Amazon tries to make the climate its Prime directive

Amazon last year committed to zeroing out its carbon footprint by 2040, or eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions caused by its activities, but concedes there isn’t a clear path to that zero-carbon goal today. — AFP

The vast Illinois factory floor that will produce electric delivery vans for Amazon.com Inc is starting to fill up. Battery and chassis assembly here. Tire storage there. A titanic, three-story metal press.

Sometime next year, the plant’s workers will complete the first van. A decade later, if all goes according to plan, van No.100,000 will roll off the line, completing the biggest electric vehicle purchase in history. By the time Amazon has all these zero-emission vehicles on the road, around 2030, it will eliminate an estimated four million metric tons of CO2 now belched out each year by gasoline-powered vans and trucks.