As climate change becomes an increasingly ‘hot topic’ in the news, many people, even those who in the past have proclaimed to not believe in or care about the issue, have been trying to figure out what they, as an individual can do to help this world wide problem. In the New York Times, Karen Weise wrote an article about the richest man alive, Jeff Bezos, and his developing philanthropy. In the past couple of days, Bezos has committed $10 billion to help the climate problem from America. He hoped to accelerate the goals of the Paris climate agreement so that America can be carbon neutral by 2040. He also pledged that Amazon, the company in which he is chief executive, would begin a switch to electric delivery trucks, reducing their carbon output immensely. While this is a huge step for Amazon, one of the top 200 carbon emitters in the world, their employees are not satisfied and want Bezos to do more.
While $10 billion is a significant amount of money, and hopefully will be able to make a large impact on the Earth’s state in regard to climate change, it really is such a small fraction compared to Bezos’ actual wealth. Because of this, many people still criticize him for not contributing more, but I feel that it is wiser to make sure this money is going to making real changes, otherwise it is being wasted. I also feel that because his company is such a bad influence on the state of Earth’s climate crisis, it is right that he should be making internal changes, and much of this philanthropy money can go straight into his own company so it becomes less harmful
This is now my third blogpost diving into what people are doing to help on an individual level to do their part to help climate change. I think it is really interesting to see the variety in what people are able to do. Obviously, not everyone has $10 billion to spend to help, but I think based on my last two blogs that is not the only way to help with climate change on the individual level. It is encouraging to me to see all of these stories coming out of people trying to stop carbon emissions and excess waste. Connecting back to my first blog, this is proof that it is not necessary to panic about climate change, because if everyone does what they can, from people running flower businesses to the richest man alive, perhaps we can tackle climate change.
Citation:
Weise, Karen. Jeff Bezos Commits $10 Billion to Address Climate Change, New York Times,
2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/technology/jeff-bezos-climate-change-earth-fund.html
