How Amazon Workers Got Serious About Climate (and How You Can, too)

How to Save a Planet

Gimlet

Science, News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A common piece of career advice is to bring your whole self to work. But what if your whole self includes a deep concern for the climate? Can you bring that part of yourself to work, even if it makes your workplace uncomfortable? This week we talked to a couple of people, Emily Cunningham and Eliza Pan, who had that same question. They were deeply concerned about the climate crisis and they felt that their workplace, Amazon - yes that one - was part of the problem. So they, along with some of their coworkers, decided to bring their concerns about climate change into the office. This week we learn how Amazon workers pushed the company to act on climate change, how effective it was, and what lessons the rest of us can learn from them. (This episode originally aired May 27, 2021). Guests: Emily Cunningham and Eliza Pan Take Action • Find out what your company is already doing to address climate change. How does what they are doing compare to other organizations in their space? Could they be doing more? • Start talking to your coworkers about climate change. Find the people in your organization who are interested in finding ways to help your company lower its carbon footprint. • Connect with groups in your area that are organizing about climate change. Some places to start looking might be your local chapter of 350.org, and check out this list for more suggestions. Learn More • Read the open that Amazon Employees for Climate Justice wrote to Jeff Bezos • Eliza recommends the book The Long Haul by Myles Horton (who we also mentioned in our episode, Where’s our Climate Anthem) • Check out Amazon Employee’s for Climate Justice’s efforts on their website. You can get in touch with Amazon Employees for Climate Justice at [email protected] • Read the full letter that former Amazon VP Tim Bray wrote about why he resigned in the wake of Amazon terminating some of its employees • Read Amazon’s climate pledge If you take an action we recommend in one of our episodes, do us a favor and tell us about it! We’d love to hear how it went and what it felt like. Record a short voice memo on your phone and send it to us via our Listener Mail Form. We might use it in an upcoming episode. Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we’ve recommended on the show. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Credits: This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by Kendra Pierre-Louis. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Rachel Waldholz and Anna Ladd. Our intern is Ayo Oti. Our senior producer is Lauren Silverman. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music from Emma Munger.Super special thanks to Rachel Strom for helping with this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to How To Save a Planet.
0:04.2	I'm Alex Bloomberg and this is the show where we're talking about what we need to do to
0:07.4	address climate change and how to make those things happen.
0:24.2	So the holidays are officially here, which means in my household that we did our traditional
0:29.5	purchasing of the very overpriced Christmas tree along Fifth Avenue and dredged at the
0:34.8	17 blocks home on my shoulder, but as every year it was worth the effort.
0:39.9	But it also means if you're like me that you've probably been spending a lot of time
0:44.0	clicking on Amazon links, I know there are a lot of people like me because last year
0:49.6	Amazon delivered more than 1.5 billion toys, home products, beauty and personal care
0:54.5	products and electronics worldwide during the holiday season.
0:58.6	And it's no surprise that as one of the largest companies in the world, Amazon is also
1:02.8	making some of the biggest impacts on the climate.
1:06.2	And that's why we're bringing you this episode that we broadcast earlier this year featuring
1:10.1	conversations with Emily Cunningham and Eliza Pan.
1:13.6	They are two former Amazon employees who realized that the company they worked for had no real
1:18.2	system in place to deal with its climate impacts.
1:21.3	And so the two of them decided to take action.
1:24.9	We originally aired this episode in May back when Ionaut was still co-hosting.
1:28.9	That's all coming up after the break.
1:40.3	Spark your creativity with the Sims.
1:42.8	Sometimes you might feel like you're not creative and you have to go in search of your creative
1:47.5	spark again.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -1193 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Gimlet, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Gimlet and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.