Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk fight the climate problem the Iron Man way

Climate change seems to be a priority for tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, but some are wondering if they are focusing their efforts on the right areas.

Broadly speaking, the three richest technology billionaires – ranked among the five richest people on the planet – are trying to develop new technologies that can reduce global carbon dioxide emissions.

Musk focuses primarily on funding carbon capture technologies, Gates is particularly bullish on nuclear power and Bezos has created a dedicated “Bezos Earth fund”. They all believe that technology plays an important role in the fight against climate change and are doing everything possible to make sure they are pushing the boundaries when it comes to climate technology.

“They basically think of the ‘Iron Man’ way, which is that we can build technology to innovate,” Christian Kroll, founder and CEO of search engine Ecosia, said in a video call to CNBC, adding that more focus should be on planting trees.

“No technology will get there,” he said in reference to the trees. “And besides, you get so many things for free. You get fertile soil, you do something against the biodiversity crisis and you help the water cycle so you have fewer droughts and fewer floods.”

Global carbon dioxide emissions have increased over the past 100 years, leading to global warming and unprecedented climate change.

Trees are known to be among the most efficient carbon capture machines on earth. They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through a chemical reaction known as photosynthesis where they convert the gas into energy that they use to grow. Empress trees, for example, can absorb about 103 tons of carbon per year per hectare.

Twelve of the top 20 climate solutions relate to agriculture or forestry, according to the San Francisco-based nonprofit Climate Reduction Project.

Last week, British Prince William stressed the importance of investing in nature to combat climate change and protect our planet.

“We need to invest in nature through reforestation, sustainable agriculture and support for healthy oceans, because doing so is one of the most effective and impactful ways to address climate change,” he said.

“It removes carbon from the atmosphere, helps build stronger communities, addresses biodiversity loss and protects people’s livelihoods. This is crucial if our children and grandchildren are to live sustainably on our beautiful planet. “.

Jack Kelly, the founder of Open Climate Fix and a former Alphabet-owned AI DeepMind lab researcher, told CNBC that a combination of approaches is needed. “I think we need a wide range of interventions, both technological and reforestation,” he said.

According to Kroll, trees and reforestation are relatively low on the list of the multimillion-dollar technology agenda.

While tech billionaires would not necessarily be able to “solve” climate change by planting more trees, they could have a “massive impact” if they devoted more of their capital to the issue, he said.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Amazon founder Bezos is worth $ 197 billion, Tesla founder Musk is worth $ 181 billion, and Microsoft founder Gates is worth $ 145 billion.

Representatives from Musk and Gates did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment, while a Bezos representative declined to comment.

There is no denying that technology billionaires are increasingly interested in climate change.

In January, Tesla CEO Musk pledged to invest $ 100 million in new carbon capture technologies. Carbon capture is the process of capturing carbon dioxide waste directly from the air or just before it is emitted from factories and power plants.

His investment in new carbon capture technologies exceeds the $ 1 million he spent on trees in 2019 when he gave YouTuber Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson a donation to help him reach a 20-year tree planting goal. million dollars.

However, Musk’s stance on climate change is complicated. While he runs a relatively green electric vehicle company, he has also been criticized for his love of bitcoin, which is now one of the world’s largest CO2 emitters.

Meanwhile, Gates thinks nuclear power is the future and his company TerraPower, which he founded in 2008, aims to build a fully functional advanced nuclear reactor.

In his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” Gates doesn’t seem to be convinced it’s worth investing in trees.

“It has an obvious appeal to those of us who love trees, but it opens up a very complicated topic … its effect on climate change seems to be overflowing,” he writes.

Gates argues that the most effective reforestation strategy is to stop cutting down as many trees we already have and states that “it would need about 50 acres of trees planted in tropical areas to absorb the emissions produced by an average American in his lifetime.”

The Microsoft mogul clarified his stance on trees in a podcast interview with New York Times journalist Kara Swisher in February.

“If you want to constantly fund replanting for 10,000 years, it’s a legitimate compensation,” Gates said. “If you only plant a generation of trees, it won’t get you much. You know, I’m not saying it’s a mistake or anything. But that’s not going to cause any major problems in this.”

Gates, who is now the largest owner of farmland in the United States, added, “The idea that there is a place to plant a trillion trees is wrong.”

Elsewhere, Bezos created the $ 10 billion Bezos Earth Fund last February to provide financial support to scientists, non-governmental organizations, activists and the private sector.

To date, the Bezos Earth Fund has awarded grants to several reforestation-focused organizations, including the Eden reforestation projects, The Nature Conservancy, and The Natural Resources Defense Council.

Amazon, however, has been criticized for increasing pollution with its planes and vans and for excessive use of cardboard when packaging its products. Amazon says its packaging is 100% renewable and does not use plastic shells or ties.

Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing giant, and Microsoft also operate energy-intensive data centers around the world.

But Kroll believes technology billionaires are still relatively “obsessed” with dreaming of new technologies to take on the problem.

His company, Ecosia, has made tree planting an important part of his identity.

Based in Berlin, Ecosia donates 80% of its profits to reforestation-focused charities. Essentially, if a person accesses the Ecosia search engine and performs a search, almost all of the money the company earns from digital ads will be used to plant trees.

The company has partnered with more than 60 tree planting organizations that have planted more than 123 million trees, Kroll said, adding that they are mainly found in developing countries in the tropics.

“By planting trees, each search removes about 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere,” Kroll said. “I’m doing dozens of searches every day, so thousands of searches every year. It’s a few tons of CO2 that is removed from the atmosphere just by doing searches.”

Kroll suggested that people should only be classified as billionaires when they remove one billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.

“Everyone else is just a billionaire of the dollar,” he said. “That’s boring. We don’t need it anymore in a 21st century.”