As we reckon with the dark side of Silicon Valley’s tech giants, there’s more scrutiny being directed at how these companies are assisting climate denial and obfuscation. We’ll look at a few related stories.

Climate and clean energy are being disadvantaged by Facebook's and Twitter’s diverging policies on political ads. How do we define issue ads and political speech?

Google, Facebook and others are getting called out for their support of groups that spread extreme climate denial. How much criticism do they deserve?

Amazon, Microsoft and Google are building the digital backbone of industries that are wrecking the planet. How should we think about their roles and culpability?

In the second half of the show, we’ll discuss America’s withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty. With U.S. global leadership in shambles, who’s going to fill the gap? And how could elections change things?

Finally, how is California’s wildfire crisis stoking the state’s distributed generation market? We’ll look at the business impacts.

Recommended resources:

  • Heated: Exxon Climate Ads Aren’t Political, According to Twitter
  • Vox: Watch AOC Ask Mark Zuckerberg if She Can Run Fake Green New Deal Ads
  • Guardian: Google Made Large Contributions to Climate Deniers
  • Guardian: Facebook Video Spreads Climate Denial to 5 Million Users
  • GTM: Power Shutoff Disruption ‘Resets’ California’s Residential Market
  • Jigar Shah/Timothy Hade Op-Ed: It’s Time to Evolve California’s Electrical Grid

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

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