Alphabet Annual General Meeting

I’m Sam Gooch, an Alphabet employee, and a Technical Program Manager at Waymo. This shareholder resolution is of the utmost importance as it asks the critical question: how will Alphabet protect its employees’ life savings from the economic consequences of climate change?

Climate change poses material risk to retirement plan beneficiaries. A recent report found that Google employees could have made over $1 billion dollars more in returns had Google moved to decarbonize its retirement plan 10 years ago.

Almost two thirds of Google’s retirement plan assets are invested in the company's Vanguard default target date option, which is heavily exposed to high-carbon and deforestation-intensive industries. These investments contribute to climate change, create systemic portfolio risk, and are poor long-term investments, particularly for younger beneficiaries whose retirement benefits are likely to be harmed due to climate related financial losses. Over one thousand of my fellow Alphabet employees have signed a petition asking Alphabet’s 401k team to demand that Vanguard offer us better, climate-safe investment options that reduce exposure to these climate related financial risks.

Alphabet knows we must address climate risk head on. It's why employees are proud of our company’s climate goals, including a goal to become carbon negative by 2030. Yet how will we meet these goals if Alphabet is, at the same time, directing nearly $2 billion dollars of our employee 401(k) savings into fossil fuels and burning down the Amazon?

These investments undermine the company's climate goals, expose employee savings to financial risk, harm the company's reputation on climate, and could expose the company to litigation risk, as occurred recently.

Just as Alphabet has taken operational climate action, shareholders, and employees like me ask that Alphabet now begin to address its target date funds, and the billions of dollars of our employee retirement plan funds invested in fossil fuels. This will not only protect our company from the economic impacts of climate change but also protect our employees’ life savings.

Thank you.