What is your alternative proposal?
It's not like Amazon's $2B investment in climate tech is mutually exclusive with government initiatives or other climate research. It's another angle to approach the problem, using the tools they have at their disposal. I don't understand the desire to assume the most cynical takes on this initiative.
According to the "The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History": a carbon tax and dividend [0].
The technology of markets is one of price signals and feedback loops, generally on time horizons between nano-second HFTs and quarterly earnings reports. Ecological events, occurring on the scale of decades or centuries, require governments (or other forms of collective action) to create artificial price signals for those externalities.
At any rate, I agree that there's nothing wrong with this initiative. Every bit potentially helps; I don't see this diverting resources from other efforts.
That was the point I was trying to make. Amazon's $2B investment isn't mutually exclusive with government efforts to combat climate change. It's additive.
The knee-jerk reactions to Amazon's climate initiatives from the HN comments are disappointing.
From Amazon's perspective, this a good move (and I'm sure as much in the interests of their bottom line as long-term planetary altruism). But from a citizen's perspective, we shouldn't rest on our laurels and assume that corporations and private investment will solve the problem on their own.
I think a concerted PR effort could move the needle on popularity relatively quickly (which isn't unprecedented on other policy issues: opinions on gay marriage and marijuana legalization both tipped relatively quickly). The fact that it's market-based and doesn't expand government bureaucracy helps sell it to the right, the fact that most working people would come ahead economically helps sell it to the left. But absent that: do you have a better policy solution in mind that is more politically viable? I think the Green New Deal is a pretty good idea, at least in the abstract, but without a major sea change it seems to be DOA as well.
I don't know what the most realistic policy is at this point. Perhaps some mix of continued subsidy for renewable energy & storage, quiet ongoing research into iron fertilization, and pray that we have the technology ready to ramp when the voting public is finally forced to face reality.
Carbon Engineering is my moonshot hope. If synthetic direct air capture fuel ever becomes cheaper than fossil, it would decarbonize many challenging industries overnight, as well as providing a good launch pad for sequestration. (Continued investment in renewable energy makes this more possible)
Huh, that's news to me. Can you point to any prominent left politicians/pundits opining that? Is it just that they prefer Green New Deal? Do they object to the "strange bedfellows" of Frank Luntz & co. (if any Republicans like it, it must be a corporate/neo-fascist plot)?
> Carbon Engineering is my moonshot hope.
Yeah, I think we'll need something like this anyway. But with our current tech, it's still orders of magnitude more efficient to not pull the carbon out of the ground in the first place. (One of my crazier/handwavium ideas: massive fail-safe thorium reactor, hundreds of miles away from any human habitation to avoid NIMBY problems, whose only job is to pull carbon out of the air.)
2B in equities won't really do anything other than raise the stock prices for green technologies.
2B in green bonds or direct funding may help to move the needle if the case is that these companies are cash strapped.
But, IMO, the thing that will actually move the needle more than anything else is if Amazon takes that 2B and actually goes out and builds out renewable sources and replaces their delivery vehicles with EVs. Because, simply investing in a company that does green things doesn't guarantee actual change.
It would be a sizable impact if they powered all their services with renewable sources, especially if they don't fall back on the grid (so building out storage for themselves).
Google uses Tomorrow's ElectricityMap [1] engine and forecasting to schedule and stage workloads based on clean energy availability [2] [3]. I am curious if Amazon would consider doing the same for themselves (and tangentially related, Microsoft as well), but also expose AWS clients to pricing signals to shift client workloads to "cleaner" locations. It would be carbon tax of sorts, but mandated by technology providers instead of government.
For example, if you were so inclined, you'd want to run your workloads during the day in AWS' west coast datacenters (as California generates an enormous amount of energy during the day from solar, and electricity in the PNW is primarily hydro), or Texas when there's a large amount of wind power on the ERCOT grid. You would not want to run your workloads anywhere where coal and natural gas were the primary sources of power.
[1] https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=...
[2] https://www.tmrow.com/blog/announcing-our-partnership-with-g...
[3] https://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/data-center...
Even better, they're doing that outside of the 2B fund.
Amazon is creating a futuristic fleet of 100,000 electric delivery vans https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-creating-fleet-of-ele...
AWS is committed to achieving 100% renewable energy usage for our global infrastructure https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/
Because of Amazon's (poor) history when it comes to exercising corporate social responsibility?
It's false to claim that Amazon doesn't pay their taxes. Amazon pays taxes on profits according to the tax law, just like every other company. Amazon employees pay taxes on their paychecks, just like every other company's employees. Amazon's customers pay taxes on their purchases, just like customers of every other company's customers. Amazon generates a lot of tax revenue.
> and we could, as a nation, decide how best to coordinate efforts to fight climate change
Like I said: Amazon's climate change actions are not mutually exclusive with government initiatives to combat climate change.
It's a false dichotomy, not to mention specious argument, to suggest that Amazon's $2B investment in climate change is somehow preventing the government from also investing in climate change intitiatives.
I think the best think individuals can do at the moment is vote to bring in new blood on both sides of the aisle, subsequently vote reform on local levels and for education reform then wait a decade or two and then vote to reform our federal systems.
In the meantime backing long term thinking companies and boycotting bad acting companies because the private sector is going to have to shoulder the fight until we fix the government. In the meantime
If not, then I don't think the problem is solved by saying they "could pay taxes" since they already are, but rather that the government could be levying more taxes on businesses like Amazon.
Also a path to consider is lobbying and political activism. If Amazon has aligned itself with driving carbon out of the economy (their historical PPA efforts and this fund seems to communicate such a stance), they should be using their dollars to support political representation that will codify this into law (more aggressive subsidies for low carbon technologies & mobility electrification, and implementation of a carbon tax).