Amazon’s carbon emissions jump 18% in 2021 – but it boasts a dubious achievement

by time news

Reverse, Bezos, reverse: Amazon’s carbon emissions jumped 18% in 2021 compared to the year before it, despite the company’s promises to reach full emissions balance by 2040 – according to the online trade giant’s annual sustainability report, published yesterday. This is the second year in a row that the company’s emissions are increasing at a double-digit rate, a fact that emphasizes the large gap that exists between the promises of huge corporations to reduce emissions and the reality on the ground.

Amazon published its climate plan about three years ago, in which it pledged to achieve full emissions balance by 2040 and to shift 100% of its operations to renewable energies by 2025. However, according to the latest report, the company actually moved in the opposite direction when in 2021 it produced 71.54 million tons of greenhouse gases – Equivalent to the activity of 180 gas-based power plants from minerals.

In an effort to downplay this failure, Amazon points to specific achievements. “The focus should not only be on the company’s carbon signature in absolute terms of emissions, but also whether it is reducing its carbon intensity,” the report states. “Carbon intensity” is the amount of carbon emitted relative to each dollar of sales on its platform – this is a corporate term designed to allow giant entities to boast of meaningless achievements in terms of meeting climate goals.

Beyond the fact that in terms of the climate crisis, the question of whether a company has decreased or increased its “carbon intensity” has no meaning – the really important data are the actual scope of emissions and the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere; Even the figure that Amazon is boasting about here – a 1.9% decrease in “carbon intensity” – is minimal and miserable, and would have been considered a failure even if it was an absolute decrease in emissions.

“While we work to decarbonize our company, Amazon is growing rapidly,” the company explained in the report. “We expanded the scope of our activity at an unprecedented rate to help meet the needs of our customers during the epidemic.” Or, in other words: we are now knocking over the cash register of life, so what if the whole world is knocked over as a result?

In practice, according to The Verge website, Amazon’s situation is even worse than the company presents. This is because, unlike other retailers, it does not calculate the emissions emitted in the production process of all the products it sells.

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