According to Jeff Bezos’ paper, The Washington Post, he’s said he’s giving $791 million to 16 groups fighting climate change out of a $10 billion climate fund. The actual article is paywalled, but you can use the scroll bar for a couple seconds before the unremovable subscription pitch kicks in. Bloomberg has a post on it in its appropriately titled Blomberg Green section. It includes a bullet point tally of these denominated millions. They do total up to 791:

Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund ($43 million)

ClimateWorks Foundation ($50 million)

Dream Corps Green For All ($10 million)

Eden Reforestation Projects ($5 million)

Energy Foundation ($30 million)

Environmental Defense Fund ($100 million)

The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice ($43 million)

Natural Resources Defense Council ($100 million)

The Nature Conservancy ($100 million)

NDN Collective ($12 million)

Rocky Mountain Institute ($10 million)

Salk Institute for Biological Studies ($30 million)

The Solutions Project ($43 million)

Union of Concerned Scientists ($15 million)

World Resources Institute ($100 million)

World Wildlife Fund ($100 million)

$100 million each for the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute. I don’t see Greenpeace. Well, there’s still $9201 million to go. As Don Funucci said in The Godfather: “… just enough to wet my beak.”

There’s $10 million to the Rocky Mountain Institute. I suppose this can help Amory Lovins keep us from discovering a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. Perhaps it will also keep him in the lifestyle he’s become accustomed to. That link is to an Atomic Insights post where Rod Adams gives an assessment of Lovins’ compensation:

As a former commissioned naval officer, I have an intimate knowledge of the salary and bonus tables for members of the armed services. Your compensation may have been set based on a rigorous arms-length consultancy process, but the end result of that process is that your reward for running a tax-exempt non-profit organization with annual total revenues that have varied between $7-$15 million and a total employee head count of less than 100 has been a compensation package that substantially exceeds that of a four star admiral or general.

I think that is significant, especially the part about your organization being one that depends on tax-exempt contributions and pays no taxes of its own. Apparently producing large quantities of antinuclear energy information is a well rewarded profession.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights

There’s $43 million to The Solutions Project. That’s Mark Jacobson’s outfit which was founded with support from Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio. I’ve warned you that despite his idiotic lawsuit, he’s not going away. It looks like obtaining funding from a sugar daddy like Bezos is a lot more lucrative and a lot less risky than trying to shake down a settlement out of Christopher Clack and the PNAS. I’ll bet they’re going to have a wild Christmas party this year.

Hey Jeff. If you’re looking for small $1 million or so organizations to drop some pocket change on, you might consider Michael Shellenberger’s Environmental progress. Of course Shellenberger has said he might soon be getting around to writing about how Amazon is using wind tax credit as a tax shelter. Go to 29 minutes in:

Despite claims from various green proponents to the contrary, I haven’t seen any evidence that his integrity is for sale. But if you could somehow pay him off with say, a successful second gubernatorial run, the residents of California would likely benefit greatly.