The battle against climate change suddenly has a new champion amidst a stunning leadership crisis. Better late than never.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has emerged from the back of the pack to take the lead where other capitalists have been afraid to lead or follow. The world’s richest man committed $10 billion of his personal fortune to set up the new Bezos Earth Fund, which would support “scientists, activists, NGOs—any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”

The announcement is light on details, but climate experts say it’s a massive investment and a tremendous opportunity that could give the warming planet a fighting chance. Hopefully, it will fund solutions, not meaningless studies and smokescreens.

Ten billion dollars is an unfathomable amount of money for climate change research and activism. It dwarfs the $4 billion that 29 philanthropic organizations pledged to fighting climate change in 2018, in what was called the largest investment of its kind at the time. It’s so much money that it will likely be difficult to spend on existing researchers and organizations, as The Atlantic noted.

“It will shape the whole nature of the climate movement,” says Robert J. Brulle, a professor emeritus at Drexel University studying politics and the environment. “There’s going to be this mad rush of cash.”

Brulle’s research on spending by opponents of the climate movement helps put the Bezos Earth Fund into perspective. From 2000 to 2016, he found, electric utilities, fossil fuel companies, and the transportation sector collectively spent over $1.2 billion on climate change lobbying. Another study found that from 1986 to 2015, five of the largest fossil fuel firms together spent at least $3.6 billion on corporate promotion advertisements in the US.

It’s not just the amount that matters, but how Bezos team invest the money. As CEO of Amazon, Bezos hasn’t exactly led the charge on progressive corporate policies around climate change and the environment. The company has been criticized for years by environmental groups like Greenpeace over its business practices and lack of transparency; the nonprofit CDP told Bloomberg News last year that it was one of the biggest carbon emitters in the world outside the fossil fuel industry.

Thousands of Bezos’ own workers affiliated with the group Amazon Employees For Climate Justice have pushed for the company to do more to mitigate its enormous impact on the environment, including by staging a walkout.

In that context, it’s easy to see Bezos’ commitment as a shrewd political move meant to pacify his workforce, or atonement for the environmental sins that made him the richest man in the world—a rank he would still hold even minus the $10 billion. Bezos had previously given relatively little of his fortune to charity, choosing instead to spend on efforts like Blue Origin, his space travel company. With one pledge, the CEO immediately joins the philanthropic ranks of tech titans like Bill Gates, who has donated over $45 billion through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It’s not clear if Bezos will be willing to fight the fossil fuel industry directly, which Amazon counts as an important customer. When Bezos announced an ambitious new plan for his company to reduce its carbon footprint in September, the CEO said Amazon’s cloud computing division would nonetheless continue working with oil and gas providers.

“Anyone who’s serious about taking on climate change has to be serious about taking on the fossil fuel industry, because they’re the ones blocking progress,” says Bill McKibben, a prominent environmentalist and the founder of the climate change organization 350.org. For the Amazon CEO to directly oppose his counterparts in another industry, McKibben adds, “That would require a kind of class betrayal on Bezos’ part—it will be interesting to see if he’s capable of it.”

Environmental experts have suggested that the Bezos Earth Fund should invest quickly in solutions that already exist today. Millions of natural gas furnaces across the country could be replaced with energy-efficient heat pumps, for example, or harmful gas leaks could be plugged. Forest conservation and reforestation also are easy steps that are part of the answer. Ending government subsidies to oil companies can level the playing field for alternative energy supplies. Where there is a will, there is a way forward. Answers begin with the truth and obstruction isn’t an option.

“If Bezos could focus $10 billion on critical technologies that are available right now, he could make them scale, he could make them cheap, he could make them widespread,” notes Foley. “Now is better than new.”

Leah Stokes, a professor studying climate and environmental politics at UC Santa Barbara, hopes Bezos uses the funds to strategically involve governments, which Amazon would benefit from too. New public infrastructure projects could help to optimize its logistics networks for delivering packages, for example. There are also plenty of more fundamental benefits. “If you think about these big Silicon Valley companies, they’re all on the coast,” says Stokes. “They’re all going to be affected by sea level rise, that’s not going to be good for their corporations.”

Even as Bezos funds his initiative, Amazon has a strong interest in shaping the climate debate, so that whatever government response eventually emerges doesn’t injure its business. (To cover its right flank, last year the company co-sponsored the annual gala of a climate-denying think tank.) After all, Amazon’s constellation of servers has a massive carbon footprint, about the same as that of a wealthy European nation; the company is transforming global patterns of consumption, so that cheap goods can almost instantaneously arrive at any doorstep.

Even if Amazon aims to slash its own emissions, it’s creating an economy that seems likely to undermine its stated goal of carbon neutrality. A reasonable debate about planetary future would at least question the wisdom of the same-day delivery of plastic tchotchkes made in China. Then there are the policies that permit companies, like Amazon, to pay virtually nothing in taxes—revenue that would ideally fund, say, a Green New Deal. It hardly seems likely that the Bezos Earth Foundation will seek to erode the very basis of the fortune that funds it.

A skeptical response to the Bezos Earth Fund doesn’t preclude the hope that it will do real good. Michael Bloomberg’s climate philanthropy has played an important role in shutting down coal-fired power plants. And unlike Obama-era policy, Bloomberg’s efforts have proved difficult for the Trump administration to roll back. Perhaps Bezos will find similarly effective vehicles for injecting his money.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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Six major U.S. banks are urging world leaders to adopt a strong agreement to slash carbon emissions and tackle climate change. The coalition warned in a letter Monday that warming global temperatures and related effects, including sea level rise and severe drought, threaten to upend the global economy and jeopardize future prosperity.

Their message targeted the heads of state and diplomats gathered in New York Monday for the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Climate change is one of the top subjects on the agenda, along with Syria’s civil war, the refugee crisis and the Iran nuclear accord. The U.N. is spearheading negotiations to forge a 195-country climate accord in Paris this December.

Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo called on negotiators to adopt policies that “recognize the cost of carbon” and help “provide greater market certainty, accelerate investment, drive innovation in low carbon energy, and create jobs,” according to the letter published by Ceres, a sustainability advocacy organization.

The banks noted that investments in global energy, water, transportation and urban infrastructure systems are projected to total $90 trillion over the next 15 years — a sum that could include funding for low-carbon alternatives given the right policy signals, according to a 2014 report by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, an initiative chaired by former Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

“Businesses across the spectrum are evaluating the risks and opportunities associated with a changing climate,” Mary Wenzel, head of environmental affairs at Wells Fargo, said in a statement. “Strong, long-term policy frameworks can provide the business certainty needed to accelerate innovation and investment.”

The banks’ statement did not explicitly call for a price on carbon dioxide emissions, which proponents say would make it more expensive to burn coal, oil and natural gas and encourage greater investment solar and wind power, electric vehicles, biofuels and other clean energy alternatives.

But some financial leaders, including the World Bank, a U.N. financial institution, have repeatedly urged policymakers to put an outright tax on carbon emissions or adopt a cap-and-trade system. China last week announced it would launch the world’s largest cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions from its steel, cement, paper and electric power sectors.

A carbon price is “the most powerful move that a government can make in the fight against climate change and the reengineering of the economy,” Rachel Kyte, a special envoy for climate change at the World Bank, said a year ago at the 2014 Climate Week NYC, an annual forum to promote the business case for a low-carbon economy.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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Microsoft India has announced the launch of Microsoft CityNext in the country. CityNext is an initiative to enable city residents and city leaders to use technology to build a foundation for sustainable city growth and prosperity.

Microsoft has identified more than 40 solution areas across eight city domains that help address 90 percent of the challenges cities faces today:

1. Energy and water
2. Buildings; infrastructure and planning
3. Transportation
4. Public safety and justice
5. Tourism, recreation, and culture
6. Education
7. Health and
8. Social services and Government administration

CityNext addresses these areas through the vast and diverse Microsoft Partner Network of more than 430,000 technology experts across the globe. In India, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro are working with Microsoft for this initiative, with other leading system integrators also joining the CityNext ecosystem.

CityNext helps city administrators create a comprehensive and robust technology framework by integrating existing citizen centric solutions and providing access to them via the cloud, social and mobile.

It also allows city administrators to monitor the key metrics of their city through customized analytics and dashboards. CityNext empowers people in government, businesses and the community to build more sustainable cities across economic, environmental and social spheres, said a Microsoft release.

Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman – Microsoft India said, “By 2030, India will have more than 69 cities with a population of more than one million. In fact, an estimated 590 million people will be living in cities. As India prepares to modernize old infrastructure, city leaders have to meet these growing demands with tight budgets and greater citizen expectations.”

“Microsoft’s CityNext puts people first and builds on a new infrastructure of collaborative technology to engage citizens, businesses and Government leaders to do ‘new with less’. We are excited about the possibilities this opens up to help enable cities compete effectively on a global scale and foster economic, social and environmental sustainability,” Pramanik added.

Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice President and Head of Government Business, TCS commented, “Today, the cities which are on a journey towards modernization face many challenges. Our work with Microsoft can help these cities find the right combination of investments, solutions, partnerships and social programs. This will enable them to attract business, build more vibrant city landscapes and competitive economies.”

Commenting on the launch, Partha Sarathi Guha Patra, Vice President & Head Corporate Affairs, Wipro Limited said, “Indian city leaders are increasingly looking at how they can drive cohesive and uniform city-wide development. Microsoft’s CityNext is an important initiative that Governments and Public enterprises can leverage to achieve this objective.”

Microsoft and its partner ecosystem is anchored around three key pillars: transforming operations and infrastructure; engaging citizens and businesses; and accelerating innovation and opportunity, the release added.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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