Jeff Bezos Says Traveling To Space Changed How He Thinks About Nature (cnbc.com) 94
Jeff Bezos on Monday pledged to give away $1 billion in grants this year with a focus on conservation efforts. "Nature is our life support system and it's fragile," Bezos said Monday at an event in New York City. "I was reminded of this just this July when I went into space with Blue Origin. I'd heard that seeing the Earth from space changes one's point of view of the world, but I was not prepared for just how much that would be true." CNBC reports: The pledge comes through the Bezos Earth Fund, which the Amazon founder and chairman started in 2020 to execute his $10 billion commitment to fight climate change. The Bezos Earth Fund has pledged to donate about $1 billion a year to activists, scientists and other groups working to address the globe's climate crisis, with a goal of spending $10 billion by 2030. Following this year's focus on conservation, the fund said that in the coming years it intends to support efforts around landscape restoration and food system transportation.
The latest round of grants will be used to "create, expand, manage and monitor protected and conserved areas," the Bezos Earth Fund said in a release. To start, the fund plans to focus on Central Africa's Congo Basin, the tropical Andes region and the tropical Pacific Ocean, all of which are key areas for biodiversity and carbon stocks, or the amount of carbon stored in things such as vegetation, soils and oceans. "The natural world is not better today than it was 500 years ago, when we enjoyed unspoiled forests, clean rivers and the pristine air of the pre-industrial age," Bezos said in a statement. "We can and must reverse this anomaly." It is not yet known which organizations will receive the grants. The gifts will be prioritized in areas where local communities and Indigenous peoples are a main focus of conservation programs, among other considerations, the Bezos Earth Fund said.
The latest round of grants will be used to "create, expand, manage and monitor protected and conserved areas," the Bezos Earth Fund said in a release. To start, the fund plans to focus on Central Africa's Congo Basin, the tropical Andes region and the tropical Pacific Ocean, all of which are key areas for biodiversity and carbon stocks, or the amount of carbon stored in things such as vegetation, soils and oceans. "The natural world is not better today than it was 500 years ago, when we enjoyed unspoiled forests, clean rivers and the pristine air of the pre-industrial age," Bezos said in a statement. "We can and must reverse this anomaly." It is not yet known which organizations will receive the grants. The gifts will be prioritized in areas where local communities and Indigenous peoples are a main focus of conservation programs, among other considerations, the Bezos Earth Fund said.
Stubborn (Score:3, Interesting)
Too cocky to accept the knowledge of a complete community who spend their lives to study the planet and humankind's influence on it. Need to spend an incredible amount of $$ and go see for yourself.
Re:Stubborn (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: Stubborn (Score:1)
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Honestly?
What a cynical world you live in that you think traveling to space wouldn't impact your world view.
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"What a cynical world you live in that you think traveling to space wouldn't impact your world view."
Probably some kind of impact, but not necessarily cynical to think otherwise. Bezos said "Nature is our life support system and it's fragile...", I'm sure some people already know the earth is that fragile, or even more so.
Possibilities.
The impact could also make some people more cynical, seeing the astronomical amount of effort, energy and waste behind sending a little fragile rocket into space with basical
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Too cocky to accept the knowledge of a complete community who spend their lives to study the planet and humankind's influence on it. Need to spend an incredible amount of $$ and go see for yourself.
The arrogance of the powerful. At least the expensive version to create insight worked.
Imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
He has committed to donate $1B after a 10-minute trip to space.
Not that it's not a great commitment, but imagine how many wonderful things he might decide to do if he spent three days orbiting Earth!
Re: Imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Or indeed if he stayed up there forever.
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He has committed to donate $1B after a 10-minute trip to space.
Barely into Space. They reportedly reached an altitude of 351,000 feet -- which is 106 km (57.8 nautical miles, 66.4 miles).
Wikipedia notes [wikipedia.org]:
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), an international record-keeping body for aeronautics, defines the Kármán line as space beginning 100 kilometres (54 nautical miles; 62 miles; 330,000 feet) above Earth's mean sea level.
Though Google notes that the U.S. military, FAA and NASA are a little more generous...
The U.S. military, the Federal Aviation Administration, and NASA all set the boundary of space at 80km (43 nautical miles; 49.7 miles; 262,467 feet) above ground.
Re: Imagine... (Score:2)
I think he now needs a Near-Death Experience, preferably one of those in which the brain generates a view of Hell, rather than the more gentle ones. Just think of what he'd do if he saw a fiery judge beginning to list all the injustices his business decisions have caused, and are still causing? And that he's being given one chance to fix all of it before coming back for the final judgment?
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Visiting Barnes & Noble?
Re: Imagine... (Score:1)
I think he now needs a Near-Death Experience, preferably one of those in which the brain generates a view of Hell, rather than the more gentle ones.
If that's a thing, it's your thing.
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If that's a thing, it's your thing.
It's just the brain firing random signals, but people who go through that sometimes change for the better, so there's that. :-)
Jeff Who ? (Score:2)
Jeff Who ?
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Have you pledged that then ?
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He probably expects a good ROI on that $1bn. He's basically selling sub-orbital trips as some kind of life changing experience for rich arseholes.
Stop using the courts instead of engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
Bezos can say all the pretty words he gets written for him, but his pathetic actions speak way louder.
His rocket can't fly to orbit and the courts are not the place to try and slow down others who can.
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Plus I suspect he'd know full well the easiest way to get this shit off the ground would be to buy up all those solar and wind patents that drastically ratchet up the price of renewable power and make em free. Theres right there something that could accelerate the race to zero emissions and STILL have another $9bil to spend on buying the amazon rainforest and turning it into a nature reserve and gifting it to the local indigenous to reforest and look after, possibly shaving another decade worth of getting t
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And perhaps maybe spend a bit of that on making those giant power sucking datacenters zero carbon somehow.
(and giving the staff a payrise)
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Re: Stop using the courts instead of engineering (Score:1)
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So, he wants to do business there? (Score:2)
Re: So, he wants to do business there? (Score:2)
A major motivation for philanthrocapitalism is that the bookkeeper says it is a good idea. But i'm sure there is a sincere element that capitalist drive in a well chosen direction benefits many.
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I kept it vague with 'many' because it's a combination of public opinion and the rich guy who decides what it means. The sector is typically one which can be described as a larger scale of common good, be it a large community, countries , humanity, biosphere. The decisionmaking power is highly centralized with wealthy people and they have a strong emphasis on self interest, even if in this case it may be broader interest.
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To be fair, most (if not all) astronauts state they view the world holistically after going to space (don't know if his own adventures qualify, but give him benefit of the doubt).
Don't know if paying indulgences is the best manifestation of this new world view. Let's see how it translates in other areas before poo-pooing him.
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It took him that much to realize it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of us take a hike in the forest to witness the damage done by human activities. But apparently rich fucks are so out of touch with the real world in their shielded rich man's world that they have to spend billions and ride their own toy firecracker up into the upper atmosphere (no, it's not space...) to realize the same thing.
Either that or Bezos just spewed out some platitude to get a bit more press out of his stunt.
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Either that or Bezos just spewed out some platitude to get a bit more press out of his stunt.
That rich fuck launches himself into kinda-space for a few minutes, in a race between billionaires mere days apart...
...and then Elon says "Hold my battery" and sends a crew of civilians to take a 3-day ride, sans astronauts.
Of course Bezos needed to do something. World's richest man looks rather pathetic right now for his half-assed space efforts.
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Re:It took him that much to realize it? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's pretty important to stay focused on the hate, not that he's donating $10bn toward some pretty important causes.
(shrug)
It's the same thing I tell my kids about climate change.
If it's REALLY a crisis, if it's REALLY as bad and urgent as people insist, and if your goal is REALLY about solving it and not about virtue signaling...then why the demonization of people who disagree? How obvious is it that putting people on the defensive, attacking them, belittling them, calling them stupid, etc is NOT going to get them ever to come around to your side, or at least be willing to be open minded about it?
When something is an actual crisis, nobody has TIME to point fingers. Certainly not to brawl even with the people who were directly to blame. All that shit can get sorted later.
If my HOUSE is on fire, I'm not going to have an argument about who left the iron on. Even if I knew she did it, and I'd warned her 100 times about it, I'm certainly not going to spend my time spitting venom at my wife but I'd be fighting the fire.
Re: It took him that much to realize it? (Score:2)
So true !
And for quite a lot of topics.
ðY'ðY
Btw, why dont emojis work here ? I find I am no longer able to think up words to express emotions that I usually signal with emojis :(
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Because slashdot, as a cutting-edge high tech site... ... curiously has a comment system unchanged since what, 1998?
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Imagine if Jeff Bezos thought about anything ... (Score:2)
... beyond his immediate context.
Who knows? He might be able to think that transitioning the world to sustainable [anything]?
Transport anyone? Might be something worth doing ... or you could just get invovled in energy generally.
Wow, he's a real competitor in the global thinker space. Ah, no .. wait.
I don't care about his motives (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yep, I'm totally with you here. I have been really struggling as to whether the space race is a good thing. But if we can send all the most powerful people up there to see the same thing, if that's what it takes to change their minds.... it can't happen too soon.
Let's get them up there, as quickly as possible.
Send 'Em To Space (Score:2)
Re:I don't care about his motives (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is a broken system. Shuffling money around within that broken system while keeping it going doesn't change our trajectory.
He could change the system, but his money comes from locking people into a cycle of dependency (his customers, suppliers, and employees), creating a culture of craving and waste, extracting wealth from them, capturing regulatory agencies to maintain that capture, and extracting resources from nature and turning them into landfill waste and worse.
He's distracting us from the problem, which includes his business model and his character, if that word applies to him.
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His company is built entirely on exploitative labor practices and endless, infinite consumerism. Bezos giving $10 billion of that profit back to the world after it's been paved with Amazon Warehouses does not mean he deserves a medal.
He should have stayed in near-space.
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That's Rich. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let me get this straight.
Man who dedicated his business to consume and destroy the competition suddenly develops a conscience about fragility after spending 15 minutes in "space", and decides to throw some wallet lint at it.
That story, is richer than he is.
Re: That's Rich. (Score:1)
Hey, it worked for Bill Gates. He stepped on the oxygen supply of the computer industry and retarded its growth for over a decade
Everything that can be said about the little creep and that's what you came up with?? Microsoft inadvertently created an entire ecosystem - an ecosystem that's outgrown tthe need for them (the best part).
Re: That's Rich. (Score:2)
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Hey, it worked for Bill Gates. He stepped on the oxygen supply of the computer industry and retarded its growth for over a decade and people love him.
People love his product. They don't love him, and you brought up just one example of why.
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More like (Score:5, Insightful)
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He felt the tide of public opinion was turning against these billionaire space trill seekers, so decided to do PR.
Becomes the world's richest man because of a global pandemic, and decides to take himself into space as a corporate bonus.
Go figure the tide of public opinion (from those that are still alive that is) turned against him. A tobacco executive is more respected these days; you at least know their business motive.
Re:More like (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called: Greenwash PR.
When you sit in front of the congressional committee, you roll it out, all the great stuff you're doing for the planet. That Justice Dept litigation over monopolistic behavior and evil deeds? Please look the other way. Pretty please.
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That Justice Dept litigation over monopolistic behavior and evil deeds? Please look the other way. Pretty please.
You had me till this, it’s not even remotely realistic. Of course they wouldn’t look the other way because of a few “Plz”. You gotta make some serious under the table “legalish” transactions first. Maybe buy a few million copies of a shitty bio ghost written by an abused and unpaid intern that gets no credit. Have you never billionared before?
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That's the psyche behind some PR/legal minion's process, and why it fails. We all know it's BS. But look, look Mr/Ms CongressPerson! We do so much good in the world! Forget about our fleet of diesel Sprinters, the packaging waste, our labor violation history, the tens of thousands of mom-and-pops that we closed, the Main Streets of small towns across the country now abandoned! Green! Green!
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Unlikely.
Why would Bezos care what you, or I, or anyone else thinks? He doesn't.
If he would really be serious about nature, (Score:5, Insightful)
Switching sources would show he is serious about nature. That billion is just another PR campaign for Bezos.
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My thought exactly, instead of giving x dollars away, he could make an effort where he has real power, his own company and set guidelines for his enterprise to not pollute or destroy the world in the first place. He might actually make more money doing that, plus getting better pr.
How I imagine he'll do it (Score:3)
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Imagine the impact... (Score:3)
...of Amazon clearly labeling when a product off marketplace would come in from outside the country so people could make beter choices.
I buy on Amazon Germany.... and so often I notice too late that the seller is Chinese...
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I don't know if this is true in Germany, but in the US, I click the checkbox for Prime Delivery (top left on any search), and that limits to the things they can get to my house in a relative short time, and cuts out all the foreign sourced items.
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Generally, that would mean it wouldn't be being shipped from China, which was what I was replying to, but go ahead and ignore the whole thread to try and get a dig in. I guess that is why you posted as AC?
PAY MORE TAX (Score:5, Insightful)
YOU FUCKER.
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I swear to god these people have alts... literally this "place for nerds" has become a total hate-mongering internet clique.
Even $10B Won't Buy Enough "Activists" (Score:1)
It doesn't matter to me what he spends his well-earned money on, but as just an engineer to an entrepreneur, my advice would be to not waste your money funding "activists". All those people know how to do is jawbone, they are pretty much useless for actually getting things done. You want to make a difference, fund the people who actually study and make
Really? (Score:3)
Distribution of funds (Score:2)
To start, the fund plans to focus on Central Africa's Congo Basin, the tropical Andes region and the tropical Pacific Ocean,
all of which have a low value as Amazon markets.
Do we need to send 7 billion people into space... (Score:2)
He didn't go to space. (Score:1)
He popped up in the atmosphere a ways and dropped back down. By no measure did he go to space. Him repeating it excitedly doesn't make it true.
As for his interests in nature? PR bullshit. Him dropping a billion towards that is probably less impactful on his life than the few thousand a year my wife and I throw at animal shelters and local conservation projects.
I think Bezos needs to take a step back, concentrate on NOT being a giant asshole 100% of the time, and maybe sort himself out a bit. As it is h
If the sight of Earth from space is so powerful (Score:2)
No it didn't (Score:2, Troll)
"Jeff Bezos Says Traveling To Space Changed How He Thinks About Nature"
a) No it didn't.
b) If it did, the thought was probably, "How can I get rid of all that nature shit to make room for more Amazon warehouses?"
We've seen this trick tried before. (Score:2)
Bezos traveled to space? (Score:1)
most of us (Score:2)
Crap in space (Score:2)
Having a crap in space will do that. By the way, who here among us has never shit in the woods?
Amazing changes! (Score:2)
I hear he now pays 70 percent income tax on all earnings including carried interest above $5 million and 50 percent capital gains tax.
Oh.
Wait.
So, nothing, then?
I believe his exact words were: (Score:2)
Nuke It From Orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Local wealthy man denies being hypocrite (Score:1)
Changed View (Score:1)
Ants (Score:2)
"Wow... they all look like tiny ants from up here."
I'm happy for him. (Score:1)
Looks like he finally took the first step on the path towards becoming a human.
Planet Bezos will miss him.
(I'm actuallly happy for him. Yes, life is more than one's own little existence. By caring for others, they *become* part of your existence.)
Productivity at Amazon (Score:2)
Would he not have also picked up some ideas that'd replace piss bottles as a means of keeping your job? How about diapers for warehouse workers? They can fill them all day long, emptying them when they're off the clock. A house pipe outside would allow workers to wash off their waste without requiring expensive shower facilities.