Jeff Bezos Announces First Beneficiaries of His $10 Billion Climate Fund (theverge.com) 70
Jeff Bezos has named 16 environmental organizations that will get the first chunk of his $10 billion fund for climate action. From a report: Collectively, they'll get $791 million from the richest man on Earth, although Bezos did not specify how much would go to each group. "I've spent the past several months learning from a group of incredibly smart people who've made it their life's work to fight climate change and its impact on communities around the world," Bezos said. "I'm inspired by what they're doing, and excited to help them scale." The Amazon CEO announced the creation of his personal $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund in February. His fund is equivalent to more than 7 percent of his net worth. It's also 10 times as much as philanthropic foundations gave globally in 2018 to efforts to slow climate change. For his first round of funding, Bezos chose to back a handful of legacy organizations with an established history of advocacy on behalf of the planet. His choice in recipients so far signals support for mainstream environmental groups rallying for new policies and research on climate change. The full list of grantees are a mix of big name NGOs, labs, reforestation and climate justice groups. They 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 World Wildlife Fund.
Solar Power Satelites (Score:3, Funny)
How about starting a solar power satellite company. Sell power to the world and kill off polluting power plants. If Blue Origin ever gets a spacecraft into orbit he can use them for launches otherwise I'm sure Musk would sell him launches on Starship.
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Interesting FP, but the numbers don't make sense. If we wanted to get serious about solar power, then we still have plenty of space on the surface to do it. No reason to go to orbit.
Since it's hard for me to believe that Bezos has actually turned over a new leaf, I think the numbers that got to him are different. He finally figured out that Blue Origin can't get him to Mars, so he's stuck here and has to worry about the planet after all. I just don't believe he has any sincerely charitable bones in his body
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He could send me maybe a couple million dollars and I would start recycling!!!
That might be the only way he'll reap a positive post on Slashdot.
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That's fair enough re: his charitability but there's no way a grown man of his age who isn't a total moron thinks he had a shot at going to Mars in this lifetime.
I'm not saying this because I think he's smart - I ascribe being in the right place at the right time as the most significant factor for capitalist success a lot more than I do intellectual or effort based merit - but thinking you'd be going to Mars in this lifetime is "stock boy at Best Buy" level of simplemindedness and detail obliviousness.
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ACK
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Bezos isn't going to Mars, Musk is. Bezos is going to the Moon and orbits near the Moon.
Space power for Earth is a cool idea from the 1970's which has probably passed its "sell by" date. Terrestrial solar and wind have blown past their cost targets and are now the cheapest sources worldwide. By the time space power gets up and running, the Earth will have already converted and it won't be needed.
Space power for space makes total sense. Solar flux up there is 4-10 times as high as places on the ground, so
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Amazon advertises and sells the most carbon polluting products. So now they will donate a tiny fraction to environmental products. HEY AMAZON you fucking morons, simply stop advertising and selling the most carbon polluting products. They generate the most pollution via their advertising driving over consumption and feeding polluting products into that cycle.
AMAZON FUCK OFF, stop it already, stop being the polluting cunts you are driving over consumption. Amazon working hard to get rid of 1% of the polluti
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Can't figure out what your point is supposed to be. Pretty sure you're wrong somewhere in there, but your motivation is so muddled that I can't figure out where to unwrap it. Are you trying to say that "phuck the earth" is a good thing?
Perhaps it will help to try to clarify my philosophy? One aspect that seems relevant here is that logarithmic growth is not sustainable over geologic time. You can easily calculate the results of extremely low growth rates for long periods of time, and you will see that the n
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How about starting a solar power satellite company. Sell power to the world and kill off polluting power plants. If Blue Origin ever gets a spacecraft into orbit he can use them for launches otherwise I'm sure Musk would sell him launches on Starship.
If you beam extra energy down to Earth, you're increasing global warming, not reducing it. Solar panels on earth just let us use that incident energy for something else before it goes into heating up the biosphere.
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Global electricity use is ~21 petawatt-hours / year. Yet, the rate of global heating from 1961 to 2011 is on the order of 1x 10^23 J [skepticalscience.com], or 133 TW, or 1,165 PWh per year. i.e. Our electricity use is 2% of the rate of heat energy increase from warming.
Replacing that 2% isn't gonna shift the needle on the heat. In fact it would be exactly the same if simply replaced and not added, because it means existing energy sources (nuclear,
Reference point (Score:2)
If you beam extra energy down to Earth, you're increasing global warming, not reducing it.
Nope. Depending on the considered energy mix, you could actually reducing global warming.
Yes, you are beam a tiny bit of energy. So you're directly adding a tiny bit to the energy balance of the planet.
But if you're beaming energy down to Earth, you're also competing with other ways to produce that energy on earth and that's where thing get's interesting.
There's a difference between beaming that energy down to France (which would have otherwise produced much of it from nuclear sources and a bit of renewable
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Where would that extra power come from? Any solar power satellite would be in geosynchronous orbit, in order to stay above the receiver. It would shade the area below it by the exact amount of power it produced. Where else would the power come from?
No, the only real argument against it is that it would be prohibitively expensive even if launch costs came down by an order of magnitude. The only way it would make sense would be if we develop an off world industrial base capable of using materials extracted fr
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> Any solar power satellite would be in geosynchronous orbit, in order to stay above the receiver.
Not correct. The beams are electronically steerable, so with several satellites and several ground antennas you can switch which ones you are feeding. The highest value for space power is meeting peak demands, so you can send it where it is needed most without lots of transmission lines
> The only way it would make sense would be if we develop an off world industrial base capable of using materials extra
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Huh, steerable beams? At orbital speeds? You sound like you know what you are talking about so I'll trust you on this. Still seems pretty incredible!
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Huh, steerable beams? At orbital speeds? You sound like you know what you are talking about so I'll trust you on this. Still seems pretty incredible!
Everything is relative. Never more so than when talking about space. To a satellite in geostationary orbit, the surface of the Earth isn't moving at all. Aiming a power beam at whatever part of the Earth you want is so easy it can be done mechanically. Sure, the satellite is moving very very fast, but the surface of the Earth is moving fast too. In geostationary orbit, the satellite moves exactly as fast as the Earth rotates underneath it. That's exactly why that orbital altitude is so useful. It's a
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Uh, I was responding to a fellow talking about powersats in low earth orbit. In Geostationary you don't need to steer beams at all. But he was talking about more than just steering the beams to stay on the rectenna, he was saying that in low earth orbit they could point at entirely different base station, to meet peak local demand. Pretty cool!
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Not necessarily. The ground antenna is mostly a metal mesh with little antennas spread over it. Depending on the albedo of the ground underneath, the beam energy may be cancelled by the antenna reflectivity.
When we (Boeing & NASA) were working on space power concepts, we intentionally limited the beam intensity to 300W/m^2 to avoid creating a death ray or stray energy outside the ground antenna fence line. That's 30% of noon solar flux at sea-level.
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How about starting a solar power satellite company.
I've played enough Sim City (2000) to know that's basically begging for a demonstration of Murphy's Law.
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By the time space power gets off the ground in a literal sense, the Earth will have already converted to solar and wind on the ground. They are already cheaper than fossil fuels in most cases, and still getting cheaper every year. That means the change-over is accelerating. World renewables this year is adding 60 nuclear plants worth of GWh output, and that is increasing year by year. Nuclear plant construction by comparison is about 15 GW/year.
This idea needs to die (Re:Solar Power Satelites) (Score:2)
There's YouTube videos of Elon Musk nearly blowing his top in anger over repeated questions on orbital solar power systems because of the silliness of the idea. He's done the math on this, and he knows that any such project is a waste of time and money.
Mr. Musk points out that there's a number of power conversions that need to happen to get solar power to useful work, and each step contains nontrivial losses.
Solar power -> electrical power -> RF power -> electrical power again -> useful work.
Th
Re:Why not earlier. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bezos announced this fund back in February, long before a change of administration was certain. You are really looking hard to find some way to make this about politics. If you wanted to do a better job of bringing politics into the discussion, bring up how the US leaves big change to the whims of billionaire philanthropy instead of just handling it in a more democratic fashion like in Europe.
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bring up how the US leaves big change to the whims of billionaire philanthropy instead of just handling it in a more democratic fashion like in Europe.
The billionaires do a much better job of allocating money than the government does.
Look at what Bezos is accomplishing with $10B.
Then consider that the American federal government spends that much every 8 hours while accomplishing little.
Re:Why not earlier. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at what Bezos is accomplishing with $10B. Then consider that the American federal government spends that much every 8 hours while accomplishing little.
Your bias against government action is showing. Bezos has done nothing with his $10B, this is the first time he announced where funds would go but they aren't spent yet. So comparing his impact on climate change with the government would come up sorely lacking. I'm glad he is doing this and I think he can be successful, but the very fact you think he has already done more with his money than the US government shows how incapable you are of even making that judgement.
Re:Why not earlier. (Score:4, Informative)
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[later] Damn it now he's given $50 billion, it's clearly too much money to merely be a token gesture of good will, but does he really have the heart to warrant acting so kindly? I doubt it, so he's not getting his goodwill from me!
People hate to see a public act of kindness; it makes them feel ungenerous. To those to whom caring earnestly about the environment is an alien con
Climate Justice (Score:3, Insightful)
Just what is a climate justice group? Is it a group that lives in the forest, uses no fossil fuels and eats only organic vegetables? If they practice any other lifestyle, they are hypocrites.
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Climate justice groups tend to be filled with jet setters constantly prancing the glob in their private jets preaching to the plebes about how much they need to change their lives or face the wrath of mother earth. Al Gore was a big proponent of that lifestyle for the ultra-wealthy, while also telling all us low-life middle-class folks to destroy their evil lives to protect the planet. Now there's an entire subset of the upper class that live this same life. Apparently preaching climate awareness while b
Re:Climate Justice (Score:4, Insightful)
The Right view: Climate Justice groups are using climate change as a vehicle to sell us international socialism.
Personally I think there's a bit of both. These are real issues and we can address them, but some people and groups will use them as an excuse to further their own agenda. And in general I am extremely wary of any group with the word "justice" in its name.
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When somebody introduces you to float point math and you figure out there are more numbers than 1 and zero, it's going to blow your fucking mind!
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Just what is a climate justice group? Is it a group that lives in the forest, uses no fossil fuels and eats only organic vegetables? If they practice any other lifestyle, they are hypocrites.
That has about as much logical sense as saying that people who want to stop widespread rape have only the option to sterilize themselves. It's also about as wrong and vile. However, I'm pretty sure you didn't come here to be convincing, or think anything through, but for the record, your stale, oft-repeated trope sucks.
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What they are advocating we collectively do is necessary: Get our net emissions to 50% in 10 years in to 0 (and negative in fat) within 30 years.
That's an ambitious goal and we're way behind on it and still trending up in emissions every (non-Covid) year.
So lead, follow, or get out of the way, which means stop uselessly sniping at those trying to help.
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Do you know what your hypothetical non-hypocritical hero looks like?
(sees a hit-and-run car crash)
HNH: "I'll never ride any wheels again and hope you do too! Carry on! What a hero I am!"
(walks in on a knife-point mugging)
HNH: "I'll never keep cutlery in my kitchen again! Carry on! What a hero I am!"
(walks in on a sexual assault)
HNH: "I'll just castrate myself and leave! Carry on! What a hero I am!"
Who's the real hypocrite here?
That's how obviously stupid and immoral this consumer-shaming trope is.
Buy that legacy, just like that Rockefeller feller (Score:2)
Oligarchs (Score:4, Insightful)
So Bezos, the wealthiest American Oligarch, decided to fund a bunch of "environmental" groups, all of which are involved in political lobbying and all of which are chaired by other globalists and wealthy oligarchs.
This should be no surprise to anyone.
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Why does this sound like large-scale money laundering?
Why am I not surprised. (Score:5, Funny)
The Union of Concerned Scientists and the Rocky Mountain Institute -- two of the groups most responsible for causing as much coal to be burned as there is, by doing everything in their power to prevent coal plants from being replaced by nuclear plants.
"The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice"? Never heard of them, but dang...
This isn't about "environment". This is about "More Woke Than Thou" pandering to the groups he expects to be running things in the next administration, in hopes of not getting Amazon broken up.
Re: Why am I not surprised. (Score:3)
False dichotomy. Solar has been viable since the 1970s but big oil fought it for decades. And they spent an awful lot of money doing it, too.
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Solar cost too much for utility power production until around 2010. Before that it was mostly limited to small applications.
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Solar repaid its energy investment in 7 years back in 1970, and the panels last 20-30 years. The energy cost is most of the cost of production. Solar has been viable for at least 40 years.
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If energy payback period is a metric that concerns you then consider that nuclear fission power has an energy payback period measured in weeks, not years.
A bit of searching the internet tells me that for much of Europe the energy payback period for common modern terrestrial solar panels is about 2 years. Searching the internet also tells me that a modern nuclear fission power plant will payback it's energy debt in about 6 weeks.
Solar has not been "viable" for 40 years. At least not for power on the grid.
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Solar is not base load, because it's intermittent. Same for wind.
Coal, hydroelectric, and nuclear are base load. They're constant power sources.
Hydro has the disadvantage that all the good locations are already in use, or are unavailable. What we've got now is all we're going to get.
I've found that few of the greenies have any comprehension whatsoever of what is meant by "base load". Or they pretend not to.
Show me energy storage on a scale needed for base load, and then, and only then, are solar and win
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This isn't about "environment". This is about "More Woke Than Thou" pandering to the groups he expects to be running things in the next administration, in hopes of not getting Amazon broken up.
Look, if you're anti-unions you can't very well buy votes by giving money to unions, can you. So you give money to these sorts of groups. They have every bit as much an agenda as any union and are well-versed in spending other people's money. So relax. MMT absolutely proooves that debt is irrelevant and of no consequence at all. Be grateful Bezos is not yet a politician. Their gifts will be paid for by your children. And their children. And their children.
Gender justice? (Score:1)
Just check the blurbs from their websites:
The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund:
The Equity Fund is strategically building power by:
Investing in the leadership and organizing of diverse communities (people of color, indigenous people, those most impacted by climate change)
Accelerating equitable climate solutions and engaging voters
ClimateWorks Foundation:
Fostering racial and social justice in pursuit of our mission
Commitments the ClimateWorks Foundation is making to deepen our efforts on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.
Dream Corps Green For All:
We fight for a world that is green for all, not green for some. We work at the intersection of the environmental, economic, and racial justice movements to advance solutions to poverty and pollution.
Energy Foundation:
Today, Energy Foundation is speaking up in solidarity against racism and violence because the urgency of recent events cannot be ignored. We are speaking up to acknowledge the advocates and organizations in our networks who are directly impacted by racial violence. We are speaking up in support of our Black and Brown colleagues and grantees.
The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, like the name alone isn't telling enough:
raises funds and makes grants to organizations that have historically lacked access to funding and are essential to making progress in addressing intersecting climate, gender, and racial crises in the U.S.
The Solutions Project:
In 2019, we doubled down on our commitment to feminine leadership and the diversity it nurtures with a pioneering 100% Commitment to Justice. We pledged that by 2020, we’d invest 95 percent of our resources in innovative frontline leadership of color, with at least 80 percent going to organizations led by women.
Okay, enough said. Climate change can be fought with clean energy production, massive carbon capture, and massive reforestation - but most of what I see in that list is extraneous matters at best, or ideologically loaded bullshit at worst.
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Improving the stake of non-economically dominant groups potentially (I'd wager dramatically) increases the political will and capital to tackle climate change. Your perspective on this is why Engineers are supposed to take social studies, because it's a purely technical view of something that has significant social dynamics.
We know *how* to fix climate change in broad strokes. The question is how do we convince those with their hands of the levers of power to do something about it. Empowering those who've t
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Culture is one of the three or four main areas -- often the three are summed up as The Good, The True, and The Beautiful, or Ethics, Science, and Art, where culture tends to be more in ethics and art.
Whilst maybe engineers don't know a lot about culture, and prefer the objective science areas, it is also the case that many people don't fathom culture and the vast complexity and intelligence needed to understand it as a human phenomenon.
The 60s started a new cultural movement, and that has continued, and the
funny that on slashdot... (Score:2, Funny)
It's funny to see that on slashdot, judging by the comments so far, no matter what they do:
Bezos, Musk, Gates and Cook can do no right;
Trump can do no wrong.
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Maybe he should start with things like (Score:3)
Environmentally "friendly" packaging instead of the 200 lbs of waste per 5oz delivery from Amazon. /s (it's not CVS level bad, but so much packaging for small things.)
Ensure when delivering overseas, to warehouses, or the last mile that every step either uses hydrogen or electrical vehicles.
Use the previous instead of jet cargo flights. It may take a bit longer, but jets can impact the environment pretty hard.
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Nature Conservancy is a really good group (Score:5, Insightful)
As first I was dubious he was giving money to anything that might have a real impact.
However one of the groups is the Nature Conservancy [nature.org], which is a really excellent organization - they preserve lands through one of the few sensible means, they buy them up and then steward them for responsible use.
Ownership of the land means that they can truly control what happens there, in a way not a lot of other arrangements can.
It gives me hope his other choices are as well vetted.
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I also suggest donating to the Access Fund if you're into rock climbing or hiking/camping. They do the same kind of work, buying up land with donations, as well as maintaining bolts and anchors for safe climbing areas.
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It will not have a real impact. It is far, far too little money. It may make him feel good about himself and allow him to forget how he made all that money, but that is about it. You cannot make this much money and have an overall positive contribution to things. At some point you have do to a lot more destruction and cause a lot more pain and suffering than what you get out in profit. Not that these psychos mind.
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Eden reforestation projects do great work too
He ain't serious (Score:3)
If he were serious about reducing global warming, he'd use that $10B to build a solar panel factory, and then dump the panels at cost. Giving money to groups to lobby the government to give away taxpayer's money is just woke signalling.
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Pushing for solar, good. Price-dumping, no good. It would drive other solar panel makers out of business.
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Richest Man on Earth (Score:2)
Correction: Bezos is the richest man who doesn't run an oil-producing country. Putin and several other oil country leaders are likely worth more.
Crazy idea (Score:3)
I have crazy idea. What if Jeff paid his fair share of taxes? What if Jeff paid warehouse employees a living wage?
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Nobody can get this rich by dealing fairly with others. Some of these rich cretins (see for example, BG) find when they grow older that they may want to contribute after all. Of course, on the Karma-side, these people are completely screwed because they can never make up for all the evil acts that gave them their money.
For those of us who are AWAKE, this is... (Score:1)
a pretty obvious sign that Jeffy has gone "woke"
It's the usual list of groups who want to return everything to nature (except of course for the wetlands where New Your City and Washington DC were built), think every man made thing is toxic (except for all the man made stuff THEY use), are opposed to nukes, and think their generation of humans is the first to discover sexuality (but at the same time are the first generation too stupid to figure out even the basics).
With the exception of the gender confusion,
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Ah, I was also just mentioning the 60s.
I'm always reminded of the Allan Savory TED talk where he says that in his earlier days as an ecologist, he and all the other experts were working on halting desertification in Africa, and they knew it was caused by grazing animals, so they shot 10,000 elephants. And one of the points he makes in his talk is that years later he realised that they'd been tragically wrong. That there's actually a whole dependency between soil and ruminants, and you just had to understand
Lacks a few zeros (Score:2)
Add, say, 6 of them at the end and we may get somewhere this can make a real difference.
Give another billion to Greta (Score:2)
or maybe she'll offer a 100-million bribe to the first world leader to do something actually serious about it.
I don't care. We should trust her. She's wiser than 1/2 the rest of us put together.