Amazon’s Sustainability Chief: ‘We Have to Act Now’ on Climate

Companies that sign onto Amazon.com Inc.’s pact to eliminate carbon emissions often have to take a leap of faith that they’ll find ways to make their operations more sustainable, even if the path isn’t obvious, said Kara Hurst, the tech giant’s sustainability chief.

“It’s a huge commitment to sign on,” Hurst said at the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle. She leads Amazon’s sustainability work. The Amazon-backed Climate Pledge asks signatories to commit to reporting their carbon emissions and eliminating them by 2040. “Some of it is a bit of jumping into the fray and saying, ‘We know some of how we’re going to get there, and also we need to partner and figure out some of the ways in which we don’t necessarily know.’”