23/04/2019
Last year I wrote a piece explaining why I decided to boycott Amazon (link below). Since then, I’ve refused to be tempted by cheap book prices from sites such as Amazon, Book Depository, and AbeBooks, as well as any online services tied to them if possible. I’ve had people question that choice, but I stand by it and explain it to them. Now, there is another reason highlighted by an open letter signed by thousands of Amazon employees.
Paying no tax on billions of dollars of profit, all at the expense of desperate and underpaid workers, may not persuade some to drop the trillion-dollar company, but what about the environment? To run their services and IT infrastructure, they use an insane amount of energy to keep themselves running. They have pledged to move towards renewables to maintain this, but there is much ground for criticism.
In the above article, the author compares that promise with their slow progress and a Gizmodo investigation that revealed their ties with the fossil fuel industry. Committing to cleaner energy consumption is not compatible with, or at least contradictory to, working on projects that benefit and expand coal, oil, and gas industries.
The cost of convenience is, indeed, the livelihood of our planet. I called out the absurdity of the money raised for the reconstruction of Notre Dame in contrast to the disinterest most of the population seems to have towards the world that keeps us alive. We have seen companies donate for material causes like a church, and yet with billions rolling around in profits, we cannot spare anything to save our environment.
It is not controversial to say the greatest security threat to our world is climate change. Terrorism, drugs, violent crime, etc. – even the wars and injustice that currently plagues regions like the Middle East – will be negligible when compared with the upheaval environmental catastrophe will cause. Many more environmental refugees will be seeking asylum, and many others will be internally displaced due to natural disasters – just look at the floods in Iran.
Companies like Amazon, and countless others, have an obligation to push for a renewable-run society, or at the very least to reject anything to do with fossil fuels. We, the consumers of convenient products, must play our part by holding them accountable for that.
Liked this? My piece on Amazon HERE
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