Jeff Bezos unveiling the “Blue Moon” lunar lander on May 9, 2019.
Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post via Getty Images
In 2019, Jeff Bezos posed the question: “What happens when unlimited demand meets finite resources?”
Bezos sees space as a place where the weather could be like “Maui on its best days” and, without gravity, where people would “fly with their own wings.”
Is the billionaire Amazon founder the best person to be lecturing about overconsumption in a world of finite resources?
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Jeff Bezos has been warning us for years that humans can’t sustain our current rate of consumption.
“What happens when unlimited demand meets finite resources? The answer is incredibly simple: rationing,” Bezos said in a 2019 speech, where he announced that his space travel company Blue Origin had developed a lunar lander. “It would lead to the first time where your grandchildren and their grandchildren would have worse lives than you did – that’s a bad path.”
Bezos may not be the best person to be lecturing about overconsumption in a world of finite resources. His wealth ballooned by $86 billion during a global pandemic, reaching a current net worth of $212 billion. He owns the Washington Post, a $65 million private jet, and so many homes-in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Washington State, and Texas – that he’s the 25th largest landowner in the United States.
Perhaps the tycoon of unprecedented proportions would be more concerned about solving Earth’s imminent shortages – or even his own excesses – if there wasn’t another world ripe for profligacy; a place where, Bezos argued in that 2019 speech, “for all practical purposes we have unlimited resources.”
On July 1, Bezos stepped down as the CEO of Amazon, though he is still the company’s executive chairman. With that changing of the guard so recently behind us, and with Bezos readying for his maiden voyage out of the Earth’s atmosphere – a 10-minute trip alongside his brother and a Dutch teenager – it’s worth unpacking Bezos’ vision.
It’s one of the few times Bezos has addressed the public at all, and it’s probably his longest public explanation of why he calls Blue Origin “his most important work.” (Blue Origin denied a request to interview Bezos before the July 20 launch.)
“The earth is finite and if the world economy and population is to keep expanding, space is the only way to go,” Bezos said, reading a line from his 1982 valedictorian speech from his Miami high school. Back then, he was already billing himself as a “space entrepreneur” who was going to make the world “peaceful and affluent.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin’s newly developed “Blue Moon” lunar lander in 2019.
Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post via Getty Images
Bezos sees space as a place where the weather could be like “Maui on its best days” and, with the absence of gravity, where people would “fly with their own wings.” There would be no rain, or storms, …read more
Source:: Business Insider
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