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Nov 08, 2024

Jeff Bezos says he’s a climate guy — why is he kissing the ring? - The Verge

By Justine Calma, a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home, a podcast

By Justine Calma, a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home, a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals.

Jeff Bezos might just be the biggest climate philanthropist out there, which is what makes his swift embrace of Donald Trump as the next US president particularly cringeworthy.

“Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love,” Bezos posted on X, hours after Trump declared victory.

The Amazon founder and chair launched his Bezos Earth Fund in 2020, committing $10 billion to funding action on climate change. The fund’s website describes it as “the largest philanthropic commitment ever to fight climate change and protect nature.”

“Earth is the one thing we all have in common — let’s protect it, together,” Bezos wrote on Instagram when he announced the fund. He stepped down from his post as Amazon CEO in 2021 to focus on the fund, The Washington Post, and his other “passions.” (Bezos reportedly killed The Washington Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.)

President-elect Trump, meanwhile, says rising sea levels — which make storms and flooding more dangerous thanks to climate change — simply mean “you’ll have more ocean front property.” On the campaign trail, he disparaged solutions like renewable energy — pushing misinformation like the myth that offshore wind farms are killing whales along US shorelines. He consistently downplays the risks posed by climate change, even as the US reels from disasters like Hurricane Helene that were supercharged by greenhouse gas emissions.

During his first term in office, Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, placed fossil fuel lobbyists in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency, and briefly pulled the US out of the international Paris agreement to stop climate change.

While the US dropped the ball on climate action at the federal level, local leaders and even the private sector attempted to fill in the gaps. During the last couple of years of Trump’s first term, a wave of big tech companies made commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — ostensibly in line with what’s needed to reach Paris climate agreement goals.

One of the early companies to do so was Amazon, which set a goal in 2019 of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. Fast-forward to 2023, and the company still produced 34 percent more carbon pollution than it did when it made its first climate pledge — although its emissions have started to come back down slightly, according to Amazon’s latest sustainability report.

Since its inception, the Bezos Earth Fund has given $2 billion in grants to a wide array of projects — from protecting forests to tracking planet-heating methane pollution by satellite. To be sure, the fund has faced some criticism over the years about Amazon’s own pollution and over how effective and equitable some of the programs it supports have been. Over time, though, the fund has started to funnel more money into grassroots groups working to ensure that there are more diverse voices being heard when it comes to finding solutions. (The Bezos Earth Fund didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from The Verge.)

Under another Trump presidency, locally led climate action and philanthropy become even more crucial again. Upon stepping back into office, Trump is expected to introduce a landslide of new policies that would slow the transition to cleaner energy needed to keep climate disasters from growing much worse.

Notably, he said he’d rescind unspent funds from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that set aside $369 billion for energy efficiency initiatives and the domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles and clean energy technologies. The Inflation Reduction Act alone is projected to slash greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40 percent from 2005 levels by the end of the decade — bringing the US close to reaching goals President Joe Biden set upon recommitting the US to the Paris climate agreement.

Another Trump presidency, on the other hand, would likely increase US greenhouse gas emissions by 4 billion metric tons compared to Biden’s plans, according to a Carbon Brief analysis published before Harris became the Democratic candidate. Trump has also said that he’d take the US out of the Paris accord again.

Bezos certainly isn’t the only tech mogul to kiss the ring since Trump’s win at the polls this week. Elon Musk has been one of Trump’s most influential hype men. Apple’s Tim Cook, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella have all extended their congratulations, to name a few. The president-elect has responded well to flattery in the past, after all — offering Musk his own “efficiency” task force to run. And Trump frequently threatens his critics with retribution.

All the bromance could really just be a strategic play on the part of Bezos and other billionaires to protect their bottom lines. But that list represents a lot of money and power that could either help keep climate goals alive or fall in line behind a president who told Musk in August that “the biggest threat is nuclear warming … To me, the biggest problem is not climate change.”

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