The world’s richest are turning their attention away from the space race to focus on world hunger. Is this becoming the new contest?
Jeff Bezos (pictured below), founder and executive director of Amazon, has sold around $2 billion in stock to put into the Bezos Earth Fund to help counter the effects of climate change, according to a «Bloomberg» report Thursday.
If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2021
Saving 42 Million From Hunger
This comes after David Beasley, the director of the UN’s World Food Programme called on Tesla CEO Elon Musk via Twitter to donate a fraction of his biggest day’s gains, earned early last week, to prevent 42 million people from falling into starvation.
Musk received a partial response from the UN organization, which details the planned allocation for top 10 recipient countries, after asking for a plan of how the $6 billion would be spent. A second response will follow, the agency said in a tweet.
Philanthropy, The New Frontier?
Until now, the three multi-billionaires Musk, Elon and Virgin founder Richard Branson have been in a battle to commercialize trips into space.
The space race has cost billions of dollars so far, with all three competing with their own fleets in a desperate race to be first. Branson flew his space glider to the edge of space last July.
Will they apply the same vigor to philanthropy? It would be more useful than space tourism for the super-rich.
