Over the last few months, thousands of people
have taken to the streets of some of the world's biggest
cities to protest against what they see as a lack of action
to tackle climate change.
Friday, September 20, looks set to be
one of the biggest of these events with tens of thousands
of workers across the world saying they
will take part in what they're calling a global climate
strike.
This is posing a particular problem
for some of the world's biggest technology companies,
many of whose workers say they are concerned
not only about climate change but also their own employers'
lack of action on this front.
Some 1,400 Amazon employees, for example,
say that they are going to walk out of the company's Seattle
headquarters.
Others from Facebook, Google and from Microsoft
are also planning to join the protests.
Some technology companies have tried to get out ahead
of these protests by announcing their own measures to tackle
climate change.
The day before the strike, Jeff Bezos
announced that Amazon would be entirely powered
by renewable energy by 2030 and would have net zero carbon
emissions by 2040.
Google, meanwhile, has said it will
increase its investment in renewable energy
by 40 per cent.
Many of these pledges however do not
go as far as some of the employees have demanded.
Jeff Bezos, for example, explicitly
ruled out one of his employee's demands
which was that Amazon should stop working with oil and gas
companies.
The problem is for many of these technology companies
that they are no longer small startups which
can afford to have mission statements like "Do no evil."
Instead they are multinational conglomerates with shareholder
demands to fulfil.
Meanwhile they still have young, dynamic, and politically
aware workforces which are beginning
to use their muscle against their bosses' wishes.
The uneasy truce between these two groups of people
is beginning to fray.