Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said Monday that he plans to spend $10 billion of his own fortune to help fight climate change.
Bezos, the world’s richest person, said in an Instagram post that he'll start giving grants this summer to scientists, activists and nonprofits working to protect Earth.
“I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change,” Bezos said in the post.
Amazon, the company Bezos runs, has an enormous carbon footprint. Last year, Amazon officials said the company would work to have 100% of its energy use come from solar panels and other renewable energy by 2030.
The online retailer relies on fossil fuels to power planes, trucks and vans in order to ship billions of items all around the world. Amazon workers in its Seattle headquarters have been vocal in criticizing some of the company’s practices, pushing it to do more to combat climate change.
Bezos said in the post Monday that he will call his new initiative the Bezos Earth Fund. An Amazon spokesman confirmed that Bezos will be using his own money for the fund.
Despite being among the richest people in the world, Bezos only recently became active in donating money to causes as other billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have done. In 2018, Bezos started another fund, committing $2 billion of his own money to open preschools in low-income neighbourhoods and give money to nonprofits that help homeless families.
Bezos, who founded Amazon 25 years ago, has a stake in the company that is worth more than $100 billion.
Comments
It’s his “own money”. Hmm I wonder about that, given the wages of his staff who actually DO THE WORK!
I find it interesting that this is a news item. While the rest of us give ‘our money’ away to good causes, it is the Billionaires who get recognized for their ‘generosity’. Not only that, he will receive a tax break, which will probably qualify as a business expense which is a better tax benefit than charitable donation receipts (that the ‘rest of us’ receive). if we taxed these guys in the first place, the money would already be there. But then, he wouldn’t receive the public acclaim that this could generate, would he?
Glad I don't have to repeat what the previous comment covered so succinctly and admirably.
My only addition to this is to spread the blame more broadly. Amazon only exists because Bezos perceived a great gaping maw in the pervasive human appetite for rampant consumption and moved, like a blitzkrieg, to fill that bottomless pit. His version of "liebensraum" is to turn goods distribution into a globally voracious hydra headed monster - consuming not only fossil fuels but human lives. Just another of the "too big to fail" brigade, marching to armageddon.
More cynically, no doubt those grants will be wrapped in ulterior motives. People like Bezos work hard at never missing an opportunity to prosper.