SCUTTLEBUTT

Catholic mutiny at SMC

Corporate behemoth San Miguel Corp. (SMC) is facing serious discontent among its Catholic shareholders and stakeholders. The powerful bloc released a statement in conjunction with SMC’s 134th anniversary last week, calling for the company to divest from “dirty” energy sources, such as gas and coal, “in line with the Church’s commitment to divest resources from fossil fuel companies as early as 2025.”

The statement was signed by 72 Catholic dioceses and institutions, six of which are shareholders of the company, with some among the top 100 stockholders of San Miguel.

Catholic shareholders, including the Roman Catholic Bishop of Tuguegarao, have already divested from SMC ahead of the 2025 deadline. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila has also significantly reduced its holdings in SMC and other fossil fuel-related companies.

“We are aware that SMC continues to operate and expand its coal power plants without any plans to shut down these assets early, in line with the requisites of keeping global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius,” the statement read. “We, members of the Church, who have a responsibility towards our Common Home, are saddened that the resources we have entrusted to the company are being used to fuel such destruction.”

In 2019, the Catholic Church pledged to move its resources away from coal-fired power plants, along with other destructive extractive projects. Studies have shown that achieving the Paris Agreement goal of keeping temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius requires a phaseout of coal in the power sector of the Philippines by 2035 and gas by 2040.

“The moral obligation to put a stop to this worsening crisis is clearer than ever. It is always the poorest of the poor who bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change, from extreme heat and drought to intensifying storms. Unless companies like SMC cancel their fossil fuel projects still in the pipeline, loss and damage from these extreme events will continue to worsen,” said Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of the San Carlos Diocese in support of the statement.

Environmental advocates have been increasingly vocal regarding SMC’s involvement in the Mindoro and Manila Bay oil spills over the past 17 months, as well as the company’s other destructive projects, such as the Pasig River Expressway and the Bulacan aerotropolis.

While San Miguel set a goal in 2018 to complete 10 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2028, the company is accelerating its build-out of fossil gas infrastructure.

Destructive politics on steroids

United Kingdom-based online security firm Sophos has warned that generative AI technologies, such as large language models, provide tools for creating sophisticated, individualized content at scale, which was previously difficult and labor-intensive. These capabilities may be widely exploited during political campaign periods.

With these advancements, the risk posed by malicious actors can reach new heights. Sophos identified various actors abusing generative AI as part of ongoing fraud campaigns, including the use of generative text to send messages to scam victims, images to create deceptive social media content, and deepfake video and audio to aid social engineering efforts. These same tools have been employed in political misinformation and deception campaigns on social media.

The warning was issued in light of ongoing elections worldwide, highlighting the effects of new technology on political misinformation. To address these emerging threats, Sophos suggested a multi-faceted approach combining technological, educational, and legislative efforts. From a technical standpoint, continued improvement of AI-generated content classifiers and fact-checkers can alleviate the burden of identifying threats.

Current generative AI technologies can be executed at very low cost by a wide range of potential actors wishing to influence politics on both small and large scales. Social media is expected to be flooded with deception during the election period, and AI is anticipated to play a significant role in this.