Reproduced From – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/diary-retail-technologist-quick-word-climatechange-avneendra-arun/
First, a quick plug for my Amazon Data Platform Team – we are hiring aggressively for many positions in Seattle WA, Arlington VA and Bangalore, India, so if you are interested to join my team (or know anyone who will be) do review the positions of Sr. Technical Program Manager / Sr. Software Development Engineer / Data Engineer . Apart from my team, there are thousands of other positions open on Amazon’s job portal https://amazon.jobs/en/ , so do explore those if my team’s positions do not seem suitable for you. Feel free to send your resume to me and/or reach out to me via DM if needed.
Also, quick update on my week# 2 at Amazon – there was lots and lots of reading, meeting, analyzing and memorizing new stuff .. as my new Amazonian colleagues tell me I should expect to continue “drinking from the firehose” for next few weeks, so nothing fun there to describe and I will stop on that topic here.
One thing worth describing though, which is main theme of today’s post is, as part of my onboarding at #Amazon, I got to learn (and it made me proud) that Amazon has taken very very clear positions on certain important global issues (btw, taking positions we all know from our experience is hard to do in a polarized world where staying in middle seems the best option on any issue) – anyways read https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/our-positions – there are many good content on above page and perhaps all of them needs their own separate posts, but the one which is the main topic of this post is Climate Change. I was pleasantly surprised when I read the clear message from Amazon leadership on the issue –
Human-induced climate change is real, serious, and action is needed from the public and private sectors.
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that human activities are contributing to climate-warming trends over the past century, and most leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. We agree and have created The Climate Pledge—a commitment to reach the Paris Agreement 10 years early. We are innovating and investing to be net-zero carbon by 2040 and run on 100% renewable energy by 2025. We are purchasing 100,000 fully electric delivery vehicles, the largest order ever for electric delivery vehicles, and investing $100 million in nature-based climate solutions and reforestation projects around the world to begin removing carbon from the atmosphere now. Our sustainability website provides comprehensive reporting on our carbon footprint and progress on our commitments.
Yesterday I was contemplating topics for today’s post and I saw an article of Amazon’s Custom Electric Delivery Vehicles being rolled out, which intrigued me – lets check out the video below to understand what I am talking about –
This was interesting and something I wasn’t aware of … I think by now we all are quite used to seeing Amazon delivery vehicles on roads, communities and in front of our homes. (A quick funny story there is last month I told my kids about me working for Amazon, I was driving later with them, having them in backseat, and they shouted “daddy that’s your company’s vehicle driving in front of us” and I laughed to see they were pointing to a Amazon’s delivery vehicle).
The point there is these vehicles are such a common sight that seeing them being converted to Electric vehicles will be a good milestone to see to have more and more vehicles on road being electric vehicles.
Btw, in above video they talked about 2040 commitment, eg- “Climate Pledge”, that ringed a bell on something I read and saw sometime back that Amazon co founded and signed the pledge few years back and also there are more companies who has joined the pledge –
https://www.theclimatepledge.com/ – What is The Climate Pledge?
The Climate Pledge, with its bold goal of net zero carbon by 2040—ten years earlier than specified by the Paris Agreement—presents a leadership opportunity for companies around the world to join together in taking urgent action on the climate crisis. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge with Global Optimism in 2019, and became the first company to sign the pledge. The Climate Pledge currently has over 100 signatories, including Verizon, PepsiCo, Best Buy, Visa, Reckitt Benckiser (RB), Microsoft, Unilever, JetBlue Airways, Uber, and more
Climate Change is such an important topic that we will keep getting new information every few months and years and hopefully as human race we will keep achieving milestones like these (converting all vehicles to electric), so I might have more in future posts here, but this is something definitely I will keep a close watch on years to come ..
We saw last year how fragile we are as a global interconnected village as we had warnings of a global pandemic for years but still we were very unprepared to deal with the disruption it caused. Now, there has been similar warnings for climate changes for many years and I think topic of climate change may become even more important in near future.
Lastly, our (my) kids will enter workforce in 2030s and for that generation environment friendly and climate change may not be just buzzwords but a basic necessity. The idea of “Climate Pledge” which seems like a nice thing to do today may become a necessity for everyone to follow whether its big businesses or regular individuals like me and my kids in the decades of 2030s and 2040s.
Anyways, lot of big talk .. so, as always, I will like to end this post on a lighter note with some of my musical experiments. This one is Main Hoon Don on Akai MPK Mini –