At Apple shareholder’s meeting, Tim Cook tells off climate change deniers

At a shareholders meeting on Friday, CEO Tim Cook angrily defended Apple's environmentally-friendly practices against a request from the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) to drop those practices if they ever became unprofitable.

NCPPR put forward a shareholder's proposal asking Apple to disclose how much it spends on sustainability programs. If those costs detracted from Apple's bottom line, the NCPPR demanded that Apple discontinue the programs and commit only to projects that are explicitly profitable. Cook apparently became angry at the group's request. According to an account from MacObserver:

What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR's advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.

"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI." He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.

He didn't stop there, however, as he looked directly at the NCPPR representative and said, "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

For the better part of the last decade, Apple has taken on a number of sustainability projects and adopted practices to reduce waste and carbon emissions. In 2012, it broke ground on a data center in Oregon in order to take advantage of low-cost renewable energy and has plans to make all of its facilities reliant on green energy. It generally scores highly with EPEAT, a federal environmental group that keeps a registry of “green” digital devices. And in May 2013, it hired Lisa Jackson, who formerly ran the Environmental Protection Agency, to help Apple with sustainability.

NCPPR later issued a blustery press release about how Apple's desire to “combat so-called climate change” would destroy shareholder value. It accused "the Al gore contingency in the room" of greeting its questions "with boos and hisses."

According to the press release, Justin Danhof, director of the National Center's Free Enterprise Project, said "Mr. Cook made it very clear to me that if I, or any other investor, was more concerned with return on investment than reducing carbon dioxide emissions, my investment is no longer welcome at Apple."

It seems clear that Apple won't halt its projects for climate change deniers, and the rest of its shareholders weren't troubled by that at all. The NCPPR's proposal received just 2.95 percent of the vote.