Jeff Bezos pledges $10bn to tackle climate change

Amazon main Jeff Bezos has pledged $10bn (£7.7bn) to a new fund to deal with weather change, but activists have urged the world’s richest man to very first thoroughly clean up the e-commerce giant’s own lacklustre environmental record.

The e-commerce tycoon claimed the Bezos Earth Fund would “fund researchers, activists, NGOs – any effort that provides a real possibility to aid preserve and defend the normal earth”.

“Local climate change is the greatest menace to our earth,” claimed Bezos, whose is thought to be worthy of $130bn, claimed in an Instagram article to his 1.four million followers.

Nonetheless, Greenpeace United states of america claimed Amazon still experienced “significant weather problems,” inquiring: “Why won’t Bezos lead by cleansing up his own house?”

Hundreds of Amazon staff members previous thirty day period signed a web site criticising the on-line retail giant’s weather procedures and demanding it do a lot more to deal with weather change.

Amazon has been accused of producing large amounts of waste from the packaging it works by using for doorstep deliveries, as properly as for the greenhouse fuel emissions from huge motor vehicle fleets.

The company, which in December claimed its workforce experienced hit 750,000, has also been denounced in excess of its carbon footprint for the reason that of the higher energy use of its server farms for its lucrative cloud computing activities.

Amazon Employees for Local climate Justice, the group powering previous month’s criticism, responded to Mr Bezos’s pledge by urging the company to cease doing the job with oil and fuel corporations and swap its diesel vans for electrical autos.

“We applaud Jeff Bezos’ philanthropy, but 1 hand can’t give what the other is taking away,” the group claimed.

Mr Bezos, who maintained his status as the world’s richest particular person regardless of an high-priced divorce previous yr, claimed his new basis would commence issuing grants afterwards this yr: “I want to operate along with other individuals both of those to amplify recognized means and to investigate new means of combating the devastating influence of weather change on this earth we all share.”

Last September, he claimed Amazon would pledge to turn into carbon neutral by 2040 and vowed that the company would buy a hundred,000 electrical supply vans.

Fairly than make investments that the enterprise guru may well profit from, the fund would allocate grant money to tasks, The New York Situations documented. It is thought to be Mr Bezos’s greatest philanthropic commitment.

Mr Bezos has often clashed with Donald Trump, who frequently attacks weather change activists and a short while ago called them “perennial prophets of doom”.

Nonetheless, The New York Situations claimed that even if Mr Bezos spent the complete $10bn right away, he would still be the world’s richest particular person.

Last week, he reportedly agreed to acquire a Beverly Hills mansion designed in the 1930s by Hollywood motion picture mogul Jack Warner for a record $165m.