Jeff Bezos Pledges $10 Billion To Fight Climate Change

Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has pledged a significant amount of money to help fight what he calls is “biggest threat to our planet”, namely climate change.

He pledged $10 billion and the money will be used to support the work of scientists, activists, and non-governmental organisations “to help preserve and protect the natural world.”

Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s richest men. Last month he was at the centre of headlines when it was alleged that he had his phone hacked by officials from Saudi Arabia.

Bezos Earth Fund

It should be noted that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, which has been critical of the Saudi regime.

But that controversy aside, Bezos revealed the climate fund donation on an Instagram post on Monday, with the launch of the ‘Bezos Earth Fund.⁣⁣⁣’

“Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,” wrote Bezos. “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share.”

“This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs – any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world,” he wrote. “We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organisations, and individuals. ⁣⁣”

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“I’m committing $10 billion to start and will begin issuing grants this summer,” he wrote. “Earth is the one thing we all have in common – let’s protect it, together.⁣⁣⁣”

Environmental criticism

The creation of the Bezos Earth Fund comes after Amazon has been criticised (most notably by Greenpeace) over the years for its hefty usage of packaging materials, as well as the emissions from its data centre and cloud (AWS) operations.

Amazon is also a big user of fossil fuels for its planes, lorries and vans to ship billions of items all around the world.

That said, the firm is investing heavily in drone technology, and Amazon will also purchase 100,000 electric delivery vans from a start-up that Amazon has invested in.

And Amazon did last year pledge to have 100 percent of its energy use sourced from solar panels and other renewable energy by 2030.

That said, Microsoft has gone one better when it promised to remove “all of the carbon” from the environment that it emitted ever since Redmond was founded back in 1975.

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