Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos: “The Natural World” is the Only Thing Not Improving
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos believes that almost everything has improved over the last 50 years, except for the natural world. At the New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Bezos stated that while infant mortality, global literacy, and global poverty rates have all decreased, the world’s oceans, rivers, and forests have been polluted and depleted to fuel human growth. Amazon itself has been a part of this problem, emitting 70.74 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022.
However, Bezos is betting on a potential solution to Earth’s natural resource deficiencies. He has spent billions per year funding his aerospace company Blue Origin, which is working on rockets, spacecrafts, space stations, and lunar landers. Bezos believes that space could provide “infinite energy, infinite raw materials,” and that some natural resources, like oxygen, water, and methane, could be mined from Mars.
Bezos’ goals for space exploration differ from those of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which aims to make humanity multiplanetary. Instead, Bezos wants Blue Origin to help keep humanity happy on Earth. “There is no plan B. We have to save Earth,” he said. “We’ve sent robotic probes to all of the planets in the solar system. This is the good one.”