Sept 20: More than 900 Amazon employees pledge to walk out over climate inaction


More than 900 Amazon employees have pledged to walk off the job at 11:30PST on Sept 20 to protest the company's inaction on climate change as part of Greta Thunberg's Global Climate Strike: they are demanding an end to donations to climate-denying politicians and PACs; kicking oil and gas companies off of Amazon's platforms; and for Amazon to be zero emissions by 2030.


The group calls itself Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, and mostly consists of staff at the company's Seattle HQ, though some Europeans have also signed on.


Earlier this year, members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice met with company leadership to discuss the retail giant's plans to combat the climate crisis. Fribley says that during the meeting, he was surprised to learn that Amazon appeared to have few specific environmental objectives. "I think everybody at Amazon knows that's not how you get stuff done," he says. "That was kind of eye-opening—to hear that there weren't goals around reducing the amount of carbon Amazon emits."

Unlike more than 7,000 corporations around the world, Amazon doesn't report on its environmental impact to CDP, a UK-based nonprofit formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. This year, the retail giant said it would finally begin tracking its carbon footprint, but it's developing its own secretive approach. The corporations who disclose data to CDP do so in a standardized way, whereas Amazon is developing its own in-house methodology. Amazon did not return a request for comment.

Amazon Employees Will Walk Out Over the Company's Climate Change Inaction [Louise Matsakis/Wired]