Technologies

Big Tech at COP26: Here’s who attended the climate talks and what roles they played

If you blinked, you could’ve easily missed them. But all the biggest US tech companies were in attendance at the UN climate summit last week.

These days, when the world’s most important and powerful people gather to talk about matters of global consequence, executives from the world’s most powerful tech companies are usually in the room.

Discussions about Climate change are no exception. From power-hungry data centers to planet-spanning supply chains, tech can be a carbon-intensive business if not run correctly. And as the effects of the climate crisis — fires, floods, hurricanes and droughts — are being more keenly felt, technology companies have been increasingly vocal in the conversation about how to tackle the climate crisis.

Beyond making commitments to reducing their own carbon footprints, this means showing up at events like COP26, the UN climate summit, which took place in Glasgow, Scotland, the first two weeks of November.

Though world leaders and energy company execs took the most vocal roles at COP26, many of the biggest US tech companies also attended the summit, even though their levels of visibility varied.

Here’s what they were up to.

The Bezos in the room

By far the most visible tech figurehead at COP26 was former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos — perhaps to his detriment. His presence at the UN summit got a mixed reception.

During his brief trip to Glasgow (he attended the two-week-long summit for somewhere between one to two days) Bezos announced that through his climate foundation, the Bezos Earth Fund, he’d donate an additional $2 billion toward landscape restoration and food systems transformation after being inspired to take care of the Earth after seeing it from the edge of space.

This made headlines but failed to impress climate activists, many of whom seemed deeply frustrated by the way Bezos engaged with the summit. It wasn’t so much his presence at COP26 that bothered them, but the fact that he used it as a PR opportunity rather than as a chance to listen to the voices of those most affected by the crisis, they said.

“These kinds of people, they shouldn’t be here giving speeches, they should be here and being targeted as responsible for these changes,”said Txai Surui, a 24-year-old Indigenous activist from Rondônia in Brazil.

“Why does he have more voice than young people that are suffering, or will suffer the consequences of the climate crisis?” asked Nicki Becker, a climate activist from Argentina. “Of course he has to be included in the conversation because he needs to first change his lifestyle.”

She added that billionaires and other top 1% earners like Bezos are most responsible for the climate crisis, so it’s hypocritical for them to turn up with purported solutions without making any effort to change their ways (Bezos flew in and out of Glasgow on his private jet).

Throughout the marches and climate protests that took place over the course of the summit, multiple people were carrying signs bearing variations on the words “We’re burning the wrong Amazon.”

The other billionaire

Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates had a quieter presence at the summit than Bezos, attracting less criticism (even though he, too, appeared to fly in and out on a private jet).

Gates addressed world leaders, updating them on the progress of his climate initiative Breakthrough Energy Ventures and calling on them to come together to start a “green industrial revolution.”

He said he was spending his three days at the summit trying to encourage people to scale clean technology. “If we’re going to avoid the worst effects of a climate disaster, it’s not enough to invent zero-carbon alternatives — we need to make sure they’re affordable and accessible enough for people all over the world to use them,” he said.

He also urged rich- and middle-income countries to do more to help the areas that’ve done the least to cause climate change but are most affected by it.

It’s not clear, though, whether Gates spent any time at the summit talking with people from these areas. A criticism of many white, male leaders at the summit has been that they spent too much time talking and not enough time listening — especially to young black and Indigenous women who are leaders in the climate justice movement.

“Everybody brings us a different perspective on this,” Microsoft Chief Environmental Officer Lucas Joppa said in an interview, commenting on the role tech figureheads could play at COP. “Some of these individuals, they’ve grown businesses from nothing not just to global scale,” but to a scale that the world’s never seen before. “That is exactly what the world needs to do in its transition, when you look at renewable energy penetration in the markets, for instance.”

Behind the scenes

Ahead of the summit Apple, Facebook, Google and other companies announced new pledges to further improve their own sustainability credentials. But at the event they kept a fairly low profile.

Apple’s VP of Sustainability Lisa Jackson, posted on Twitter about attending COP26 and meeting with US President Joe Biden while there. At the summit Apple and Amazon signed on to the World Economic Forum’s First Movers Coalition, which aims to scale up emerging technologies essential to transitioning the globe’s economy to net-zero carbon by 2050.

window.CnetFunctions.logWithLabel(‘%c One Trust ‘, “Service loaded: script_twitterwidget with class optanon-category-5”);

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement that joining the Coalition would “help further accelerate our efforts to decarbonize our operations through real business change and innovation.” (Jassy didn’t attend COP, but other execs from the company did.)

In an interview, Facebook Director of Global Sustainability Edward Palmieri said his role at the summit was to ensure the company was engaging in the right partnerships and coalitions to tackle the climate crisis.

“Our foundational work on sustainability, if it has taught us anything it’s that we not only have to take care of our own house and make sure that we’re in order from a sustainability perspective, but that global solutions are going to take us all working together to kind of get it done,” he said.

One of Palmieri’s focuses at the event was learning more water stewardship, so Facebook is able to meet its goal of restoring more water than it consumes by 2030. Water plays a huge role in cooling and maintaining the right level of humidity in Facebook’s global data centers, but the company says it recognizes water is also a shared community resource that needs to be restored so it doesn’t become polluted or scarce.

Microsoft also came to the summit hoping to learn as well as contribute, said Joppa. He was spending a portion of his time in Glasgow learning more about carbon removal and carbon accounting.

“The carbon removal markets today are wildly oversubscribed, and we need to fix that for the world and for Microsoft to meet its own goals,” he said. “We need much more common kinds of standards and definitions around the way we do accounting.”

Playing to the crowd

Microsoft was one of COP26’s principal sponsors, so as well as having its logo everywhere, it also had a stand in the “Green Zone” (the part of the summit open to the public). At its booth, it welcomed school children and other attendees to explore the company’s different initiatives as it works toward its goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030. The space also provided a platform for smaller companies to showcase their climate tech. These included NCX, a company Microsoft has invested in that uses aerial imagery and AI to survey forests.

Financing these companies is important, said Joppa, but so is giving them exposure to clients and customers via Microsoft’s platform. “How you all kind of hold hands and lift each other up is to actually help people become aware of all the solutions that are out there,” he said.

Other tech companies also focused their COP26 efforts on trying to use their reach to broaden access to the summit.

Google used its Arts and Culture project to take people from all over the world inside the Green Zone. Meanwhile, Facebook livestreamed conversations about climate science from a small booth within the UN pavilion at the summit.

Public awareness has been growing around COP for several years, and Facebook’s platforms can be harnessed to make and keep conversations around what happens at the UN climate summits on a global level, said Palmieri.

Instagram, in particular, has been a crucial platform for young climate activists from all over the world to engage their audiences and educate them about the climate crisis. During COP26, Emma Watson used her own Instagram presence to introduce her followers to many of these activists, who as well as doing vital work in their own communities, form a loosely grouped online activist network.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Emma Watson (@emmawatson)

window.CnetFunctions.logWithLabel(‘%c One Trust ‘, “Service loaded: script_instagram with class optanon-category-5”);

But one thing Palmieri hopes to see happen is ensuring that information flows in both directions.

“What’s really important, and that I’m hoping our platform will be able to do more and more of, is to bring some of the experiences of climate change from certain parts of the world that maybe are less represented to decision makers and communities that are wealthier and have more of a voice,” he said.

Technologies

Anthropic warns investors of AI’s ‘existential risk to humanity’ in IPO prospectus, reports say

Anthropic’s IPO filing dedicates 80 pages to the risks of AI, nearly double the 48 pages it spends discussing its business plans, according to Reuters.

Your Privacy

On this service, we and our vendors use cookies and other tools (“Cookies”) to store and access information on your device, such as device identifiers, IP address, and your browser type. Your data may be used to save and communicate your privacy choices; ensure security, prevent fraud, and debug our products and services; personalize advertising and content; for advertising and content measurement; to conduct audience research and services development; so we can improve our services and develop new ones; to match and combine offline data with your online activity; and for social features. We may share this data with select vendors with your consent. You can adjust your choices any time through the “Cookie Preferences” link in the footer of relevant Versant sites or in-app settings.

We will also use other Cookies that are essential or related to our services, including for security and fraud prevention. To learn more about some of our vendors, see the IAB and Google Vendors under each purpose. Visit our Cookie Notice and Privacy Policy to learn more.

These Cookies and SDKs are required for Service functionality, including security and fraud prevention, and to enable any purchasing capabilities. You can set your browser to block these tracking technologies, but some parts of the site may not function properly.

The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.

Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.

Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.

Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.

– Use limited data to select advertising 791 partners can use this purpose Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).

– Create profiles for personalised advertising 637 partners can use this purpose Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.

– Use profiles to select personalised advertising 640 partners can use this purpose Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.

– Create profiles to personalise content 261 partners can use this purpose Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.

– Use profiles to select personalised content 234 partners can use this purpose Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.

– Measure advertising performance 916 partners can use this purpose Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.

– Measure content performance 405 partners can use this purpose Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.

– Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources 579 partners can use this purpose Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).

– Develop and improve services 688 partners can use this purpose Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.

– Use limited data to select content 180 partners can use this purpose Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).

These Cookies and SDKs are used to collect data about your browsing habits, use of the Services, your preferences, and your interaction with advertisements across platforms and devices for the purpose of delivering targeted advertising content, both on our Services and on third party sites. Third-party sites and services also use Targeting Cookies to deliver content, including advertisements relevant to your interests on the Services. If you reject these Cookies or SDKs, you will see less relevant advertising.

Data collected under this category through Cookies and SDKs can also be used to select and deliver personalized content, such as news articles and videos.

Technologies

U.S., Iran hold separate mediator talks as Mideast oil exports hit war-time high

Iranian and U.S. officials reportedly met separately with mediators Monday to push for a ceasefire, as Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded to war-time high.

Iranian and U.S. officials reportedly met separately with mediators Monday to push for a ceasefire.

Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded this month to around their highest level since the war began in February.

An outright export ban by Washington on diesel would keep roughly 1.2 million barrels a day at home, and risks overwhelming Gulf Coast storage, according to Kpler.

The building of the destroyed Shajareh Tayebeh primary school is pictured surrounded by rubble in Minab in Iran’s Hormozgan province on August 10, 2026. Six months on, a team of AFP journalists obtained rare access to the school which has remained largely in ruins, its collapsed walls and twisted steel now surrounded by portraits of the children killed as Iranian flags flutter above the rubble. Iran says the attack on the school involved two separate US Tomahawk missiles but neither the United States nor Israel has officially claimed responsibility for the strike. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP via Getty Images) /

Atta Kenare | Afp | Getty Images

U.S. and Iranian officials have reportedly held separate indirect talks with mediators on Monday, reviving efforts to end seven months of war as Tehran presses for a response to a revised ceasefire framework and Middle East crude exports climb to their highest level since the conflict began.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Qatari mediators in New York, where he remained after the United Nations General Assembly, and reportedly said he expects Washington’s reply by Tuesday. “We talked about ideas and how to find solutions to fulfil Iran’s conditions,” Araghchi said, adding that he planned to return to Tehran once a response arrives. “Whenever the Qataris have a response, they know how to get it to us.”

Iran’s proposal, first presented on the sidelines of last week’s General Assembly, calls for a four- to five-day U.S. timeline to release frozen Iranian funds, lift sanctions on Iranian oil and end the naval blockade of Iranian ports, with nuclear talks beginning within seven days. Tehran has tied any reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to those steps.

President Donald Trump had on Sunday called the plan “unacceptable” and rejected it, telling reporters Iran wants a swift deal because of the economic pressure it is under. Speaking at the White House Monday, Trump said U.S. officials had spoken separately with mediators but gave no further details, adding: “We’re going to win. It’s going to go pretty quickly.”

The diplomatic push comes as physical supply data shows the war’s toll on the oil market easing. Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded this month to around their highest level since the war began in February, Kpler data showed. “Middle East crude exports at just under 80% of pre-conflict levels,” the tracking firm said in a note on Monday.

The Strait of Hormuz itself remains far from normal. Kpler’s real-time tracking showed total clearance through the strait at 10,591 kilobarrels a day on Saturday, against a pre-war baseline of 17,133.

Technologies

Oil prices fall as crude exports recover at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ports

Saudi Arabia has restored flows through the pipeline to around 3.5 million barrels per day, according to media reports.

Your Privacy

Data collected under this category through Cookies and SDKs can also be used to select and deliver personalized content, such as news articles and videos.