If Amazon doesn’t know how to eliminate carbon emissions, then who does?
If Amazon doesn’t know how to eliminate carbon emissions, then who does?
如果亚马逊都不知道如何消除碳排放，那还有谁知道？
Amazon’s chief sustainability officer said Tuesday the company doesn’t know how it will achieve its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. “We are still striving towards that target,” Kara Hurst said at an Axios event, adding later that she is “not going to sit here and say, ‘We know all the ways that we’re going to do this.’” 亚马逊首席可持续发展官周二表示，该公司目前尚不清楚将如何实现其 2040 年净零碳排放的目标。Kara Hurst 在 Axios 的一场活动上表示：“我们仍在朝着这个目标努力。”她随后补充道，她“不会坐在这里说，‘我们已经掌握了实现这一目标的所有方法。’”
The admission was both frank and realistic. It’s also a bit disappointing. If Amazon doesn’t have a plan to decarbonize, then who does? Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, with last year’s revenue up 12% to $717 billion — about the size of Ireland’s economy. Its rise is illustrative of how, as UN Secretary General António Guterres has pointed out, power has shifted from governments to a few corporations. As power moves, responsibility follows. The question is, how much responsibility does Amazon bear? 这一承认既坦率又现实，但也令人有些失望。如果连亚马逊都没有脱碳计划，那还有谁有？亚马逊是全球最大的公司之一，去年营收增长了 12%，达到 7170 亿美元，规模相当于爱尔兰的经济总量。正如联合国秘书长古特雷斯所指出的，亚马逊的崛起说明了权力已从政府转移到少数几家企业手中。权力转移，责任随之而来。问题是，亚马逊承担了多少责任？
“This isn’t a question of companies versus governments,” Hurst told TechCrunch in a written reply to questions after the event. “Tackling climate change at the scale it demands takes both, and it takes them working together.” She added, “Where we can lead, we do.” “这不是企业与政府对立的问题，”Hurst 在活动后的书面回复中告诉 TechCrunch。“应对气候变化所需的规模要求两者共同参与，并需要双方通力合作。”她补充道：“在我们可以发挥领导作用的地方，我们正在这样做。”
It’s true that Amazon has not been sitting still. In her talk yesterday, Hurst pointed out that the company is “one of the largest purchasers of clean energy in the world for the last several years running” with 42 gigawatts in its portfolio. She also said that Amazon has reduced its carbon intensity, or how much pollution it generates per dollar of revenue, though that claim depends on the time frame. Last year, carbon intensity rose compared with 2024, even though it stayed below where it was in 2022. 诚然，亚马逊并没有坐以待毙。在昨天的演讲中，Hurst 指出，该公司“连续几年成为全球最大的清洁能源采购商之一”，其投资组合中拥有 42 吉瓦的清洁能源。她还表示，亚马逊已经降低了碳强度（即每美元营收产生的污染量），尽管这一说法取决于统计的时间范围。去年，碳强度较 2024 年有所上升，尽管仍低于 2022 年的水平。
Amazon is a sprawling business, and as a result, its carbon emissions are spread across nearly every sector of the economy, from aviation and AI to agriculture and construction. The company needs suppliers in every sector to achieve its goal. “This is not something we can do alone,” Hurst said at the Axios event. The company acknowledges that its commitments are its own. “We hold ourselves accountable to The Climate Pledge goal of net-zero carbon by 2040. That commitment hasn’t changed,” Hurst told TechCrunch. 亚马逊业务庞大，因此其碳排放遍布经济的几乎每一个领域，从航空、人工智能到农业和建筑业。该公司需要各行业的供应商共同努力才能实现目标。“这不是我们能独自完成的事情，”Hurst 在 Axios 活动上说。该公司承认其承诺是其自身的责任。“我们对 2040 年实现净零碳排放的‘气候承诺’（The Climate Pledge）目标负责。这一承诺从未改变，”Hurst 告诉 TechCrunch。
But Amazon has also made choices that undermine its leadership on the issue. Earlier this year, an investigation revealed the company’s plans to build a 7.65 gigawatt natural gas power plant to power an AI data center campus. The project’s 35 turbines could release up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, making it the largest single source of that pollution in the U.S. 但亚马逊也做出了一些削弱其在该问题上领导地位的选择。今年早些时候的一项调查显示，该公司计划建造一座 7.65 吉瓦的天然气发电厂，为人工智能数据中心园区供电。该项目的 35 台涡轮机每年可能排放高达 3300 万吨二氧化碳，使其成为美国最大的单一污染源。
With few exceptions, companies prioritize revenue growth over climate commitments. For a company like Amazon, which operates the largest cloud service in the world, AI is apparently a revenue driver that’s impossible to pass up. The climate tech world has been hoping that, as clean power gets cheaper, the market would work its magic to lower carbon emissions. There have been a few success stories, but as the AI rush has shown, that approach has its limits. Even Amazon, one of the leaders in the space, bet big on natural gas. In the process, it essentially said that climate change is something for future generations of executives to deal with. Sound familiar? 除了极少数例外，企业通常将营收增长置于气候承诺之上。对于像亚马逊这样运营着全球最大云服务的公司来说，人工智能显然是一个无法放弃的营收驱动力。气候科技界一直希望，随着清洁能源变得更便宜，市场能够发挥其魔力来降低碳排放。虽然有一些成功案例，但正如人工智能热潮所显示的那样，这种方法有其局限性。即使是该领域的领导者亚马逊，也押注于天然气。在此过程中，它实际上是在说，气候变化是未来几代高管需要处理的事情。听起来耳熟吗？