Really Good News: Jeff Bezos Announces Exciting, Sweeping Plans for Amazon's Climate Action Goals

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled a sweeping plan on Thursday, the day before 1000 Amazon Seattle employees will join colleagues at Google and Microsoft in walking off their jobs to support the September 20, 2019 Global Climate Strike and marches around the world. The sweeping new plan unveiled by Bezos commits the company to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years ahead of schedule.

As part of the announcement, Amazon will purchase 100,000 electric delivery vans from vehicle manufacturer Rivian. They will be on the road as early as 2021, giving the company a big boost in keeping its climate policy promise to make Amazon carbon neutral by 2040. All 100,000 vans should be on the road by 2024. Note that Amazon has already invested $440 million in Rivian, which raised as part of its $700 million February 2019 round of funding.

Rivians will be built in Michigan in Normal, Illinois, alongside the SUVs and pickups Rivian plans to build in a former Mitsubishi plant, reports The Detroit News.

"This provides an opportunity for mega-tech, through the sheer size and capital available, to invest in electric vehicle and accelerate EV penetration," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a Thursday note to investors. Read on in New Day.

Youth Climate Movement Puts Ethics at the Center of the Global Debate

Youth Climate Movement Puts Ethics at the Center of the Global Debate

Even if you’ve never heard of Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmentalist who crossed the Atlantic on a sailboat to attend a Sept. 23 United Nations summit on the climate, you may have heard about the student-led Global Climate Strike she helped inspire, planned for Friday, Sept. 20.

People from more than 150 countries are expected to head to the streets to demand climate action. According to the organizers, the strike aims “to declare a climate emergency and show our politicians what action in line with climate science and justice means.”

The strike was galvanized by a global youth movement, whose Friday school walkouts over the last year were themselves inspired by Thunberg’s own three-week strike in August 2018 to demand climate action by the Swedish parliament.

People of all ages will be joining this year’s protests at the United Nations, and adults – with their environmental organizations, climate negotiations and election campaigns – are gradually getting on board. The Union of Concerned Scientists even published an “Adult’s Guide” to the climate strike to help parents of participants get up to speed.