On February 17th, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, posted a picture on Instagram that sparked both negative and positive emotions. In his post he says, “I’m committing $10 billion to start and will begin issuing grants this summer. Earth is the one thing we have in common — let’s protect it, together.” He calls this donation to climate change the Bezos Earth Fund. This post appears to be a positive movement that provides baby steps towards our goal of fighting climate change; however, the comments by the public have not all been nice. Some comments have said “You’re disgusting and no one likes you,” “Stop acting like a hero and spread the money you don’t need that much,” and “Take care of your workers first.” His overall intentions are to donate to such a serious problem such as climate change. Even though he donated a considerable amount of money, people are skeptical of his intentions.
A group of Amazon workers appreciates the actions of the Bezos Earth Fund, but they spoke up against Bezos talking about Amazon’s involvement with the natural gas businesses. This group of Amazon workers calls themselves the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. After Bezos posted his Instagram announcement, the Amazon employees posted a counterattack against the company. Their post was nowhere near malicious, for they were just informing the public about the involvement in the climate crisis. Their post says, “When is Amazon going to stop helping oil & gas companies ravage Earth with still more oil and gas wells? When will Amazon take responsibility for the lungs of children near its warehouses by moving from diesel to all-electric trucking?” After the word got around about the gas and oil companies, thousands of employees signed a letter to the board of directors demanding to end the contracts with the harmful companies and create goals for renewable alternatives for the future.
Amazon finally obliged to the workers after threats of an employee walkout. The committed “to use 100% renewable energy by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2040” (Held). This pledge was a success to the workers and gave Amazon a better reputation amongst the community. They have also purchased around 100,000 emissions-free electric vans to deliver packages all over the country. Climate change remains a scary topic to think about. Although the earth seems fine at the moment, we must think about how our future will look if our bad habits continue. The earth has endured years of abuse and neglect from humans and now we must work together in order to save our beautiful planet and all the inhabitants on it.
Held, Amy. “Jeff Bezos Pledges $10 Billion To Fight Climate Change, Planet’s ‘Biggest Threat’.” NPR, NPR, 17 Feb. 2020, www.npr.org.
I am glad that Jeff Bezos wanted to raise awareness for climate change issues, but I agree with some of the workers that the best first course of action would be making environmentally-friendly changes within his own company. I am glad that some of the workers were able to take advantage of his supposed dedication to climate change reform so that his dreams could become more of a reality through Amazon.