The Other Amazon: Deconstructing Amazon's Climate Pledge and Sustainability Discourse

Abstract: The techno-conglomerate Amazon has emerged as a corporate giant, branching out their operations to include many sectors of the global market. While previously concealing their carbon footprint, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge together with two former architects of the Paris Agreement in 2019 with the goal of reaching net zero carbon by 2040, ten years earlier than the Paris agreement. A copious amount of criticism has been leveled at the firm for a various number of affronts; including accusations of anti-competitive behaviour; surveillance; inhumane working conditions; supporting climate change denying think tanks; and selling software technology to Big Oil and highly criticized Homeland Security subdivision ICE. Through the lens of critical discourse analysis and a greenwashing perspective, a selection of material concerning the Climate Pledge and Amazon’s sustainability discourse was analyzed with the question “how does Amazon construct itself as being sustainable?” followed by corollaries “what discourses does it reproduce?” and “is Amazon engaging in greenwashing?” in mind. I argue that Amazon uses its discourse to conceal its preceding abuses and hypocritical behaviours by using language that situate them in an ecomodernist discourse that is vague and contradictory, refraining from acknowledging its culpability in perpetuating waste, pollution and carbon emissions.