Amazon Founder Funds $10 Billion Bezos Earth Fund To Fight Climate Change
/From his top spot as the world’s richest person, Jeff Bezos is known as the anti-philanthropy CEO. Pay no corporate taxes, share no riches has defined the relationship between Bezos and the global citizens who buy his products. The world is his for the taking as the consummate innovator and unfettered capitalist. . People like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have long spent vast sums of their wealth trying to solve the world’s problems.
On Monday Jeff Bezos announced the formation of the Bezos Earth Fund, capitalized with $10 billion of his own personal fortune dedicated to fighting climate change. The fund will begin giving out grants this summer to “support scientists, activists, NGOs—any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world,” Bezos wrote in an 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 on this planet we all share,” the Amazon CEO said in a statement. “…We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations and individuals.”
Many Amazon employees immediately responded with criticism that the amount isn’t nearly enough to undo all the environmental harms created the the tech giant. VICE writes that the move comes after months of protests from employees and Amazon’s own threats to fire employees for speaking out against Amazon’s environmental damage and lack of truly strategic climate policy.
"The international scientific community is very clear: burning the oil in wells that oil companies already have developed means we can't save our planet from climate catastrophe," said Amazon Employees for Climate Justice in a press statement. "We applaud Jeff Bezos' philanthropy, but one hand cannot give what the other is taking away."
According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Bezos Earth Fund is the third largest charitable commitment ever. In 2006 Warren Buffett pledged to gradually give away all of his Berkshire Hathaway holdings to charity — most often the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s estimated that Buffett has since donated $36 billion. Helen Walton, the late wife of Walmart founder Sam Walton, made a similar pledge in 2007 and has donated $16.4 billion.