Jeff Bezos commits $1 billion to conservation as Amazon destroys the world

Jeff Bezos is donating $1 billion of his $10 billion climate philanthropy pledge to protect biodiversity and carbon-saving forests in the Andes, the Congo Basin, and the tropical Pacific Ocean. After nearly three decades leading Amazon, which has a vast and growing carbon footprint, Bezos seems intent on forging a new identity as an environmentalist and perhaps the world’s most generous financier in the fight against climate change. And that expensive trip to space he just took? Bezos says it was enlightening.

“Nature is our life support system and it’s fragile,” the billionaire said Monday at a press conference. “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.”