Many billionaires love to paint themselves as environmentalists or ‘eco warriors’ while they contribute to the painting of climate change.
-- Holly Young, 7th Grade
The human race has known climate change as an existential crisis since the 70s, but there is a very simple answer as to why people haven’t done anything drastic about it. This is the fact that climate change benefits the 1%.
ExxonMobil knew about global warming from 1977, 11 years before it became common knowledge, yet they denied that it existed for decades. This company is one of the world's largest oil and gas companies with a carbon footprint of 1,300 million metric tons. They have been spreading misinformation about climate change since the 80s. Now, they are trying to undo all that with pledges and transparency, but it doesn’t change that we are in this depth of crisis because of them and other companies, refusing to let go of their most precious value: money.
Let’s talk about Jeff Bezos. He is the founder of Amazon, a company with a carbon footprint of 51.17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, and creator of the Bezos Climate Fund. Despite the fact that their emissions rose 15% last year, he still claims that Amazon will be 100% based on renewable energy by 2025. And yes, you could theoretically blame the pandemic for this rise in emissions, but it’s not the virus’s fault that the company did not pay the expense of using electric vehicles or that they have over 80 jets all around the world to transport packages.
On paper it looks like Bezos is a huge climate activist, he has a climate fund and donates money, but he is doing it in such a way that he is pushing any blame off of himself that he can. He claims that Amazon is this trailblazing company that is working so hard on cutting down on their carbon footprint while criticizing other companies with the same problem so that it seems he is different. It’s a “not like the other billionaires” type of situation.
Elon Musk has made his billions by founding companies whose main goal is renewable scientific advancement. Despite this promise, however, he has collaborated with many companies with a huge carbon footprint
Earlier this month, Musk came under fire for attempting to “greenwash” or downplay Bitcoin’s climate credentials. Bitcoin has a carbon footprint that is the same size of some of the world’s biggest cities and relies heavily on mining to make their money. Both Musk and the company have attempted to diminish the problem that is Bitcoin’s carbon emissions, releasing many articles and papers, such as this memo published by Square.
So, despite having very eco-friendly companies, Musk still contributes to climate change by supporting businesses that go against what he apparently stands for and trying to diminish their impact on the environment.
The book How to Prevent a Climate Disaster was released earlier this year by Bill Gates. It touches on many topics, from different forms of renewable energy to trapping carbon emissions, but it was criticized for it’s very apparent theme of saviorism threaded throughout it, as well as some pretty reckless ideas.
One of the very first things that he touches on is nuclear energy and how it could substitute fossil fuels. There are huge movements started by survivors of nuclear accidents to ban the use of nuclear energy. It’s been 35 years since Chernobyl and people all over Easter Europe are still facing the consequences of this disaster, like radiation sickness and homelessness.
A very strong message throughout the entirety of the book is that the people with the resources should be actively involved in fixing the problem. Although that is an important message, it gets to the point where it sounds like only people with the resources can fix the problem, and that is entirely untrue.
The world needs to hold people accountable. Donating money isn’t enough anymore, they need to cut off all oil guzzling, carbon releasing ties and use renewable energy. Be the change the people need you to be!
This was a really interesting review on Bill Gates’ book:
ExxonMobil knew about global warming from 1977, 11 years before it became common knowledge, yet they denied that it existed for decades. This company is one of the world's largest oil and gas companies with a carbon footprint of 1,300 million metric tons. They have been spreading misinformation about climate change since the 80s. Now, they are trying to undo all that with pledges and transparency, but it doesn’t change that we are in this depth of crisis because of them and other companies, refusing to let go of their most precious value: money.
Let’s talk about Jeff Bezos. He is the founder of Amazon, a company with a carbon footprint of 51.17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, and creator of the Bezos Climate Fund. Despite the fact that their emissions rose 15% last year, he still claims that Amazon will be 100% based on renewable energy by 2025. And yes, you could theoretically blame the pandemic for this rise in emissions, but it’s not the virus’s fault that the company did not pay the expense of using electric vehicles or that they have over 80 jets all around the world to transport packages.
On paper it looks like Bezos is a huge climate activist, he has a climate fund and donates money, but he is doing it in such a way that he is pushing any blame off of himself that he can. He claims that Amazon is this trailblazing company that is working so hard on cutting down on their carbon footprint while criticizing other companies with the same problem so that it seems he is different. It’s a “not like the other billionaires” type of situation.
Elon Musk has made his billions by founding companies whose main goal is renewable scientific advancement. Despite this promise, however, he has collaborated with many companies with a huge carbon footprint
Earlier this month, Musk came under fire for attempting to “greenwash” or downplay Bitcoin’s climate credentials. Bitcoin has a carbon footprint that is the same size of some of the world’s biggest cities and relies heavily on mining to make their money. Both Musk and the company have attempted to diminish the problem that is Bitcoin’s carbon emissions, releasing many articles and papers, such as this memo published by Square.
So, despite having very eco-friendly companies, Musk still contributes to climate change by supporting businesses that go against what he apparently stands for and trying to diminish their impact on the environment.
The book How to Prevent a Climate Disaster was released earlier this year by Bill Gates. It touches on many topics, from different forms of renewable energy to trapping carbon emissions, but it was criticized for it’s very apparent theme of saviorism threaded throughout it, as well as some pretty reckless ideas.
One of the very first things that he touches on is nuclear energy and how it could substitute fossil fuels. There are huge movements started by survivors of nuclear accidents to ban the use of nuclear energy. It’s been 35 years since Chernobyl and people all over Easter Europe are still facing the consequences of this disaster, like radiation sickness and homelessness.
A very strong message throughout the entirety of the book is that the people with the resources should be actively involved in fixing the problem. Although that is an important message, it gets to the point where it sounds like only people with the resources can fix the problem, and that is entirely untrue.
The world needs to hold people accountable. Donating money isn’t enough anymore, they need to cut off all oil guzzling, carbon releasing ties and use renewable energy. Be the change the people need you to be!
This was a really interesting review on Bill Gates’ book:
