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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/jeff-bezoss-usd10-billion-climate-pledge-is-actually-tiny.html>
"This is all to say that anyone who expects philanthropy to play the
role of climate white knight or deus ex machina is deeply deluded —
climate change is simply too big for even the most grotesquely
well-capitalized individuals to meaningfully impact with record-breaking
generosity. In his book Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas brilliantly
illustrates the way in which, over recent decades, the world’s richest
people have bought themselves a kind of immunity from taxation by making
(in most cases) relatively small philanthropic gestures, which the rest
of us take to be quite large because, in nominal terms, they are. But
perhaps the most pernicious effect of this dynamic has been to teach the
non-philanthropic public — the 99 percent, to coin a phrase — that there
are some things only the world’s plutocrats are capable of. In fact, the
opposite is true: There are many vital projects far beyond the cost and
scale that any individuals are capable of generating on their own. Even
setting aside, for a minute, ideological objections to social welfare by
billionaire largesse, when it comes to challenges like climate change,
philanthropy of any scale simply isn’t adequate, or anything close."
Via Jennifer Freeman.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://www.xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
http://www.glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
http://www.sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
