
Amazon Employees Pledge to Walk Out as Part of Global Climate Strike - jbegley
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joUIg5O5pRS_R2OqXoJzbuCXcQ0trL9ki8XO2aO0prg/
======
michannne
Is this a Silicon Valley thing? People becoming far too attached with what
their company is doing. Even if I had been working there for 5 years, I would
never bat an eye at anything my company did in it's own name -- I'm my own
person and have my own beliefs, why should I expect a multinational enterprise
to buckle to my feelings? If at any point I felt like my company was doing
something that went morally against what I believe is right, then I would
straight up leave. The thought that I'd get up and go to my manager to
complain at how the executives could do something as atrocious as go against
my moral compass sounds impossibly childish. Then, on top of that, virtually
skipping work so I can complain even further, I'm surprised no one gets fired
on the spot.

I'm not concerned with whether or not this was sanctioned or expected, or if
these people will lose their jobs or not, I just can't connect with this idea
of assimilating my personal views into a corporation's identity.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
What, then, is your comprehensive alternative?

We probably, at this stage, need to approach this issue with a certainly level
of moderated-panic, and attempt to address it on al lines across all levels.

It stands to reason that if the general population can influence corporate
decision making that might have a knock-on effect to cause companies to
influence government decision making.

I'd hazard a guess that Jeff Bezos ability to influence government policy far
exceeds mine by orders of magnitude.

~~~
michannne
>We probably, at this stage, need to approach this issue with a certainly
level of moderated-panic, and attempt to address it on al lines across all
levels.

What does this mean? I have been hearing the terms "global warming" and
"crisis" for almost 20 years now, yet it is almost always followed up with
talk -- talk about how others could change their lifestyle choices, talk about
how organizations can change how they function, talk about how we can talk
even more to the right people. Very rarely have I ever seen a plan -- a
formulated, step-by-step guide on what people or organizations must sacrifice
in order to bring about a better future, and even less so people who actually
act on that plan instead of simply reiterating it to anyone within earshot.

I would absolutely not be surprised if this event, which some consider to be
"necessary" on any level, does nothing to impact Amazon to change anything to
improve the climate situation -- as far as they can see from my perspective,
they see 900+ employees, some of whom are probably part-time and not getting
paid anyways, with no actual plan of how global warming should be solved with
respect to Amazon, but want to feel good for a time, feel as though they are
making some level of actionable change on the world, until their time is over
and they go back to work while they patiently wait for

>one of the most innovative companies[0]

to come up with a plan themselves. I've seen it time and time again, it solves
nothing, achieves nothing. And I'd bet it all on black that this earns them
nothing but contempt from their supervisors/managers.

[0]:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joUIg5O5pRS_R2OqXoJzbuCX...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joUIg5O5pRS_R2OqXoJzbuCXcQ0trL9ki8XO2aO0prg/edit)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I believe you have neglected to response to the _most important_ part of my
comment:

 _What, then, is your comprehensive alternative?_

~~~
michannne
You ask for an alternative as if there is a solution already being proposed,
and yet, I see none.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I can definitely understand that perspective.

Perhaps my earlier comments were too harsh, given I definitely feel defeated
with regards to climate change. My current approach is to simply _not care_ ,
as the added stress of caring didn't help and didn't do any favours to my
general well being.

It's all looking like a lot of _too little too late_. But, fortunately, at my
age, I'll probably miss the worse of it.

We probably need to simultaneously drastically limit carbon emissions and draw
down atmospheric carbon / remove CO2 from the oceans. And I can't see how
that's going to happen prior to things getting a lot worse.

Having said that, we did act collectively to implement the Montreal
Protocol[1], so there's a bit of a precedent for acting at this scale... but
there were fairly straightforward alternatives to ozone depleting gas.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol)

~~~
michannne
No offense taken, I've been downvoted a lot and I can understand people have
very passionate beliefs on issues of this scale, I'm also passionate in my
belief that talk, protests and walkouts, while they have an impact on
awareness and of course the right people being aware of the issue may get us
somewhere, does not get us anywhere in today's age.

Everyone knows of global warming, I don't want to see more talks, more
protests and more blame, I want to see plans being enacted, laws being
enforced, the world actually improving, but that's not what I see in this
Amazon spectacle.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Yeah, I reckon that's probably what everyone wants to see by this stage:
actual changes. So I see these walk-outs and protests[1] as a sort of _throw
ya hands in the air cos won 't somebody fckn do something already_ sort of
action.

(For what it's worth, I didn't down vote any of your comments. I typically up
vote anything I engage in, and usually only down vote comments that are
shallow or abusive).

1\. [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-15/students-walk-out-
of-...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-15/students-walk-out-of-class-to-
protest-climate-change/10901978)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>The employees are also asking for zero contracts with fossil fuel companies
that use Amazon’s AI technology to help them accelerate oil and gas
extraction,

This type of stuff will be the bane of large companies migrating to cloud. A
lot of large companies are involved in defense initiatives, law enforcement,
fossil fuel extraction, mineral extraction etc. If they have to worry about
what latest moral crusade will try to get you kicked off the cloud platform,
they will be a lot more reticent about migrating to cloud.

In addition, if you were a fossil fuel or car company that makes gas burning
vehicles, how confident are you that one of those people that is walking out
to try to get you kicked off the platform, won't try to be a "hero" and use
their insider access to try to sabotage your operations or leak confidential
data? I mean if the cause is worthy enough, all sorts of activities that would
be illegal are considered justified. I mean if a person thinks they are
literally saving the planet from destruction, sabotaging an oil company's
cloud infrastructure seems like something that they would at least seriously
consider doing.

I think Amazon and the other cloud companies need to come down hard and state
unequivocally that cloud services are not fodder for political crusades, and
they will allow all companies that are conducting legal business activities,
to be able to use their cloud.

~~~
n_time
> If they have to worry about what latest moral crusade will try to get you
> kicked off the cloud platform, they will be a lot more reticent about
> migrating to cloud.

Equating climate change activism with all other forms of social justice is a
common trend I see. They seem so different to me–the difference between
empirical reality and ideology. While the outcomes of climate change will be
ideological–save climate refugees or preserve competitive advantage and
wealth–the immediate concern of attempting to mitigate the impacts of climate
change are relatively rational.

> if you were a fossil fuel or car company that makes gas burning vehicles

Have you tried putting on your role-playing hats and empathising with some of
the points being made on the environmentalist side?

~~~
kd5bjo
The problem with most climate change activism is that it’s hyper-targeted
against the offender du jour and all of the others are largely ignored. It’s a
global-scale problem that demands global-scale solutions; the vigilantism
isn’t doing anything other than providing a straw man for the opposition to
knock down.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Then by all means you should show Sierra, 350, Sunrise, ER, and all of the
other folks out there how to do it better.

I mean this sincerely: I’ve been deeply involved in political and civic
activism for the past couple years, and have learned a ton, especially from
other people—but I also find it deeply frustrating when seemingly well
intentioned folks offer unspecific feedback on how the significant investments
of time, money, and energy I and others around me could be spent activisting
better.

~~~
kd5bjo
The goal is policy change, and that requires convincing people to vote for
things. The path that makes that happen is education, policy advocacy, and
ultimately gaining political office.

Direct action, however, tends to put more emphasis on the activists themselves
as the problem instead of whatever their platform is. This is only useful when
it demonstrates a sufficient commitment by a large number of people, which can
demonstrate wide popular support— rallies, peaceful protests, etc. that
involve enough people to potentially change the outcome of an election.

My problem is really with the publicity stunts done by a small number of
people. From outside, it looks like an egotistical act and, if not dismissed
entirely, hurts the reputation of everyone doing useful work in the same
field. Antagonizing people is a poor way to convince them of anything.

As for why I don’t go into politics myself, it isn’t my calling and I don’t
have the temperament to be successful at it. I believe I’ll do more concrete
good in the world by being kind and helpful to those I meet in this journey we
call life than by trying to force my concerns to the forefront of attention.

------
GhostVII
> The employees are also asking for zero contracts with fossil fuel companies
> that use Amazon’s AI technology to help them accelerate oil and gas
> extraction

To me, it seems like activists spend too much time focusing on the producers
of things like fossil fuels, and not enough time on the consumers.

I have nothing against companies which are producing fossil fuels, in general,
since they are usually producing a product that has at least some genuine
value in many cases. If everyone stopped drilling for oil immediately, it
would certainly have incredibly negative consequences. I do have a problem
with people who are excessively using these types of products, since they are
creating waste that damages the environment - if everyone stopped driving
their car everywhere and instead biked when they were able to, it would
certainly have a very positive effect.

------
privateSFacct
Be interesting to see if Amazon supports the employee strikes as much as
google - I think with google a lot of the strikes and walkouts were supported
by management and/or no consequence. So it was a "strike" but everyone got
paid still.

Is Amazon this progressive as well? Ie, will it pay everyone if an employee
was needed but unavailable?

~~~
kevin_b_er
Amazon seems far far more cutthroat than Google. They'll get PIP'd and thrown
into the pressure cooker as punishment until they quit.

~~~
cheeze
Antecdotally - the folks who have organized internal things like this at
Amazon generally continue to work there. The folks who did the same at google
seem to have gotten fired.

------
hirundo
If I were their manager I'd want to handle it like any other absence. If an
employee has a history of unscheduled ghosting, whether for protesting,
watching soap operas or whatever, treat them the same. If it _is_ scheduled or
otherwise arranged with a supervisor, no problem. Politics need not enter into
it.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
That sort of misses the point of protest via a walk out. You can’t have civil
disobedience without the disobedience.

------
tracker1
Do these people really think there is no environmental impact to creating
these "zero emission" vehicles? That the materials aren't destructively being
mined for the minerals used in the batteries and solar cells? That the engines
and vehicles aren't themselves shipped multiple times huge distances by cargo
ships using carbon burning engines? That the sunk environmental impact of
existing vehicles is worth throwing away? That natural gas shouldn't even be
considered?

I mean, a lot of these "green new deal" types of initiatives are short sighted
at best, and harmful at worst. Wind, solar and nuclear power should all be on
the table. Why aren't we talking about desalinization and water pipelines for
hydrogen fuel?

~~~
michannne
>Why aren't we talking about desalinization and water pipelines for hydrogen
fuel?

Because for these types of people, the goal isn't to enact any measurable
change on their own. It's to make others feel guilty for not coming up with a
solution.

------
atonse
Good for them. So much focus on "what we can do" with the climate crisis puts
the onus on individuals, instead of industry.

I like that they go further than just "use EVs to deliver packages" – but
instead also calling on AWS to not enable or help accelerate Oil and Gas
company extraction. Although I'm sure this one will fall flat, because there's
too much money involved.

~~~
mc32
>”...to not enable or help accelerate Oil and Gas company extraction.”

I don’t think that makes any more sense than say “not selling goods and
services to individuals who own ICE propulsion cars”. Or won’t sell items
manufactured in Chine due to dirty energy and lax enviro controls in
manufacturing.

------
tempsy
I’m not sure what the research says but is buying something online (+ one day
shipping) more or less environmentally friendly than going to a store?

~~~
pimmen
It depends, where is this hypothetical person living? I live in the middle of
a city, the store close to me serves the thousands of people living in my
square kilometer. Because of scale, the truck that transports new goods to the
store has a low carbon emission per customer.

I have friends who live way out of town. If they have a store it serves maybe
twenty people. Instead of dividing the truck’s emissions by thousands of
people you just divide it by twenty.

~~~
robryan
If someone has to get in their car at all to go to the shops I would say it is
likely to be more carbon intensive than a delivery service with high
utilisation. A shopping center in general would be generating a lot more
emissions per product than a warehouse.

On the other side often things bought online come with a lot more packaging. I
think Amazon is trying to cut down on this by having suppliers where possible
use a box for a product that is durable enough for shipping without having to
put it in another box.

------
body12
I would love to know the organizers' opinion on whether these various uses of
AWS "accelerate oil and gas extraction," i.e. whether they would be allowed on
AWS:

-The engineering of drill bits or other equipment that could be used for oil wells, but also for water or geothermal wells

-A business consulting firm running payroll, marketing, or accounting for an oil company

-Personal internet services for offshore oil workers

-Telemetry for drilling or pipeline monitoring equipment

-Geology research by a university that is likely to be used by oil companies

------
lovemenot
It's remarkable to me that in the original article and in all these comments
so far, there's no mention of energy use by AWS.

AWS is market leader in public cloud, which is probably the fastest growing
class of energy consumer. Already overtaking traditional industrial energy
consumers such as steel.

Assuming this market trend will continue, what can AWS realistically do to
mitigate their impact?

~~~
embedded
AWS, like google and like Azure and every other cloud provider already does
everything they can to minimize energy consumption because it is in their
economic interest to do so.

In fact I would think the best thing industry can do to reduce energy
consumption is to move their data to a cloud provider. It takes far less
energy to cool one large room with servers from a dozen companies than it does
to cool a dozen server rooms with private on-prem servers.

~~~
lovemenot
This all seems correct, but insufficiently proactive, at least not enough to
satisfy activists.

For instance, though it may not currently be economic, how about pre-cooling
using renewable energy. Locating data centers next to hydro / geothermal
sources? Larger UPS? Load balancing across DCs with available renewables?
Other mitigations to get ahead of the issue?

------
perfunctory
They should also join the Extinction Rebellion on October 7

[https://rebellion.global/events/2019/07/30/rebel-without-
bor...](https://rebellion.global/events/2019/07/30/rebel-without-borders/)

------
smpetrey
However unlikely it is, it would be awesome to see the Amazon warehouse
workers join in solidarity.

------
efitz
In other news, Amazon announces over 900 new job openings.

------
pinewurst
941/647,500 (the 2018 Amazon employee total)

~~~
mc32
Probably because if they reversed the numbers in the article, it wouldn’t
sell. “646,000 out of 647,500 Amazon employees will not pledge to join
protest!”

------
lacampbell
Walk out into the car park to drive home?

------
axiom92
This (unfortunately paywalled) article from the Economist raises a lot of
points discussed in this thread:
[https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/22/what-
companies-...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/22/what-companies-
are-for)

------
Pfhreak
There's something really interesting going on with the flagging in this post.
There are several on topic, polite discussions that have been flagged to
death. (Along with some replies which, rightly, have been flagged to death.)

Maybe it's just folks expressing political views with the flag button, but
it's interesting to see it used so dramatically here.

Edit: Either someone did something or a bunch of vouching happened, because a
lot of comments have come back.

~~~
mattsfrey
That's unfortunately what HN comments has become, a popularity contest where
instead of replying to views you disagree with using counter arguments, you
just downvote them and if their statement particularly offends your
sensibilities, flag them.

~~~
badsectoracula
Honestly, downvoting - especially as implemented here in HN where it fades out
things - was a mistake. I do not understand why people still insist on it and
ask people to not use it as a "disagree" button (and flagging as a "super
disagree" button) when many years of evidence show that despite any effort, it
will be used as such.

I can understand (even if disagree) with Reddit-the-company wanting it to stay
there because it increases "engagement" with the platform (regardless of the
engagement's quality) and thus gets more ad revenue, but why anyone else (and
any site that doesn't monetize such "engagement") would insist on downvoting
is beyond me (and i especially do not understand people acting as if the topic
itself is some sort of taboo to not even be discussed and treat its existence
as unquestionable dogma).

~~~
mises
The better option would be to get rid of political BS entirely. I am
incredibly sick of hearing each side scream into the wind while the other
screams back. This was originally mostly a tech forum; it's grown to a size
where it needs to be _only_ a tech forum. People can go to reddit if they want
to scream about politics.

~~~
Pfhreak
That's a position that's ok if and only if you are ok with the status quo. It
is, in itself, a political stance.

Now, screaming into the wind is also far from ideal, but I think the answer
shouldn't be "Ignore politics because I'm fine."

There are a ton of places where tech intersects with politics, whether that's
in climate science, gender, mental health, medicine, art/culture, public
transit (and other public shared resources), copyright, privacy, safety, etc.
Strictly restricting the discussion to tech doesn't erase those intersections
between tech and political domains.

~~~
mises
Except all the issues you just raised are primarily things about which one
side cares. The cares of the other are ignored or, in the rare case they are
visible, flagged down.

~~~
Pfhreak
What? These aren't boolean propositions. Each of them has a pretty complex set
of connections with tech, across a variety of subdomains and interests....

~~~
mises
Maybe a better way to describe it is as a venn diagram. If there are circles
with "lefty" things and "righty" things, you took (as HN tends to do) the
whole lefty circle. That includes things in the center, but not those on the
right.

~~~
Pfhreak
Ah yes, the "lefty" concerns of privacy, safety, medicine, public land use,
and intellectual property and how they intersect with tech. I somehow always
manage to forget that the "righty" folk are disinterested in discussion on how
those topics might intersect with tech.

Again, these issues aren't binary, they aren't left v. right, there's much
more to understand than just two fixed points. I didn't even dive into any
specific issues. Public resources could mean parks or it could mean the Bureau
of Land Management, eminent domain or subsidized bus fare. Safety and privacy
could be a discussion of the TSA, or gun rights, or immigration, or facial
recognition.

Those are obviously concerns that impact a wide group of people, across many
different political ideologies.

You are seeing something that isn't there.

~~~
mises
You cherry-picked stuff from the center of the diagram. Stuff like climate
"science" and "gender" gets posted a good bit; these are things of which the
left has made issues. My point is that the whole left circle - issues
important to the left and important to both left and right - are posted and
discussed. Issues important only to the right are flagged down. Right-wing
perspectives on political posts are flagged down. To take an example, very
occasionally, I see a mention of guns that includes a right-wing perspective.
Even if it's politely stated, flagged down. Example, something like: "The
arguments about taking guns lowering mass shooting-rates does mot affect the
right because priorities are different. The right is willing to tolerate some
death as tragic but a fact of life to maintain rights, and mass shooting death
rates are vastly below other public health issues any way."

Such a comment would be flagged down. A comment taking the opposing point-of-
view, even much less politely, would be supported. Comments with vulgarity and
rudeness are also tolerated only from certain perspectives. This disparity is
particularly galling because low-ranked comments become greyed to the point of
un-readability, and flagged ones don't appear at all by default. I couldn't
care less about the internet points, but HN ought to leave un-popular opinions
visible.

------
Postosuchus
I assume, the whole narrative is above such insignificant details as direct
and indirect costs of producing "green energy?"

~~~
bcheung
Not sure what you mean but Amazon is doing a lot of research into things like
drone deliveries and robotic vehicles which can be powered from renewable
energy.

Fuel costs money. Ultimately delivery efficiency is better for business and
for the environment.

They also are encouraging all deliveries to happen on a given day of the week
so they can be batched up and logistically planned better.

Seems like things are moving in the right direction.

------
oh_sigh
Amazon's entire retail business model is built upon oil(specifically drivers
moving individual packages to consumer's homes).

------
rwoodley
Great! The more people strike, the more we'll get the kind of change we need.

------
panic
It's worth emphasizing that these Amazon employees aren't acting on their own
-- they're taking part in a global climate strike:
[https://globalclimatestrike.net](https://globalclimatestrike.net). Even if
each person or company acting individually can't change anything, a large
enough movement like this may make change possible.

