Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took to Instagram on Monday to announce his latest endeavor, the Bezos Earth Fund. The billionaire promised to commit $10 billion to fight climate change, as reported by The New York Times. According to TechCrunch, this $10 billion comes from his “personal wealth.”
“It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals,” Bezos wrote in reference to climate change on his Instagram post.
According to his Instagram post, the Bezos Earth Fund will fund non-government organizations, activists, and scientists in research efforts to combat climate change. The fund will start issuing grants in summer 2020, and it’s not yet clear who will be funded.
Bezos has previously discussed how important it is that we try to combat climate change. For example, in 2019, Amazon revealed a climate pledge that commits to achieving Paris Agreement goals a decade before the deadline, including becoming carbon neutral by 2040. It also promises that Amazon will use 100% renewable energy by 2030. The company also wants to use 100,00 electric cars for deliveries. The company also promised to launch a fund for restoring wetlands and forests, pledging $100 million for that effort alone.
“You can go back 10 years or 20 years and there were people who just did not acknowledge that climate change is real,” Bezos said at the Smbhav summit in January, as reported by CNBC. “Anybody today who is not acknowledging that climate change is real—that we humans are affecting this planet in a very significant and dangerous way—those people are not being reasonable.”
Mind you, thousands of brave Amazon employees have also walked off the job to protest the company’s lack of action on climate change just last year.
In the past, Bezos launched the Day One Fund for childhood education, homelessness, and affordable housing, pledging $2 billion for the initiative. This climate action pledge, however, is separate from the Day One Fund.
“Jeff’s passion and this extraordinary personal contribution to the fight against climate change are going to have a huge impact,” a spokesperson for Amazon wrote in an emailed statement to BuzzFeed News. Imagine what huge impact might occur if all billionaires (and their big companies) made the extraordinary contribution of paying more in taxes? Some estimate that under Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax plan, Bezos would pay more than $6 billion a year in taxes. Given that Bezos reportedly spent more on a new house than Amazon paid so far in U.S. federal income tax for 2019, that seems pretty feasible.
Update: The Amazon Employees For Climate Justice group has tweeted out the following statement.
