This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
Amazon shareholders voted down an employee-backed resolution calling for more aggressive action on climate change at their annual meeting Wednesday, The Los Angeles Times reported.
The employee-filed resolution asked the company to develop a public plan for responding to extreme weather events and weaning itself off of fossil fuels. It was publicly backed by more than 7,600 employees, who signed their names to an open letter, a novel tactic for tech employee activism, The New York Times said.
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the group that grew out of the resolution, said in a press release they will file another if the company's board doesn't increase its climate commitments.
"The enthusiasm is overwhelming," Amazon employee Rebecca Sheppard, who works in air cargo operations, told the Los Angeles Times. "We'll be back."
Ahead of the vote, the resolution had won the support of two of the largest proxy advisory firms in the U.S. — Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). Glass Lewis said that Amazon was less transparent about its sustainability plans than similar companies, The New York Times said. However, the Amazon Board formally opposed the resolution, meaning it faced an uphill battle to gain the 50 percent of support it would have needed to pass, according to the employee press release. Amazon will release the final vote tallies Friday, the company told the Los Angeles Times.
During the meeting, tensions rose as the resolution was introduced. User experience designer Emily Cunningham addressed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos directly, asking him to come on stage and speak to employees about the resolution. He refused to engage, the employee press release said.
"We have the talent, the passion, the imagination. We have the scale, speed, and resources. Jeff, all we need is your leadership," Cunningham said during her speech.
WATCH: Amazon employees confront Jeff Bezos over lack of action on the #climatecrisis at the shareholder meeting today. We asked him to join us and commit to bold climate leadership now. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/okGmFCdj7B
— Amazon Employees For Climate Justice (@AMZNforClimate) May 22, 2019
Around 50 people stood up in support after Cunningham introduced the resolution, CNBC reported.
When Bezos did appear later in the meeting to take questions, he was asked about what the company was doing on climate. He said it was "hard to find an issue more important than climate change." Amazon's global sustainability head Kara Hurst said the company would share its carbon footprint later in the year, CNBC reported.
Two months after the employees filed their resolution in December of 2018, Amazon announced Shipment Zero, a plan to have 50 percent of shipping emit net zero carbon by 2030. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice said the measure did not go far enough, but also said it was proof their activism had made a difference.
"In six months, we've won changes including Shipment Zero and a commitment to share our company's carbon footprint, but we know these half-steps are not nearly enough to address the scale of our company's contributions toward the climate crisis," Software development engineer Jamie Kowalski, who co-filed the resolution, said in the press release. "Amazon has the scale and resources to spark the world's imagination and lead the way on addressing the climate crisis. What we're missing is leadership from the very top of the company."
Amazon voted down 12 resolutions in total Wednesday, including two that sought to stop the company from selling facial recognition software to government agencies over concerns it would enable racial discrimination and human rights abuses, CNBC reported.
Amazon has never passed a shareholder resolution, The New York Times said, but failed resolutions have still sparked change. The board originally opposed a resolution calling for it to consider more diverse candidates last year, but eventually adopted it after public pressure and added two women of color to its previously all-white membership.
Amazon Employees Praised for Using Shareholder Status to Demand Comprehensive Climate Plan. https://t.co/zPb4h8bLCo
— Brad Zarnett 🇨🇦 (@BradZarnett) December 18, 2018
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Lorraine Chow
Kokia drynarioides is a small but significant flowering tree endemic to Hawaii's dry forests. Native Hawaiians used its large, scarlet flowers to make lei. Its sap was used as dye for ropes and nets. Its bark was used medicinally to treat thrush.
States that invest heavily in renewable energy will generate billions of dollars in health benefits in the next decade instead of spending billions to take care of people getting sick from air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels, according to a new study from MIT and reported on by The Verge.
For a Sustainable Climate and Food System, Regenerative Agriculture Is the Key
By Kristin Ohlson
From where I stand inside the South Dakota cornfield I was visiting with entomologist and former USDA scientist Jonathan Lundgren, all the human-inflicted traumas to Earth seem far away. It isn't just that the corn is as high as an elephant's eye — are people singing that song again? — but that the field burgeons and buzzes and chirps with all sorts of other life, too.
Hawaii's Kilauea volcano could be gearing up for an eruption after a pond of water was discovered inside its summit crater for the first time in recorded history, according to the AP.
Trending
Humanity faced its hottest month in at least 140 years in July, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Thursday. The finding confirms similar analysis provided by its EU counterparts.
Trending
By Hans Nicholas Jong
Indonesia's president has made permanent a temporary moratorium on forest-clearing permits for plantations and logging.
It's a policy the government says has proven effective in curtailing deforestation, but whose apparent gains have been criticized by environmental activists as mere "propaganda."
By Grace Francese
Outbreaks of potentially toxic algae are fouling lakes, rivers and other bodies of water across the U.S. Nationally, news reports of algae outbreaks have been on the rise since 2010.