Jeff Bezos sees space as a new ‘sacrifice zone’

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After Jeff Bezos’ brief escape from Earth yesterday, an idea came to the founder of retail giant Amazon. “We need to take all the heavy industry, all the polluting industries, and move it into space and keep Earth such a beautiful jewel of a planet,” he said in an interview with NBC News. “It will take decades to achieve this, but you have to get started. Big things start with small steps.”

Long before wealthy white men threw themselves into space, they approached whatever was the “boundary” at the time with dollar signs in their eyes and destruction in their wake.

Big things start with small steps, but this particular idea is a big step backwards. Space travel to manufacture things in zero gravity is a logistical nightmare with astronomical costs, to say the least. It is actually not a very innovative plan. Putting unwanted items somewhere that seems out of sight is a tiring idea. It’s the same old mentality that has dumped industrial waste on colonial peoples and neighborhoods of color for centuries.

Long before wealthy white men threw themselves into space, they approached whatever was the “boundary” at the time with dollar signs in their eyes and destruction in their wake. As a result today, the sacred land of the Shoshone and Paiute tribes is designated as a nuclear waste site in Nevada. A rural plot along the Mississippi River, where former slaves and their descendants built their homes, has become Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” after more than 150 refineries and petrochemical facilities moved in.

Environmental justice advocates often say that their lands and homes have become “sacrifice areas” for Western industry and development. As the founder of Amazon, Bezos is responsible for creating new “sacrifice areas” for the retail empire’s warehouses. It still needs to be tackled – maybe he can start from there, before creating any new ones in space?

Do you know what else is amazing? Pay taxes, treat workers with dignity, and assess an individual’s carbon footprint as floods and fires rage. For too long, frontline societies have been areas of sacrifice for the excesses of the rich. Our societies need real climate action now. https://t.co/C080jaO9U5

– GGJ (@ggjalliance) Jul 20, 2021

Speaking personally, Amazon now has a massive footprint in the region in which it originated, the “inland empire of California”. When I was a kid there, the place was still kind of the badlands of Los Angeles – a potential stopping point for residents of beach towns and cities on their way through the desert to Las Vegas. It was a place out of sight and out of Bezos’ minds in the world.

Now the area is increasingly dominated by retail warehouses that are close to people’s homes and are a magnet for polluting trucks and planes. The Inland Empire suffers from the worst air pollution in the country. Amazon is its largest private employer in the region, and it has faced pressure from residents and its employees to clean up its business.

“Every time I see one of these [Amazon] Trucks with a smiley face feel like they’re making fun of people,” says Adrian Martinez, a senior attorney with the nonprofit Earth Justice. Earthjustice is currently representing environmental groups that have sued the developer of a new air freight logistics hub in the Inland Empire that includes Amazon.

An Amazon Prime truck drives to the BNSF rail yard across the street from a soccer field and community center in San Bernardino, California. Photo: Justin Calma/The Verge

Both Amazon and Bezos have made lavish pledges to fight climate change. But the population represented by Martinez is still breathing from the pollution of the Amazon. “That’s what they are, they’re pledges. And I think I’d feel more confident seeing zero-emissions trucks roaming my customers’ neighborhoods,” Martinez says.

People like Bezos’ Martinez, Amazon, or other polluters aren’t asking companies to move pollution into space. They’re asking for things like more electric delivery cars on the road, and a much lighter lift from figuring out how to expand the industry into space. They are demanding that pollution stop in the first place, and they are calling on billionaires to stop engineering new “sacrifice zones”.

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