The world's biggest tech firms back climate change proposals

Climate Change

The likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft as well as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have rallied round the White House in a pledge to highlight and combat the growing issue of climate change. The Obama administration has just released a statement outlining the severity of the situation and the need for action.

The new Climate Action Plan proposed in the US will cut 6 billion tons of carbon pollution by the year 2030 - that's the same as taking every car in the United States off the road for four years. China has made similar pledges.

At the end of this year the leaders of the United Nations will meet together in Paris to thrash out a new timetable for minimising and reversing our impact on the environment, and this new plan is a step towards that meeting.

"Enormous threats"

Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has been busy blogging his support for the new climate change proposals and talking up his company's green credentials at the same time.

"Reaching a strong deal in Paris is an absolute and urgent necessity," he writes. "The data is clear and the science is beyond dispute: a warming planet poses enormous threats to society."

Schmidt says action is needed before "increased natural disasters and humanitarian crises fuel instability and violence" as a result of the world's changing climate. Extreme weather, drought, malnutrition and disease would also spread, he warned. But will it be too little too late?

David Nield
Freelance Contributor

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.