Bezos's Climate Change Hypocrisy

I'm very interested in working on climate change solutions. Like many in my generation, I'm at the very least incredibly conscious of it. So I was initially very excited to see that Jeff Bezos pledged a massive 10 billion dollars towards climate solutions: https://www.wsj.com/articles/jeff-bezos-pledges-10-billion-to-tackle- climate-change-11581974234

That's a monumental sum! 10 billion is far outside my ability as someone with ordinary spending to comprehend.

Yes, yes, I know he's done plenty of unsavory things but I'd rather he do this with the money than let it sit. Perhaps it's all just an expen$$$ive PR move to improve his image, after all the flack that Amazon and him have been catching for their issues, with workers having to leave their basic human dignity at the warehouse door. But, personally, I'll still take a $10 billion PR move if it helps the climate.

But, and why does there so often have to be a but, I recently learned that he'd purchased this massive superyacht: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-05-07/jeff-bezos-s-new-superyacht-heralds-roaring-market-for-big-boats

?????

If he were truly focused on making a positive impact on the climate then how does this literal showboat make any sense? That's why I suspect the initial contribution was just a giant PR move, because this just seems so hypocritical.

Let me clear, I am not the climate-fun-police here; I'm not here to tell you that you can't watch your TV because that uses electricity, or that you can't go sailing with since being active must mean you're turning out more CO2.

It's just that this superyacht is so incredibly wasteful. I mean one look at the name and you'd get it: a normal yacht is already extravagant, but this is a superyacht, the creme de la creme of showboating.

What does Bezos need 3 masts for? I can't imagine that you strictly need more than one mast if you truly want to have some fun. 

1 mast yachts are for peasant millionares. Come on have some class.

Meanwhile we, the public, are told that the burden is on us to take colder showers, make sure to sort and recycle all the plastic packaging you never asked for, and all manner of other "helpful" tips that distract from actual major carbon contributors.

Make sure to reuse your old Amazon cardboard and plastic packing for strange DIY experiments, it helps the environment cause you'll never throw that out either! Oh what about my superyacht here? It's totally ok, since I already, like, gave $10 billion right? Don't worry, I make sure to turn off all the lights when I'm done sailing!

I'm beginning to think that the exponential distribution of resources and consumption mean that we should start focusing our criticism of habits elsewhere.

Thanks to Juwan Jackson for reading drafts.