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‘You can go back 10 years or 20 years and there were people who just did not acknowledge that climate change is real. Anybody today who is not acknowledging that climate change is real — that we humans are affecting this planet in a very significant and dangerous way — those people are not being reasonable.’
Billionaire Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos included this warning on the danger of climate change — and the risk of ignoring its demands — as he pledged new investment in India Wednesday.
The developing nation is one of the Paris Climate accord blatant violators, at least according to President Donald Trump, who has begun the act of pulling the U.S. from the pact.
Bezos, who is currently on a three-day visit in India, said his company plans to invest $1 billion in digitizing small and medium businesses there, the Associated Press reported. He said Amazon AMZN, -0.40% is going to use it size, scale and global footprint to export $10 billion in goods made in India by 2025.
Bezos added that he was using his connections to work with CEOs in India and around the world on climate-change policies as his own company pursues an aggressive plan to offset its large carbon footprint and faces internal criticism of backlash against staff grievances on climate change.
“When a large company like Amazon with 700,000 employees and a big global footprint does something like the climate pledge, it really can be a needle mover,” Bezos said on Wednesday, according to CNBC. “Because it’s not just Amazon, it’s our supply chain. For us to meet that pledge, they have to meet that pledge.”
Amazon last year set a goal to meet the Paris Climate agreement objectives 10 years early, with a pledge to be carbon neutral by 2040, even for its Prime one-day shipping service.
Read: 7 ways to cut the carbon footprint on your Amazon deliveries
Amazon has said it will work toward using 100% renewable energy by 2030 and had placed a big order for electric delivery vans from a Midwest company, Rivian, which the online retailer took a $440 million stake in.
Some Amazon tech workers who are members of a group called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice said earlier this year they were contacted by reps from legal and human resources teams after calling for the company to take a bigger role in battling climate change. Some of those workers allege they were threatened with termination for speaking out.
Bezos plans extend beyond Earth, he indicated Wednesday.
“We have sent robotic probes to every planet in the solar system — this is the good one,” he said, according to the CNBC report. “There are no other good planets in this solar system. We have to take care of this one.”
Bezos, who also owns space exploration firm Blue Origin, predicted that in hundreds of years, humanity would move all polluting industries into space.
Amazon shares are up 10.5% in the past year. The S&P 500 SPX, +0.19% is up more than 25% over the same stretch.
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