Protestors gathered outside Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle on Thursday with a message to the company’s executives to strengthen its climate commitments. The demonstration, which shut down Sixth Avenue, was led by environmental advocacy groups including Stand.earth and the Ship It Zero coalition, climate and community advocates
The protestors were pressuring the company “to announce a commitment to transition its maritime and land-based shipping and logistics to zero-emissions alternatives, and to release a science-based roadmap toward implementation that aligns with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” according to a press release.
“We are in Seattle today calling on Amazon executives to put their goods on zero-emissions ocean ships by 2030,” Shannon Wright, Ship It Zero spokesperson, said. “Amazon is heading the wrong way on climate and public health. We are asking this prime polluter to turn their transportation and logistics emissions around. It’s time for Amazon to stop using fossil fuels in ships, vans, trucks and planes. Shipping pollution accounts for more than 3 percent of global climate emissions. Amazon is one of the world’s largest shippers of goods across the Pacific Ocean. The message is clear: Amazon must be a climate leader and Ship It Zero.”
According to research published by Stand, Amazon is one of the fastest growing air shippers and because of it, the company more than doubled its emissions in air freight operations in the last five years since adopting its Climate Pledge, a press release reported.
“The shipping industry is a significant contributor to climate change,” Logan McIntosh, Stand.earth organizing and campaigns director, said. “Despite its climate promises, Amazon continues to grow its land- and air-based emissions. It is imperative that the company’s leadership communicate the true impact of its fossil-fuel trucks, vans, and planes, and waste no further time in shifting substantial investment toward a rapid transition to zero-emission deliveries.”
While Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, promised “to build a cross-sector community of companies, organizations, individuals, and partners working together to address the climate crisis and solve the challenges of decarbonizing our economy” through the company’s Climate Pledge, protestors accuse him of greenwashing, which the Natural Resources Defense Council defines as “the act of making false or misleading statements about the environmental benefits of a product or practice.”
Amazon committed to “Shipment Zero” in 2019, which would make 50 percent of all shipments be “net zero by 2030.” But the company “abandoned its promise to make its shipments more environmentally friendly by 2030; without public announcement, its new stated target date is 2040,” South Seattle Emerald reported.
“Amazon executives are making short-sighted decisions without care for the well-being of youth who will be burdened with their pollution,” Zubin Ace, 12, said. “Amazon’s lack of leadership today is an injustice to the leaders of tomorrow.”
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