

you have no idea how much I love you for having Rollie on here. that's basically my dad right there

[@JamesonHuddle]

Can't reccomend climate town enough, the deliver and editing style is top notch (the research and education is pretty great too :)

[@tentenbits]

Rollie!!! unexpectedly getting more Climate Town content from MKBHD!

[@suny217]

I work at an Amazon warehouse and was asked to help out for 40 minutes at this place where packages needs a human touch to make sure they are placed onto the conveyor label side up. The amount of single item, plastic shopping bags I’ve seen, in that short amount of time. Should be illegal. I always knew how much plastic bags Amazon goes through but to see it first hand, I was stunned

[@ghost_endy]

IT’S FRIDA- oh wait… happy tuesday!!!

[@TheBismrk]

Honestly, it gets me every time

[@LoolooandMarco]

Video title sounds really interesting, listening right now ^^

[@carylittleford8980]

I've always been troubled by the fact that when tech reviewers recommend a product to buy they're almost never talk about the ethics and impact of the company that make them as well as their repair ability and companies attitudes to sustainability etc. I've worked as an ethical IT purchaser for government and business for many many years and do not understand why tech reviews seem to refuse to inform their audiences of the ethical side of their recommendations. Recommending you buy a product based on its features alone without considering the environmental sustainable and repairability aspects just seems wrong.....

[@gmdille]

I agree with you and would love to see more focus on corporate ethics in reviews, but the fact of the matter is that covering ethics becomes its own separate research project to dig into the company, their history, the background of the product designers, etc. Not to mention you'd need to figure out if Company A (who has a great ethical reputation) uses any widgets from Company B (who doesn't) in their product, and that's a whole separate can of worms. And maybe all of that is overkill, but without doing exhaustive research I feel like it would be impossible to make any kind of informed ethical judgement about a single product, let alone a whole company. So if we want to have that kind of discussion (and I think there's absolutely value in having them), these "ethical reviews" would almost need to be their own deep-dive style documentaries a la 60 Minutes or something.

[@ian-wilson]

Find an excuse to bring Rollie back! Love the episode and discussion!!

[@lackoliver55]

Thank you David. Can't tell you how many times I've seen people get stuck on a word in conversation and ask "Is ____ a word?" I always, as well, just say "Words aren't real." If I understand what information you're trying to translate from brainwaves to human sound patterns. Guess what? You succeeded.

[@DavidImel]

🤝

[@somratkhan8688]

But then they'll say that you're uneducated on simple things or you're a dumb person though.

[@lackoliver55]

@@somratkhan8688 Depends on context, topic of conversation, and the company you keep. I guess. If you're having a philosophical debate on the nature of existential realism, (or worse, contract litigation) then yeah, vocab is probably important. If you're trying to explain the texture of a material to a friend and call it "cork-esque" then I get it.

[@segraham33]

Long term MKBHD/Waveform fan, found Climate Town just this year. A mixture of two great things! Just started listening to The Climate Denier's Playbook podcast and highly recommend it!

[@TylerFernandes94]

I love Climate Town!

[@harrisonwheat7976]

Rollie is my hero man. So funny and so intelligent. The way he fuses teaching and comedy is a true gift.

[@Fliptricksftwdude]

Climate Town! Great to see Rollie here, nice cooperation 😊

[@tanninarceo]

Just want to mention how I love that you guys do bonus episodes when you have a guest rather than the guest episode replacing the normal format! I mean I loved this episode and Rollie was a great guest, but it's just nice to know we still get to hear the regular squad banter later in the week 😅

[@garvyadav]

I agree! 😃

[@averyfollett4005]

PLEASE bring this guy back. I love Climate Town

[@devinlinehan7048]

Good for you guys for convincing such a great content producer on your show. I watch everything that Climate Town puts out. I wish that there was more, but I think that high quality takes time to produce. Great way to pull more traffic to your channel.

[@Raggart]

I love Climate Town! Rollie did an amazing job explaining some fairly complex concepts. Thanks for inviting him.

[@vrucewayne]

David is spot on, words can mean whatever we want them to.

[@Kane0123]

I love how you quickly Rollie gets going on a tangent. It’s such an indicator of such deep knowledge and a desire to share it. No wonder climate town vids are so long - thank god he scripts it!

[@khall187]

Ha more like total b/s rambling.

[@darthmaul216]

@@khall187so facts are now b/s? Where will it end

[@khall187]

@@darthmaul216 Facts? Not a single fact about the genocide in the Congo was discussed. Not a single fact about the perils of lithium batteries was discussed. No facts about the impact on the car industry. Not a single fact about CHARGING PEOPLE A TAX to use their own devices (carbon credits). This was literally a shine piece for the pro-green people and said NOTHING about the very valid counter arguments against it.

[@sundersquare]

@@khall187 why would they talk about genocide in congo? its about climate. they also didn't talk about genocides that happened in the US. because its not relevant to the current climate crisis. this is basically an intro to thinking about the climate for fans of marques and tech people

[@darknesswithin0]

1:10:55 Imagine companies telling the best they can do-and then surpassing that. That's exactly what the climate efforts need...

[@cagey300]

Know mid-week waveform!! David always comes up with such incredible episodes

[@shiveshinpillay]

Since I am a massive pool fan, I knew Rollie for his cool recreations of shots, so to see him talking about climate change is definitely a crossover for me😂👍

[@UlrikDrabls]

So happy to see Rollie more places on YT, been a GIGANTIC Climate Town fan since the very first video

[@downingbots]

We love ClimateTown!

[@user-od3ii6bd7d]

I haven’t even started watching but I know this episode is gonna be amazing. ClimateTown is a John Oliver tier channel for me

[@user-od3ii6bd7d]

He called himself “low budget John Oliver” I swear I didn’t prewatch. Fucking awesome 😂

[@sauravayyagari7606]

let's goo, great guest climatetown funny and smart

[@TheFatblob25]

Climate Town is a great channel!!

[@brandondo2734]

I have a forestry degree the stuff said about logging and burning is false information. Forest management involves cutting trees like a person getting a haircut to keep it from being overgrown and unhealthy. Prescribed burns are another method of forest management where control fires burn dead leaves and other materials that could act as fire fuel on the forest floor. Stopping these practices will led to more severe fires in the future that will produce more carbon emissions than normal management practices. Not all harvesting are using a clear cut method. Most of the time it is a thinning method which once it's done you can barely tell there was a harvesting operation was done in that stand. Even so with clear cutting operations it is done with species like Douglas fir that love the method. It gives them open space to release their cones. Regeneration for Douglas fir is quick after clear cutting operations turning it into essentially a tree farm. Harvesting operations allow for more regeneration and completion after its done as new open space is available for seedlings to grow and not be shaded by old growth tree. Apart of "forest protection" as mention not to do in the podcast but is indeed how to protect the forest is prescribed burns and harvesting operations to keep the forest nice and healthy. In general there is a misconception about the whole logging industry and forest management in general as most people automatically think cutting down a tree is bad. There is a lack of public education for forestry practices.

[@AngelicHunk]

No disrespect, but "false information"? There weren't any serious implications about forest management in this episode. When Rollie mentioned burning forests, he was implying a *complete removal* of a forest; he used it as a flippant hypothetical where a company pays for a carbon negative thing to not happen. The focus was about carbon offsets, not forest management. He also didn't imply clearcutting was the only harvesting method, but clearcutting definitely happens, so using that term is valid in an example about "carbon-neutral" posturing.

[@yonkocommander5531]

@@AngelicHunk his remarks on leather are very far from reality tho, we need to keep in mind that cow farms are not going away, vegan leather is a synthetic plastic-like bottom of the barrel quality material that takes 1000 years to degrade, while real leather is a byproduct that otherwise will be garbage that will continue to exist, it's also way more biodegradable with way more durability and reusability, disappointed that such a big activist doesn't know this simple things.

[@melissa.deklerk]

I LOVE the ClimateTown channel. Such an excellent idea for a bonus episode. Can't wait to sit down with a cup of tea and listen. Thank you to everyone who made this episode possible.

[@TheZekei]

Climate Town brought me here. First time watching this podcast. Glad to see it!

[@AlexanderHeiss-xr8xs]

No way!! The crossover episode i never knew i wanted but i always secretly needed

[@loganwebb5449]

the bonus episodes have been so great! Keep em coming!

[@knightoh]

Climate Town! Rollie is so god damn good.

[@charlesdamien5849]

Loving all the longform content!

[@IanZainea1990]

28:11 not only was it a slo mo, it was a time travel, and this podcast was recorded when I was 12 days old. Neat!

[@shadebug]

The thing about the OnePlus recycle scheme is, are they actually recycling it themselves? As soon as they aren’t then there’s a significant chance that they’re handing it to a “recycling company” that’s just going to landfill it because they couldn’t find a buyer or some such

[@dizmog]

Easily my favorite WVFRM collab. This was so great. Can't wait to see the follow-up.

[@Arsalan_2210]

so many bonus episodes! Thanks guys :). Enjoying em on my way back home from work!

[@alandworsky8926]

You guys have been crushing it lately - props to the whole team!

[@TheBClark88]

Amazing to see Rollie on here - guy has been killing it for the past couple of years.

[@ricardovargas678]

I love MKBHD, but having a Phd degree in climate science and having collaborated with the IPCC I can said there where a lot of imprecision in the discussion. Also, the offsetting of carbon is terrible, is just greenwashing, there are a lot of issues with the accountability of carbon. I was expecting a more firm statement about that

[@YouTubeMonkeyWrangler420]

The collab I never expected, glad yall are fans of climate town too!!!!!

[@ovrsees]

Love Rollie's work on Climate Town! So glad to see him as a guest here - best collab of 2023.

[@sreedhar6745]

Wow, what a collab!! For me... Rollie is known for his awesome pool videos, I still watch them everyday even though he stopped making those two years ago. Good to see him here.

[@IanZainea1990]

Was great to hear from Rollie! Have him on again, love this guy

[@jannisb3801]

I love Rolli, such a fun and informative person, one of a kind!

[@critiqueofthegothgf]

"in any order...or?" Rollie is hilarious for no reason man

[@milkmanchannel1]

These bonus episodes are seriously some of the most interesting stuff. Love it

[@TalkingTrey]

Love these random drops

[@XLessThanZ]

Thank you for the new channel, Climate Town. Great episode👍🏽

[@dcdales]

Oh! Climate Town! LOVE his videos. This is awesome! Edit: Really looking forward to the EV episode. 🤞

[@auke640]

Damn Climate Town is big time now! Hell yeah

[@sundersquare]

big fan of Rollie

[@kenbee1957]

Been watching Climate Town for a year now I scared my cat jumping for my phone when I saw the thumbnail Also, the 90 degree bond bit That absolutely KILLED

[@FranciscoNogueira]

This guy is a great discovery. Just subscribed his channel. And the cherry on top is that he's got loads of Dave Matthews' vibes...

[@DT8888]

Please involve more analysis on tech products with Rollie! His message is so important and increasing his reach would be fantastic

[@bashbifaananyi3136]

Definitely loving the bonus episodes.

[@cristiantrushin]

This was incredibly informative. Thanks Rollie!

[@fukkenPavlo]

You absolutely should feature Louis Rossman on the right to repair video

[@mikezheng33]

The problem I have with getting rid of leather is that we still eat beef. So surely we might as well use the leather the cows are producing.

[@Pictoru2]

holy smokes, i LOVE ClimateTown!!!!! This is the combo i never knew i wanted, but desperately needed

[@victoroyeyemi3187]

This was a fun guest

[@jasonckirby]

“Words aren’t real.” Love it!

[@TheKaurK]

I LOVE CLIMATE TOWN!! Omg I have literally DREAMED of this collaboration! Of course in the dream there was a zombie apocalypse happening simultaneously but still. This is amazing!!

[@tito9107]

Yes! The crossover I've always wanted!

[@raphael7208]

Such a good episode please continue with these videos

[@hoodedmexican]

Please bring him back (maybe for that ev topic?!!) Rollie is a top tier guest!!!

[@ConLLee]

100% have Rollie back on again. What a great bonus episode

[@CelestialVeggie]

Amazing work, all of you! ❤

[@jjbankert]

Just at the 2nd baked in ad break, and stoked to find out there's half an hour more 🎉

[@andrazsk8]

A crossover I never expected, but absolutely love!!

[@StealthyArmada]

I would love to see him on your main channel for more climate change outreach ❤

[@bjarkih1977]

Watching Lois Rossman's videos about Apple's efforts to hinder repair and therefore increasing waste is very informative.

[@felix6763]

Always happy for a bonus episode ❤

[@kestutis.povilaitis]

This is an awesome collab!! Loved watching it. Love Rollie and his content. Eagerly looking forward for the EVs video. Maybe you could explore some Chinese EVs and their manufacturing practices and sustainability claims? They will be likely cheaper due to being made in a more polluting way and it could pose a serious competition to some more sustainable EVs. Maybe there are some things public should know on this. Thanks!

[@CoIIecting-Dust]

Love these mid week suprises!

[@vncube1002]

Loved this collab with Rollie and appreciate the research that goes into these deeper dive episodes🙌🏾

[@Jzpssngthru]

Such a good episode! Hope you guys venture more into sustainability and climate topics!

[@MaxFung]

i love climate town!!! such a quality creator

[@KaleyDuke]

9:32 david saying "...ok..." all uncomfortable lol. great episode!!! hope Rollie comes on again soon.

[@Lawman212]

Damn, @climatetown making the podcast rounds. Nice! More Rollie is needed.

[@MacarioDeLosRios]

Amazing!!! Climate Town, one of the best KZbin channels. Well done guys

[@KROMAprd]

This is such an interesting episode, what a fantastic guest to bring on and a great topic to delve into - tech from a different angle that is super important right now.

[@chasingdogs]

This happened to be very informative. I had some of these doubts you guys asked. Thanks guys.

[@mon699]

Loooooooove me a bonus episode literally taking a break from work and this is my break time snack!!!

[@pauleinundzwanzig]

Great podcast! Please more about this topic!

[@DiegoMattos_diguitarrista]

Nice episode. I'm a physicist and I also teach so it's nice to see this discussion and get the information about the companies.

[@nandishrajukori2169]

I lost it when he said "carbon dioxide fu*ks of into the atmosphere" 😂 (9:53)

[@REVIEWSONTHERUN]

Thanks for sharing it. ✌️

[@ninjamonkeytime]

Seeing Raleigh in the Tumbnail made me almost as excited as a new climate town video

[@U2haveaniceday20]

MKB Excellent Podcast and great points brought up.I appreciate all the great subjects brought up as well.I think that it's great no matter how someone else choices to make a difference in someone's life. Also i see many comments about consumerism and child labor and all this but yet the same applies to the comments made through devices(Phones),Computers and other electronics products. Yet everything today from transactions will be done this way.I also see where it is expected to be done this way.So i like to see how many people are willing to make strong decisions about what to do. Thanks so much for sharing Always Enjoy. ✌️💯

[@gshak33]

Climate Town is the best! Thanks for bringing his message into the mind of the tech community.