Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and the richest man in the world, announced on his Instagram account on Monday the launch of the Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate change. Jeff Bezos said he personally endowed the fund with $ 10 billion (9.8 billion francs) to begin with.
The first grants from researchers, activists and NGOs will be awarded this summer. This decision comes 20 days after 300 Amazon employees signed criticism of their group, particularly regarding its environmental policy.
The group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) pushes the company to go further in its plan of mitigation announced great reinforcement of publicity in September, when Jeff Bezos launched a campaign which must make it possible to fill – with 10 years in advance – the climate commitments of the Paris Agreement.
As employees, here is our statement to Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund announcement (as an image): pic.twitter.com/opgcCpa67D– Amazon Employees For Climate Justice (@AMZNforClimate) February 17, 2020
Amazon, which has built its success on a logistic road transport network standard to ensure increasingly fast deliveries, is a major producer of greenhouse gases, the main culprits of climate change.
Carbon neutral in 2040
The server farms of Amazon, which has made the cloud (decentralized computing) another very important source of profits, are also extremely energy-hungry. According to the online platform Climate Watch, the 44.4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent produced each year by Amazon represent a little more than 10% of France’s total annual missions.
In September, Jeff Bezos promised that Amazon would achieve carbon neutrality in 2040. We can save the earth, he said on his Instagram post on Monday, under a photo of the plant. This requires collective action by big and small companies, states, global organizations and individuals. Land is the thing we all have in common. Let’s protect it, together, he concludes.
Demonstrations for the protection of the environment and against large polluting companies have multiplied this fall and this winter, notably under the leadership of associations like Greenpeace, the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg or the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement. Amazon has thus been the target of several actions to denounce overconsumption and its ecological consequences during Black Friday in November, one of the great promotional days that contribute to the colossal revenues of the multinational.
(Nxp / ats)
– .
