The richest man in the world today, Amazon Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jeff Bezos announced that he will donate a massive 10 billion US dollars for his Bezos Earth Fund to support the continuing war against global warming. He made the announcement through an Instagram post on his official personal account last week.
On his post, the billionaire mentioned that his 10 billion USD commitment will be called the Bezos Earth Fund, and will start with the 791 million USD in donations, to the 16 organizations that according to him, works on "innovative, ambitious, and needle-moving solutions."
The 16 grantees of the first batch include: The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, ClimateWorks Foundation, Dream Corps Green for All, Eden Reforestation Projects, Energy Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, NDN Collective, Rocky Mountain Institute, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Solutions Project, Union of Concerned Scientists, World Resources Institute, and the World Wildlife Fund.
ALSO READ: Nanotechnology Sees Developing Use to the Environment
One of the first batch's grantees, the Environmental Defense Fund, is a US based nonprofit environmental advocacy group that is known for providing solutions on different issues about the environment such as global warming, ecosystem restoration, problems on the oceans, and the human health. They established the purposive application of economics, law, and sound science to come up with solutions that would fit and work upon the issues they are dealing with
The group expressed their gratitude to the Amazon's CEO also through Instagram, with their post thanking the Bezos and labeling the Bezos Earth Fund as a proof of a "window of opportunity" for groups and initiatives to fight climate change and bring action to save the environment.
They also shared their action plan at the current state. The first one is to cut methane pollution from oil and gas by 45 percent in a span of five years (targeted 2025), wherein it would cater the same output of delivery as a 20 year benefit compared to a closing of a third of the world's coal plants.
The other one is the development of power nature-based climate solutions that are the same as integrating the profound power of forests to sustain life, with its agricultural soils and the ocean parts to capture and store a sufficient amount of carbon.
Bezos ain't a Stranger on Donating and Supporting Initiatives
The now world's richest man is remarkably familiar to initiatives and funding drives to help solve certain issues that surround the world today. From 2009 to 2017, Bezos has donated several times to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center for its continuing research on the cancer disease and its treatments. In 2013, he donated 500,000 USD Worldreader - a nonprofit organization founded by a former Amazon employee that provides free access to tons of digital books through e-readers and mobile phones.
He donated more as the years passed, on different and existing funding drives and initiatives by nonprofit organizations, as well as funding drives created by other multi-millionaires, such as Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures that has the aim of promoting emissions-free energy.
ALSO READ: New Social Media Site Parler Sees Surge of Users; Becomes US' Most Downloaded News App
