"The luxury lifestyles and continued plundering of the planet by the world’s richest people are placing us all in ever graver peril."

In January 2020, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said: “There are no other good planets in this solar system. We have to take care of this one.”

Eighteen months later - he took an 11-minute trip to space.

In 2019, Amazon and Global Optimism co-founded The Climate Pledge, in which the multinational company commited to achieving a net-zero status by 2040.

Bezos subsequently promised $10 billion towards the climate change fight but since then his company’s carbon emissions have increased, with its pollution rates comparable to that of Switzerland and Denmark.

While his excursion to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere was completed using relatively environmentally-friendly fuels, the project set him back around $5.5 billion - more than half of his total climate pledge.

One space trip is perhaps not enough to vilify the 58-year-old entrepreneur but the potential for commercial space travel will certainly have a negative impact on the planet.

Experts claim that the soot and aluminium oxide released from rockets could have a disproportionate impact on the atmosphere, while the carbon footprint of space travel is growing exponentially.

Elon Musk also recently took his private jet for a nine-minute hop between San Jose and San Fransisco, a journey that would have taken the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX less than an hour by car. A seat on the train would have set him back just over $10.

Landed in San Francisco, California, US. Apx. flt. time 9 Mins. pic.twitter.com/8vWvODLEOL
— ElonJet (@ElonJet) May 6, 2022

A statement from Amazon in February 2022 read: "As part of our goal to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, Amazon is on a path to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025."

However, a recent study from the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor rated the company’s integrity as ‘low’ and suggested that the strategies it has in place would only lead to a 40% reduction if properly implemented, rather than the 100% implied in the term 'net-zero'.

A spokesman for Greenpeace, an independent global campaigning network aiming to pave the way towards a greener planet, said:

“The growing influence of billionaires, and our shrinking ability to influence them, should worry everyone, and a climate emergency is a particularly bad time to hand power to people in possession of both private islands and insatiable greed.”

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is an international non-profit charity that ranks various companies by their commitment to making a positive difference when it comes to climate change, water security and deforestation.

14 companies, including L'Oréal, were impressive enough to be ranked A across the board. It seems as if they really are worth it.

Amazon is nowhere to be found on the website’s ‘A list’ and has regularly received an ‘F’ grade after refusing to disclose its results.

When questioned about this, Amazon replied:

“As part of our ongoing mission to reach net-zero carbon, Amazon regularly reports our carbon footprint, and in 2021 we also reported to CDP. Our own carbon footprint reporting already meets the widely adopted international standard of the GHG Protocol and has been independently audited and verified by Apex according to the International Organisation for Standardisation’s ISO 14064-3 verification.”

However, this contradicts what is found on the CDP website, as Amazon’s Climate Change score was not available, while it failed to respond in regards to water security and deforestation.

Amazon’s somewhat ironic refusal to comment on forest degradation is perhaps unsurprising as nowhere in its pledge to be carbon neutral by 2040 does it mention how they plan to reduce its contribution to the destruction of tropical rainforests.

Forest 500 tracks the policies and performance of the 350 most influential companies and 150 financial institutions linked to deforestation, and in their most recent report, Amazon scored just one out of 12 for their overall approach.

Billionaire Bezos’ recent actions, most notably his suborbital flight on the New Shepard, have angered climate activists who are trying to make a positive difference.

In response to this, Greenpeace said:

“Billionaire space tourism, and even private jet use, are problematic when trying to persuade non-billionaires to cut their personal emissions. Criticising someone’s annual emissions when they are less than the daily emissions of a billionaire can seem unfair, and when we’re being asked to make a change we’re reluctant to make there is a natural tendency to point to that unfairness as a reason not to change.”

A graph detailing the anomalies in global temperatures from across the globe in the last 30 years.

A graph detailing the anomalies in global temperatures from across the globe in the last 30 years.

Greenpeace was founded in 1971 and is one of those organisations in the world that probably wish it didn’t exist.

Unfortunately, more than 50 years on, their message of promoting a greener, healthier and more peaceful planet is more important than it has ever been.

Greenpeace added:

“Individuals making voluntary cuts to personal emissions aren’t the main plank of any serious climate strategy, and the bigger problem posed by billionaires is matching enormous economic and political power with almost no accountability. Democracy should mean that the laws enacted reflect the will of the people, or perhaps more realistically, the acquiescence of a majority of the people.”

Manchester Greenpeace has recently been taking on a huge corporation of their own - Tesco.

Protests were staged outside of their various city-centre locations in March, as the supermarket chain has been accused of sourcing its meat from "climate criminals" and is contributing hugely to deforestation.

This is reinforced by its CDP score for 2021, as it was rated D in relation to cattle products.

Tesco has also pledged to become net-zero Greenpeace claim that they continue to buy chicken and pork from suppliers owned by notorious rainforest-destroyer, JBS.

The Brazilian business is the largest food processing organisation in the world but admitted in 2021 that it would accept deforestation in its supply chain for another 14 years.

According to leading experts, however, radical change is required now if we are to avoid the planet from becoming uninhabitable in the near future.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies.”

It would be understandable if climate-conscious individuals or groups such as Greenpeace were to question their actions in the wake of billionaire space trips, livestock farming and drastic deforestation but Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate perhaps summed it up best at COP26 when she said:

“Your actions matter. No action or voice is too small to make a difference.”