Climate Conference: Jeff Bezos commits $2 billion for Climate Change

America entrepreneur, Jeffery Preston Bezos, simply known as Jeff Bezos, astoundingly commits $2 billion to Climate Change.

World leaders including U.S President, Joe Biden and India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi were linked up by business heavyweights, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates on Tuesday, 2nd November, 2021, which is the third day of the UN climate conference. Also, the American actor and film producer, Leonardo DiCaprio was briefly in attendance.

Bezos was visiting Glasgow to open up a session on forests and land-use—the same day as the announcement of a $19.2 billion deforestation pledge—and to announce his own $2 billion pledge to tackle climate change, part of his Bezos Earth Fund. That follows a $1 billion pledge earlier this month, he said.

Nature, “gives us life,” he said in a speech. “It is beautiful, but it is also fragile. I was reminded of this in July when I went into space with Blue Origin.”

He was “not prepared” for just how much the trip would change the way he viewed the world, he said.

The Amazon founder also said he was granting $500 million to a joint fund also backed by the Ikea and Rockefeller foundations, which was announced on Tuesday at COP26. That fund, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, will use a total of $10 billion to make investments in renewable energy projects.

Despite the size of the pledges, Bezos’ appearance drew plenty of raised eyebrows. Criticism of the COP26 event has frequently focused on how attendees did or did not arrive at the event (local trains, the most virtuous option, experienced chaotic delays earlier in the week). But the fact that Bezos has focused recently on commuting to space did not go unnoticed. Bezos has reportedly invested about $1 billion per year in Blue Origin, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Later in the day, opening a session on clean technology, billionaire Bill Gates spoke about his fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which provides research and development-focused investments in companies to scale up climate innovations. Gates said that the fund has so far raised over $2 billion and funded over 80 companies in 11 countries.

Gates also spoke about bringing down the “green premium,” to make technology competitive and scalable worldwide.

He said;

“The cost of transition must be low enough that the whole world can afford it.” He further declared that he expects Breakthrough will “double its financial strength” over the next year.

The drum beat behind the high-profile appearances, meanwhile, continued to be tension between larger and smaller countries over financial support.

The prime minister of Fiji, Frank Bainimarama at the first event of the morning said;

“Yesterday marked the start of cyclone season in the South Pacific, a period now defined by record smashing superstorms that can erase years of infrastructure progress in a matter of hours. I know, because I’ve seen it happen. Whether it’s storms, floods, or fires—the same hard standards are being learned around the world.”

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, is the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference. It is being held in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom, between 31 October and 12 November 2021, under the presidency of Alok Sharma. The conference is the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the third meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement.

This conference is the first time that parties are expected to commit to enhanced ambition since COP21. Parties are required to carry out every five years, as outlined in the Paris Agreement, a process colloquially known as the ‘ratchet mechanism’.