Hundreds of Amazon employees criticize firm's climate stance

Yahoo – AFP, January 27, 2020

Amazon is frequently criticized over its carbon footprint due to its road transport
network and server farms for its cloud computing activities (AFP Photo/INA FASSBENDER)

San Francisco (AFP) - Hundreds of Amazon employees Sunday openly criticized the online retail giant's environmental record, defying the company's communications policy.

More than 300 signed a Medium blog post by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ), which is pushing the company to go further in its climate change mitigation plan announced in September.

Group members have publicly criticized the company, and some have been warned that they could be fired.

"The protest is the largest action by employees since Amazon began threatening to fire workers for speaking out about Amazon's role in the climate crisis," the AECJ said.

"As Amazon workers, we are responsible for not only the success of the company, but its impact as well," said Sarah Tracy, a software development engineer at Amazon.

"It's our moral responsibility to speak up, and the changes to the communications policy are censoring us from exercising that responsibility."

It is common for companies to demand restraint from employees when it comes to publicly discussing the firm's activities and even more so when openly questioning them.

While the environment and climate change was the focus of many of the posts on Sunday, Amazon was also criticized for other activities such as providing artificial intelligence capabilities to companies in the oil sector.

Amazon, which in December said its workforce had hit 750,000, is often criticized over its carbon footprint because of the high energy consumption of its huge server farms for its lucrative cloud computing activities.

And it has built its success on the back of a huge road transport logistics network to ensure speedy deliveries, which generates a lot of greenhouse gases, the main culprit in climate change.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on September 19 last year made public environmental commitments, promising in particular that the firm would be carbon neutral by 2040.

The AECJ said this was insufficient and that Amazon should be aiming for a 2030 target.

"This is not the time for silencing voices. We need policies that welcome more open discourse, more problem-solving, and more urgent and concerted action about climate change and its causes," said Mark Hiew, a senior marketing manager at Amazon.

Responding to the letter, an Amazon spokesperson defended its policy on public statements about the company.

"While all employees are welcome to engage constructively with any of the many teams inside Amazon that work on sustainability and other topics, we do enforce our external communications policy and will not allow employees to publicly disparage or misrepresent the company or the hard work of their colleagues who are developing solutions to these hard problems," the company said.

Why are Google and Facebook financing climate skeptics?

Hard to grasp, but true: Google and other large firms are donating large sums of money to the climate skeptic scene. How does that square with an otherwise meticulously managed image as an ecological innovator?

Deutsche Welle, 2 May 2017

Google logo as seen on a TV behind a smartphone (Imago/Zumapress)

For many years, there's been an overwhelming consensus among scientists that human activity is influencing the climate. But there is a group that vehemently challenges this - so-called climate skeptics. Among their claims: Global warming is not definitively caused by humans.

Think tanks play a pivotal role in this scene - they present themselves as scientific organizations with unbiased experts. In reality, however, many are pursuing a clear agenda. In the United States, they have an especially large influence on popular opinion and politics.

What's behind it all? Energy companies, car manufacturers and the tobacco industry in particular have a vested interest in portraying climate change as an invention of eco-hysterics. ExxonMobil, Volkswagen and Monsanto all back of climate-skeptic think tanks, as do billionaire oil magnates the Koch brothers.

And although it may seem hard to believe, Google, Facebook and Microsoft are also among the ranks of companies investing in climate denial.

Climate protector Google?

Solar-cell roofs and wind
energy at Google - all just PR?

That fossil fuel, automobile manufacturing and chemical companies may seek to undermine efforts to protect the climate could be seen as acting out of self-interest - so, not surprising. But why would ostensibly "green" companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Google support climate skeptics?

This is the same Google that touts itself as soon being able to cover its own energy needs using only renewables. And, which states on its website that ecological sustainability is an important issue for the company, and that more measures against climate change worldwide are long overdue - yes, that Google.

Who exactly Google is sponsoring is easy enough to see on its homepage. Google backs not only the hyper-conservative Cato Institute, but also the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which are among the most influential players of the organized climate skeptic scene. At a CEI fundraising event in 2013, Google was even its largest single sponsor, according to the "The Washington Post."

The internet firm is also a member of the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest economically orientated lobby group worldwide. It supports mostly Republican politicians who deny climate change, is firmly against emissions trading, and recently praised US President Donald Trump's plan to ease climate protection.

A few companies like Apple have already left the Chamber of Commerce in protest over its approach to climate change.

Money is power

The climate skeptics among them:
former Czech Republic President
Vaclav Klaus visits the Cato Institute

Daniel Dudis of Public Citizen has a simple explanation as to why Google, despite its carefully-managed reputation as a climate protector, supports the Chamber of Commerce and climate skeptic think tanks: "As a big firm, you give these groups money in order to exert influence through them." With Trump as president, Google through the think tanks now has better access to politicians with decision-making powers.

Furthermore, the Cato Institute and the CEI address a relatively wide array of issues. So although Google may perhaps not agree with their views on the climate, it could align with their positions on tax and state regulations.

When contacted, Google's only response was to refer to a statement from one of its spokespeople: "We work with dozens of lobby groups from across the whole political spectrum. We can't always agree 100 percent with every organization on every topic. Regarding ecological sustainability and renewable energy we've shown that are involved long-term with it."

The question remains: how can Google pump so much money into think tanks with ostensibly opposite views to its on climate protection, and which try with all their might to undermine it?

"All these activities suggest that much of Google's committment is just greenwashing: Public relations to get an environmentally friendly image," said Dudis.

In the US political system, money plays a much larger role than in many European countries, meaning companies have a huge influence there on politics. Google is among them - if need be, even at the cost of the environment.

Earth Day 2013 celebrated with Google doodle

Google marks environmental awareness day with interactive scene depicting the water cycle – and a cheeky badger

guardian.co.uk, Adam Vaughan, 22 April 2013

Google doodle Earth day 2013. Photograph: Google

Earth Day is 43 years' old today, a milestone marked by one of Google's annual doodles dedicated to the event. The day of environmental awareness has been marked by a Google doodle for as long as I can remember, from melting polar ice in 2007 (a prophetic nod to the record Arctic melt that year), rocks in 2008, a waterfall and marine life in 2009 to parrots in 2010, pandas in 2011 and animated flowers in 2012.

This year's somewhat pastoral scene of hills, snow-capped mountains and a lake teeming with fish seems to be making a nod to the hydrological cycle, if I'm not over-interpreting the animation. If you click the clouds, for example, it rains, and there appears to be a spot of percolation with water making its way through the soil.

There are a pair of bears in a cave and, if you click the hole near the front, a badger pops out – is this Google's pre-emptive strike against the government's plan to resume its delayed badger cull this summer in a bid to tackle bovine TB? Probably not, but it's cute nonetheless.

Google's no stranger to environmental efforts, of course. It's funded a stack of renewable energy projects - though in 2011 it quietly shelved one effort, RE<C, which hoped to see renewable energy become cheaper than coal - and in 2011 the internet giant published its carbon footprint for the first time. Turns out it's the equivalent of the United Nations, or a little higher than the emissions of Laos.

Earth Day, born in the US in 1970, was the creation in large part of Gaylord Nelson, a US senator and Democrat, who died in 2005. It is designed to "[activate] individuals and organizations to strengthen the collective fight against man's exploitive relationship with the planet." Denis Hayes, the national coordinator of that first day, said a few years back that he thought the day had achieved many of its aims.

"Beyond any doubt," he said in 2009, "today the basic core values are vastly more 'green,' if you will, than they were in the 60's and 70's." But with a recent global poll showing that public concern over environmental problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss is its lowest in 20 years, it's clear that there's still a need for Earth Day.

Related Article:

New Discovery: NASA Study Proves Carbon Dioxide Cools Atmosphere

Greenpeace lauds Cisco on climate, chides Google

Cnet, by Martin LaMonica

Despite Google's lobbying on clean-energy policy and investments in renewable energy, it was Cisco and Ericsson who received Greenpeace's top marks in its ranking of computing vendors' activity on climate change.

The environmental watchdog group released its annual Cool IT Leaderboard on Thursday, which judges large IT and consumer electronics companies on a range of criteria related to climate change, including efforts to lower their environmental footprints and commercial efforts in energy and efficiency.

This year, Greenpeace placed Cisco at the top of the list because of its move into building energy management and the smart grid, technologies that can boost renewable energy use and efficiency.

Ericsson and Fujitsu scored well for developing methods for measuring the environmental impact of IT and for setting credible carbon reduction estimates for its customers.

Google, meanwhile, was marked down for not reporting its internal greenhouse gas emissions, which most companies surveyed do. In response, a Google representative on Wednesday said that it doesn't disclose information on the size of its operations for competitive reasons.

Google's data centers run efficiency, consuming about half the power as typical data centers by optimizing the chip, power pack design, and building cooling. "We are...dedicated to minimizing our footprint; it makes business and environmental sense for us to do so," the representative said.

Overall, Greenpeace is pressuring IT and communications companies to get involved in energy policy, which is historically not been an activity of tech companies. As it did in last year's Cool IT Leaderborad, Greenpeace is also prodding IT companies to take advantage of the commercial possibilities in lowering greenhouse gas emissions, as does IBM's Smart Planet initiative. Greenpeace estimates that applying IT to transportation, buildings, and power generation can result in 15 percent emissions reduction over the next 10 years.

"The company bottom line coupled with the environmental bottom line, the need to curb a growing greenhouse gas emissions, should send the IT industry to the front lines in the battle for a clean energy economy," said Greenpeace campaigner Casey Harrell in a statement. "The sector needs to step up its policy advocacy now."

For Earth Day last week, Greenpeace organized a panel on IT and climate change which was hosted by Cisco and had representatives from Cisco, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.

Related Article:

Climate Policies Earn Cisco Top Spot in Greenpeace IT Rankings

California and Google launch tool to visualize the effects of climate change

Examiner.com, December 5, 5:19 PM Climate Change Examiner Tony Hake

This image from the Google Earth tour released by California and Google portrays some of the dangers manmade climate change are thought to bring to the state. You can watch the complete video below. (State of California)

The state of California and Google have been considered at the forefront of the fight against manmade climate change and the two have come together to help the state’s residents visualize the effects of global warming. The new interactive tool, dubbed CalAdapt and part of the Google Earth software, portrays a dismal future for the Sunshine State unless steps are taken to stem man’s effect on the earth.

Narrated by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the tour begins by zooming in and out of the state and highlighting the steps it has taken on its own. Investments in renewable energy, its commitment to reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels and the state’s green building program are all featured.

Graphic representation of the effects of manmade climate change are meant to drive home the dangers California faces. From a less reliable water supply to more frequent and more intense wildfires and rising sea levels, the state faces a number of risks according to the video.

The unveiling ceremony was held on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. The significance of the location was not lost on Schwarzenegger who said, “Within a century, Treasure Island, this place where we are right now, could be totally under water.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was on hand as well to plug his company’s contribution. Schmidt said, “It allows Californians to see what's happening to our wonderful and beautiful state." Google has pushed a number of green initiatives and consulted with Al Gore on some issues.

The Google Earth tour and its corresponding website are part of the state’s Climate Adaptation Strategy, a 200 page document that outlines impacts and makes recommendations to help the state adapt. The governor also created a 23 person board comprised of leaders from the public and private sectors that will advise the state on how to adapt to climate change.

You can watch the tour below or, if you have Google Earth (free), you can download the file that allows you to play it in the software from the CalAdapt website.

Related Article:

Complete Examiner.com coverage of the effects of climate change