Under Trump, Billionaire Climate Champions Have Gone Quiet 

Since the inauguration, billionaires who funded climate action over the last decade have avoided criticizing Trump’s climate policies.Over the last decade or so, a group of America’s wealthiest individuals, largely from the tech industry, became some of the world’s biggest climate champions, pledging billions in highly public campaigns.Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, committed $10 billion of his own money in 2020 to start the Bezos Earth Fund, a charity focused on climate and nature issues.Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, has put more than $1 billion toward a campaign to close coal plants and block petrochemical plants.Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, poured billions of his fortune into Breakthrough Energy, an umbrella organization working to address climate change.Laurene Powell Jobs created a foundation to promote climate solutions and said it would spend $3.5 billion. Marc Benioff, the co-founder of Salesforce, spun up an initiative to plant a trillion trees.And big tech companies, from Google to Meta to Amazon, made ambitious pledges to reduce emissions and support clean energy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.