WHO IS REALLY DEVELOPED

A new development metric ranks countries based on their living standards that can be scaled globally without breaking planetary limits

- CHIRAG DHARA AND SOUMYAJIT BHAR

IN 2023, US' Apple Inc ran a campaign featuring a skit in which the technology behemoth promised a sceptical Mother Nature that its latest Apple Watches were carbon neutral. "Don't disappoint your mother!" was Mother Nature's parting shot at Apple's chief executive officer Tim Cook as she exited the meeting. According to a recent class action lawsuit against the company, it would appear that Apple has disappointed Mother Nature after all.

The lawsuit alleges that Apple's carbon offsets—central to its carbon-neutral claim—fail to meet the principle of "additionality", a foundational standard of carbon offsetting. Additionality means the offsetting activities must genuinely represent additional, new actions that would not have occurred otherwise. According to the lawsuit, Apple's projects involved protecting forests that are already safe-guarded, thus offering no additional environmental benefit.

This dispute reveals a dangerous conceptual sleight-of-hand practised by corporations worldwide: the conflation of being "less unsustainable" with being genuinely sustainable. From multinational giants touting "eco-friendly" fast fashion to fossil fuel corporations marketing minuscule renewable investments as major initiatives, greenwashing relies on relative metrics of improvement.

Imagine two cars moving on a highway that has a speed limit of 60 km per hour—one is speeding at 150 km per hour and the other at 200 km per hour. While the first car is relatively safer, both the vehicles are dangerously unsafe. Performing better than the worst is hardly a stamp of success.