The planet is on track of impending doom and the most affected communities are least responsible for climate change. The world is already witnessing the devastating impacts of changing climatic conditions. The flooding in India like never seen before, the water crisis in Africa, wildfires and floods in North America, rapidly melting glaciers, coastal displacement in Asia, and crop failure in Latin America – all are unnerving calamities owing to the climate change crisis.
No doubt global communities are pressing on the need for strong actions against climate change. Many tech companies have also committed to the cause and pledged to reduce their carbon emissions and utilize more renewable energy resources.
In September 2019, thousands of Google employees joined the global climate strike and asked their employer to take stringent actions against the climate situation. Recently, over 1,000 employees of the tech giant wrote an open letter addressing Google’s chief financial officer Ruth Porat, calling on the company to cut all of its carbon emissions by 2030.
In this letter, the employees asked Google to eliminate contracts that ‘enable or accelerate the extraction of fossil fuels,’ not work with ‘entities enabling the incarceration, surveillance, displacement, or oppression of refugees or frontline communities,’ and stop funding for think tanks, politicians, or lobbyists that deny the threats posed by the climate change.
Google is not the only company that has its employees demanding stringent action on climate change. Earlier, the workers at Amazon and Microsoft had also demanded these three measures. But, Google employees have demanded to cut all business deals with any institution that adversely affect the people coping with the effects of changing climate.
Google employees striking against inaction on climate change / Image: The Verge
Allegedly, the company has also made large donations to many organizations who deny the climate change situation. In a report by The Guardian, among hundreds of groups that the company has enlisted on its website as beneficiaries of its political giving are more than a dozen organizations that have questioned the need of actions against climate change. Amidst the list, Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative policy group is also a beneficiary, which played an important role in convincing the Trump administration to abandon the Paris Agreement.
According to its annual environmental report, Google has been “carbon neutral” since 2007 and uses 100 percent renewable energy for its operations. But, Google’s operations still run on fossil fuels. In 2018, it generated 4.9 metric tons of greenhouse gases. According to at least one researcher’s estimate, Google searches alone account for 40 percent of the entire internet carbon footprints.
This is why the company’s environmentally concerned employees are demanding the company to take action to end greenhouse gas emission completely. The responsibility toward the environment and the users motivated the Google employees to put forth their demands in this open letter.
It is of utmost importance to reduce the impact of human actions on the environment to survive this existential crisis known as the climate change. Hopefully, the company will respond while keeping the future of the planet in mind.
Via: The Verge