Jeff Bezos is throwing both his weight and his wealth to support the fight against climate change several months after employees of Amazon publicly pressured him and the company to do more to address this alarming issue.
On Monday, the Amazon CEO announced a new fund to support scientists, activists, and organizations working to lessen the impact of climate change. In an Instagram post, Bezos said he will commit $10 billion to start.
The initiative is called the Bezos Earth Fund and will start giving out grants this summer. The $10 billion commitment includes less than 8% of the world’s richest man’s estimated $130 billion net worth. Even so, it is one of of the biggest charitable pledges in history, according to a ranking by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, just ahead the $36 billion commitment by billionaire Warren Buffett in 2006 and an estimated $16.
4 billion pledge by Helen Walton, the late wife of Walmart (WMT) founder Sam Walton, in 2007.
Bezos said in the Instagram post:
“Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet.”
“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 has been under pressure from his employees who tells him to do more to protect the environment. Thousands of employees from Amazon signed a letter last May asking how the company planned to respond to climate change, and many of them performed a walkout in September asking for it to do more.
A day before the walkout, Amazon already announced a pledge to go carbon neutral by 2040, an estimated ten years before the deadline set out by the Paris climate agreement. The company also said it will send 100,000 electric delivery vans by 2024.
Bezos added:
“It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation-states, global organizations, and individuals.
The group that held last year’s Amazon Employee for Climate Justice just now. However, in a video, Bezos’ revealed his latest pledge by saying more needs to be done to address underlying causes like fossil fuel consumption.
“It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation-states, global organizations, and individuals.
The group that held last year’s Amazon Employee for Climate Justice just now. However, in a video, Bezos’ revealed his latest pledge by saying more needs to be done to address underlying causes like fossil fuel consumption.
The group of St. Martin’s said:
“We applaud Jeff Bezos’ philanthropy, but one hand cannot give what the other is taking away,” the group said in a statement Monday, calling on Amazon to stop working with oil and gas companies or funding think tanks that deny climate change.”
She added:
“Will Jeff Bezos shows us true leadership or will he continue to be complicit in the acceleration of the climate crisis, while supposedly trying to help?”
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