Tech giants sounded the alarm about climate change. Now they're warming up to Trump
To hear the CEOs at tech giants tell it, climate change poses a dire risk to humanity.
Fifteen months ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a post on X that climate change is "one of the world's most urgent priorities." Weeks later, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, described the issue as "humanity's next big moonshot" in comments at a company conference.
Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos, who founded a $10 billion organization devoted to addressing climate change, wrote in an Instagram post nearly five years ago that it is "the biggest threat to our planet."
Speaking to thousands at a Harvard University commencement in 2017, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg urged graduates to help fight climate change before "we destroy the planet."
Since the re-election of former President Donald Trump, however, and despite his repeated denials that climate change is real and his vows to roll back the nation's commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, these big-tech leaders and their companies have publicly engaged with the president-elect more amicably than they did during his first administration – including making $1 million donations to his inauguration from each of the companies or their executives.
This apparent warming of relations could make it difficult for the big tech firms, which make up four of the world's seven largest companies by market capitalization, to maintain their high-profile public appearance of corporate advocacy in the fight against climate change, according to experts who spoke with ABC News.
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Meta declined an ABC News request for comment. Alphabet and Apple did not respond to repeated ABC News requests for comment.
In response to ABC News' request for comment, the Trump-Vance transition team touted what they said was Trump's record on environmental issues.
"In his first term, President Trump advanced conservation and environmental stewardship while promoting economic growth for families across the country. America’s energy agenda under President Trump produced affordable, reliable energy for consumers along with stable, high-paying jobs for small businesses – all while dropping U.S. carbon emissions to their lowest level in 25 years," Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team, told ABC News in a statement.
"In his second term, President Trump will once again deliver clean air and water for American families while Making America Wealthy Again," Leavitt added.
A trend of falling U.S. carbon emissions began under President Barack Obama but it continued under Trump, according to Global Carbon Budget findings compiled by Our World in Data.
Big tech and Trump: Then versus now
To be sure, there is no evidence that the companies' friendly posture toward Trump since the 2024 election has altered their respective plans to reduce emissions of carbon, the primary greenhouse gas driving climate change.
Apple, Alphabet and Meta have pledged net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, while Amazon says it will attain the same goal by 2040.
Yet the cordial relations of late between Trump and the tech giants mark a shift from recent years.
Just weeks after he was elected to his first term, Trump met at Trump Tower in New York with some of the biggest names in tech, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Apple's Tim Cook, former Alphabet CEO Larry Page and its then-Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg.
"We'll be there for you," Trump told the Silicon Valley royalty, in part, calling them an "amazing group of people."
![PHOTO: Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, President-elect Donald Trump, Peter Theil, Tim Cook and Safra Catz attend a meeting at Trump Tower in New York City, Dec. 14, 2016.](https://i.abcnewsfe.com/a/5783ebe3-95dc-4cfa-a3ad-29ac43ce37d9/tech-climate-trump-1-gty-jm-250117_1737127040891_hpEmbed_22x15.jpg?w=992)
The honeymoon was short-lived for some. During Trump's first term, he sharply criticized Amazon and The Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Speaking to the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. in 2018, Bezos described Trump's attacks on the media as "dangerous."
Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram banned Trump in January 2021, soon after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. Zuckerberg called the risks of allowing Trump on the platform "simply too great," though last year, Meta reinstated Trump's accounts.
More recently, that public stance has significantly changed. Last month, Amazon made a $1 million donation to Trump's inauguration – more than 17 times the $58,000 Amazon donated to Trump's 2017 inauguration – days after Bezos told The New York Times that he is "very optimistic" about a second Trump term.
Meta also donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration last month, after not donating to Trump's 2017 inauguration.
Alphabet also made a $1 million donation, as did Apple CEO Tim Cook, separate from Apple. Apple did not give to Trump's 2017 inauguration, while Alphabet donated $285,000 to that year's event.
Pichai and Cook visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence on consecutive days last month, the Associated Press reported. In posts on X, Pichai and Cook each applauded Trump's victory and vowed to work with the incoming administration.
Meta's Zuckerberg also met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago Jan. 10, multiple sources told ABC News. The meeting took place just days after Zuckerberg announced that Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram were doing away with fact checkers in favor of "community notes" – essentially, allowing the platforms' contributors to police content – saying in part that fact-checkers who were put in place in the wake of Trump's 2016 election have proven to be "too politically biased."
"The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech," Zuckerberg said.
Some industry observers told ABC News that the ostensible softening toward Trump by big-tech corporations reflects a new business landscape that is both heavily influenced by the president-elect and increasingly defined by the development of energy-intensive artificial intelligence products.
"You're seeing a much different sense this time around with Trump than obviously when he came into office in 2016," Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at the investment firm Wedbush, which focuses on the tech industry, told ABC News,
"The tech companies can still keep their green-friendly targets, but they also have to play nice in the sandbox with Trump," Ives added.
While those companies do their best to "play nice" with Trump while continuing to pursue their climate change pledges, the analysts said they may continue their climate advocacy more quietly than in prior years.
"I understand why companies would not be as vocal under Trump," Lisa Benjamin, a law professor at the Lewis & Clark Law School who studies corporate responsibility and climate change, told ABC News. "They can package it whatever way is palatable, but corporate action is what's important here."
Increasing climate change concerns
Warming relations between big tech and Trump have coincided with renewed alarm from scientists and international agencies about the threat posed by climate change.
A United Nations report published in October found that greenhouse gas emissions reached an all-time high last year. Urgent action must be taken to avoid "catastrophic" temperature increases and prevent the worst effects of climate change, the report said.
For his part, Trump has previously dismissed climate change as a "hoax." One day after the 2020 presidential election, he withdrew U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Accords, a global treaty that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. Trump also vowed to increase U.S. production of fossil fuels, a major source of greenhouse gasses.
While Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Meta have public-facing climate commitments, they differ in substance and execution, said Benjamin, of Lewis & Clark Law School.
Some pledges lock companies into near-term commitments that allow for some accountability, while other pledges are less-specific and include significant wiggle room, Benjamin added.
For instance, Apple has vowed to address not only its direct carbon emissions but also those caused by the energy it purchases, and by the downstream firms within its supply chain. Apple's pledge qualifies for a list of credible commitments maintained by the United Nations-backed Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a nonprofit that evaluates corporate climate pledges.
By contrast, Amazon's commitment relies in part on carbon offsets – investments in outside projects that ideally reduce greenhouse gas emissions in amounts equal to what the purchaser produces. Amazon was removed from SBTi's list in 2023 after the organization said it failed to set a credible carbon emissions target.
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In response to ABC News’ request for comment, Amazon pointed to a section of its 2023 sustainability report showing that the company reduced its overall emissions by 3% compared to a year earlier.
Amazon also highlighted a portion of the report that mentions independent review of some of the findings was conducted by accounting firm EY and consulting company Apex.
Alphabet's pledge qualifies for a spot on SBTi's list, while Meta's commitment does not.
"Nuance is everything. You can't just say you've got a net-zero commitment and we won't hold you to it," Benjamin said. "The biggest companies are huge in terms of the number of emissions they capture, and some really can be leaders in the fights against climate change."
As concerns about climate change increase, so too does concern among advocates that big tech may soften its commitment to address it under a second Trump administration.
"It matters what they say, but it matters more what they do," Benjamin added. "The nightmare scenario is that they're not as vocal, and they don't take sufficiently ambitious actions. That's what we're all worried about."
Balancing climate advocacy with business realities
Industry observers who spoke with ABC News said big-tech firms now must grapple with how to maintain public-facing climate leadership while also preserving healthy relations with the Trump administration. The latter is necessary in order to maintain their bottom lines, leaving them little choice but to embrace that reality.
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"The companies either go to Mar-a-Lago and walk down the red carpet, or they'll be fighting a battle uphill," Ives said.
That purported economic reality is exemplified by the competitive fight over the lucrative market for AI products, Ives said. Trump has indicated that he will do away with a Biden administration executive order that placed a regulatory framework on AI – a promise that, if kept, is inarguably favorable for big tech.
Given that AI relies on energy-intensive data centers, however, its further development could make it more difficult for those same firms to promote a rapid shift toward green energy.
"Big tech knows they need more energy to fuel the data centers," Ives said. "To some extent, they're going to have to talk out of both sides of their mouths."
Mindy Lubber, chief executive of the environmental advocacy group Ceres, which examines corporate conduct, acknowledged the new business landscape for tech firms and the difficulty that Trump poses for the fight to address climate change. But in the end, she anticipates that the tech giants will fulfill their climate pledges.
"I think they'll stay the course," Lubber said, pointing to potential backlash if the companies reverse or delay their commitments, as well as the large financial investment firms have already made toward the transition to greener energy.
"We live in the real world," Lubber added. "I don't think it's black and white."