More than 1,500 Amazon employees are expected to walk out on Friday to protest climate change

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos.

• More than 1,500 Amazon employees are expected to walk out on Friday to protest climate change.
• The walkout is part of the youth-led Global Climate Strike, which will take place on September 20 and 27.
• Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the group behind the protest, is urging the company to commit to zero emissions by 2030, zero custom Amazon Web Services (AWS) contracts for fossil fuel companies to accelerate oil and gas extraction, and zero funding for climate-denying lobbyists and politicians.
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More than 1,500 Amazon employees are expected to walk out on Friday to protest climate change.

The walkout is part of the youth-led Global Climate Strike, which begins three days before the UN Climate Summit; the idea is to rally politicians and policymakers to take action to combat climate change.

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16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg will be leading the protest in New York on Friday. A second wave of protests is scheduled for September 27.

The Amazon protest is led by a group called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, who put forward their list of demands in a Medium post earlier this month.

The group is urging Amazon to commit to zero emissions by 2030, zero custom Amazon Web Services (AWS) contracts for fossil fuel companies to accelerate oil and gas extraction, and zero funding for climate-denying lobbyists and politicians.

A spokesperson for Amazon did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

"Young people all around the world have been striking from school to call attention to the climate crisis. We're answering their call to walk out because our role, as employees of one of the largest companies in the world, means we need to push for a climate plan that gets us to zero emissions company-wide by 2030," Bobby Gordon, a Finance Manager at Amazon in Seattle, said in a statement to the press, which was put together by the Amazon activist group.

"Amazon employees are deeply concerned about the climate crisis, and we see how it's impacting our lives," Danilo Quilaton, a product designer at Twitch, one of Amazon's subsidiary companies, added. "I've seen how rising sea levels and increased hurricane activity are eroding coastlines and devastating sea turtle habitats where I've grown up and lived all my life. The climate walkout is about showing Amazon that employees want to make climate justice central to our business and show real climate leadership."

Facebook, Google, and Microsoft employees are also expected to protest on Friday.