Tim Cook Suggests to Shareholders that Deny Climate Change to “Get out of the stock,”

| Mar 1 2014 - 7:41 pm PT

But Cook does care about the environment — and that became very clear on Friday, when the CEO had a terse exchange with an anti-environmental lobbying group.

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, has had a reputation for keeping it cool within the industry. Never gets angry on stage, never makes remarks that take away from his reputation of being able to control his anger. This all changed, on Friday, when Tim Cook met with the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR). The NCPPR has a record for knocking Apple’s green-energy methods and recent hires.

“We object to increased government control over company products and operations, and likewise mandatory environmental standards,” wrote NCPPR general counsel Justin Danhof in a statement before the meeting. “This is something [Apple] should be actively fighting, not preparing surrender.”

Apple is known for their rundown of environmental standards that their products meet at their product launches. And there is no doubt that they’re proud of that.

“We do a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive,” the CEO said. “We want to leave the world better than we found it.”

There, the CEO is addressing that even though the company is sitting on billions in cash, their go-green policy is not for economic gain, and that he simply “wants to leave the world better than he found it.“

Anyone who had a problem with that? They should sell their Apple shares. “Get out of the stock,” Cook suggested. Danhof’s proposal was voted down by shareholders.

Here, the CEO puts it bluntly – if you don’t like that Apple is making efforts to go green, “get out of the stock.” We haven’t seen a direct hit like this from Tim Cook for a long time, and the former Vice President of the United States (also on Apple’s board of directors) agrees: