Opinion: Billionaires Can Save the Planet

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(Image via NRDC)

Alondra Pineda, Writer

Our planet is dying and we are hardly doing anything about it. Climate change is happening and since 1906 the average temperature has been increasing, which means the Earth is getting hotter, and fast. We are losing our animals quickly since without their homes from global warming and us humans destroying them they are going extinct. The sea ice is melting and the glaciers are breaking, so the polar bears are dying as they now don’t have homes. With the ice melting and the glaciers breaking, the sea levels are rising, which can threaten and alarm many countries. With global warming and the heat rising, many deadly bugs are coming on the rise and are bringing many deadly diseases. There won’t be very clean water with all the glaciers melting, which contain the world’s freshest water. This isn’t even all that is going on our planet, and it’s honestly really sad and terrifying how we haven’t been taking care of it.

Although many people haven’t donated yet to save the planet, as of now there has only been one very wealthy person who has donated and made a foundation. Hansjörg Wyss is a Swiss philanthropist has committed to donating one billion dollars to help with saving the planet. The $1 billion dollars will go to his foundation called “Wyss Foundation”. The foundation “is a private, charitable foundation dedicated to supporting innovative, lasting solutions that improve lives, empower communities, and strengthen connections to the land,” This already will help so much, as many people with a lot of money don’t donate.

For very wealthy people, donating money to a very good cause like the Wyss Foundation isn’t such a big deal for them. It’s not a big deal because they already have loads of money which wouldn’t affect them if they donated. Some celebrities who could donate, and would have no negative effects after donating their money are: Jackie Chan ($370 million net worth), Adam Sandler ($420 million net worth), George Clooney ($500 million net worth), Tom Cruise ($570 million net worth), and Shah Rukh Khan ($600 million net worth). Their networth shows just how much money they have and could use that to donate to help the planet and save future generations to come as well as aiding in increasing both the cleanliness and wellbeing of our environment and planet.

With wealthy people donating a good amount of money, it would really benefit us by having the money to start actually making progress. If we and the wealthy donate as much money as the Notre Dame donation (around $1 billion dollars or more) the planet could actually have a chance of surviving and also would help us not go extinct. Put it into your head and realize our planet is going to die, and global warming will be irreversible if we don’t do not take any sort of action. People act like this won’t affect them, but it’s our planet, so, if the planet dies, we die too. We need to save the planet and fast.