Jeff Bezos commits $10 billion to solve the climate emergency

In an Instagram post, Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and the wealthiest man in the world, announced that he would commit a staggering $10 billion to fight climate change.

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Today, I’m thrilled to announce I am launching the Bezos Earth Fund.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ 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. This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world. We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals. ⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ I’m committing $10 billion to start and will begin issuing grants this summer. Earth is the one thing we all have in common — let’s protect it, together.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ – Jeff

A post shared by Jeff Bezos (@jeffbezos) on Feb 17, 2020 at 10:00am PST

Many journalists chastized Bezos when he offered just $690,000 to help Australia recover from its worst bushfires in recorded history. Writing for Wired, Natasha Bernel mocked Bezos’s environmental contribution, which she found was “less than he made every five minutes in 2018, based on shares and personal wealth of around $114 billion.”

Now, a month later, Bezos is showing that he is actually taking environmental disasters and the looming threat of climate change very seriously.

“Earth is the one thing we all have in common,” he wrote. “Let’s protect it, together.”

According to Bezos, most of this money will be used to help researchers, NGOs, and “any effort that offers a real possibility” to preserve the environment and mitigate the climate emergency.

The grants will be exclusively awarded in academia and charity. The fund will not engage in investments in the private sector.

There are still few details floating around besides Bezos’s Instagram post, but what we know for sure is that the first grants will be issued this summer. Stay tuned for more info about how to access the fund as more information surfaces.

Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon, which for the first time in its history released a carbon footprint report. According to the document, the trillion-dollar company emitted 44.4 million metric tons of CO2 in 2018, which is about 1% of the US’ national footprint. Amazon wants to become carbon neutral by 2040.