Article content

Jeff Bezos, the mega-billionaire founder/owner of Amazon, just announced he will give US$10 billion to “fight climate change.” According to CNN, this followed immense pressure from his employees to take action. And, as is inevitable with this issue, as soon as he made the announcement his activist employees declared it wasn’t enough.

“We applaud Jeff Bezos’s philanthropy, but one hand cannot give what the other is taking away,” their group sniffed. “Will Jeff Bezos show us true leadership or will he continue to be complicit in the acceleration of the climate crisis, while supposedly trying to help?”

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Ross McKitrick: It's never enough with climate activists — even a staggering $10 billion from Jeff Bezos Back to video

It is never enough with climate activists. Bezos’s US$10 billion is a staggering sum. But it’s also a drop in the bucket compared to what governments have spent over the past two decades on the climate issue. Yet activists keep complaining governments aren’t doing anything, either.

One begins to suspect they are not being up front about what they really want. Politically minded observers might conclude activists do not care about the climate per se but instead want to impose a big-government central planning regime — for which the supposed climate emergency is merely a pretext. Any response to their demands that leaves the market system intact is therefore inadequate.