Amazon’s chief sustainability officer said Tuesday the company doesn’t know how it will achieve its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

“We are still striving towards that target,” Kara Hurst said at an Axios event, adding later that she is “not going to sit here and say, ‘We know all the ways that we’re going to do this.’”

The admission was both frank and realistic. It’s also a bit disappointing. If Amazon doesn’t have a plan to decarbonize, then who does?

Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, with last year’s revenue up 12% to $717 billion — about the size of Ireland’s economy. Its rise is illustrative of how, as UN Secretary General António Guterres has pointed out, power has shifted from governments to a few corporations.

As power moves, responsibility follows. The question is, how much responsibility does Amazon bear?

“This isn’t a question of companies versus governments,” Hurst told TechCrunch in a written reply to questions after the event. “Tackling climate change at the scale it demands takes both, and it takes them working together.” She added, “Where we can lead, we do.”

It’s true that Amazon has not been sitting still. In her talk yesterday, Hurst pointed out that the company is “one of the largest purchasers of clean energy in the world for the last several years running” with 42 gigawatts in its portfolio. She also said that Amazon has reduced its carbon intensity, or how much pollution it generates per dollar of revenue, though that claim depends on the time frame.

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