A group of more than 1,000 Google employees has signed an open letter calling on Google to take steps to reduce the impact of climate change, including producing zero emissions by 2030.
The workers also want to see the company ditch 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 politicians and think tanks that deny the existence of climate change.
“The day of the global climate strike, [Google CEO Sundar Pichai] responded to our organizing by saying that reaching zero emissions by 2030 ‘definitely seems [like] the kind of timeline by which we want to accomplish those things,'” wrote Google site reliability engineer Ike McCreery in an email to Fast Company. “We need from Google a comprehensive climate plan incorporating all four demands.”
Google currently counts various energy and oil companies among its cloud computing customers.
The company has also drawn ire for contributing to pro-free-market think tanks that oppose action on climate change, saying it supports their policies on technology.
“We’re hardly alone among companies that contribute to organizations while strongly disagreeing with them on climate policy,” a spokesperson told the Guardian.
Google isn’t the first big tech company to see employees urge action on climate change: Earlier this year, Amazon workers signed their own open letter to CEO Jeff Bezos urging similar changes at the company.
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