Jeff Bezos: fighting the planet's greatest threat

Jeff Bezos made a stir this week, after causing a moment of confusion, with a pledge to donate $10 billion to combat the greatest threat to the planet: socialism.

But he initially misstated the purpose of his grant money as “climate change”, leading to many mistaken reports as journalists hurried to file their stories during the applause between Bezos’s misstatement and the correction.

“Wait, did I say climate change?” said the Amazon billionaire after the hubbub died down, shaking his head and laughing at the obvious blunder. “I’m sorry, how did that come out? I meant to say, to combat socialism, of course. The greatest threat to the planet, du-uh, is socialism. Not—” he made an amused sound like pffft!—“climate change.”

The audience quieted down considerably at the correction, but Bezos went on. “I mean, think about it. Socialism can only exist under an authoritarian government powerful enough to force people to give up their stuff or do whatever the government says to do with it. Obviously, this is a recipe for bad management decisions passing without proper criticism, and hence for irresponsible stewardship of the environment. Which is exactly what we have seen under socialism.

“The greatest environmental disaster on the planet, and it's not even close, has been the destruction of the Aral Sea by the Soviet Union’s misguided diversion of water for irrigation. All the ecosystems of that erstwhile sea and its area have been destroyed. The plains left behind as it recedes are covered with salt and chemical pollutants, carried off by wind as toxic dust storms. The human cost has been enormous.

“Then you have the Chinese Three Gorges Dam. Landslides, drought, disease, millions of people living in its vicinity put in danger, endangered species and whole ecosystems disrupted—even the Chinese government has admitted it was a huge mistake.

“And of course the Soviet Chernobyl disaster, which by any reckoning was two orders of magnitude worse that the roughly contemporary Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in the United States. Estimated deaths came to thousands, a danger zone stretching 20 miles in radius all around the site more than thirty years later.

“Where does nine-tenths of the plastic waste in the oceans come from? Communist China.

“Climate change has been going on since the world began, and the planet has withstood it just fine. I mean, over the two-billion-year history of life on this planet the Sun’s radiance has varied by more than 10 percent. Ten percent! Kinda dwarfs anything you’ll get from carbon dioxide, huh? But socialism, man, that’s bad news from start to finish.

“So I’m proud to donate this money to combat socialism, the greatest threat to the planet,” concluded the world's richest man, ending his remarks to the assembly, where you could have heard a pin drop.