The Earth's wealthiest person and former CEO of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Jeff Bezos, has returned to the planet's surface following a short flight to the edge of space. After landing, Bezos also gave away $200 million, but the donation was soon overshadowed by a comment that the centibillionaire gave thanking those who'd made the expedition possible.
"I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, 'cause you guys paid for all this...Thank you from the bottom of my heart very much."
The audience attending the post-flight news conference can be heard chuckling in response to the statement made by Bezos, but online commentators soon dug in against the 200-billion-dollar man, saying his comments were "revealingly tone deaf."
Amazon, now valued at $1.8 trillion, employs nearly 1.3 million workers. Those workers, largely in warehouses, make a median wage of $29,007 per year. Bezos stepped down as CEO on July 5, but he still stands as the company's largest shareholder.
Recent efforts have been made by Amazon workers to form unions within U.S. warehouses, but those efforts have been defeated in no small part due to aggressive anti-union campaigning by the company- as well as alleged misconduct regarding the collection of the votes.
Bezos also chose to give $200 million in "courage and civility awards" following the landing. The money is intended to be donated to the recipients' chosen charities. The total amount was split between Van Jones, CNN contributor and commentator, and chef José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, a non-profit dedicated to distributing food after disasters.
"We need unifiers and not vilifiers," Bezos said in his announcement of the award. "It's easy to be courageous but also mean. Try being courageous and civil. Try being courageous and a unifier. That's harder and way better, and makes the world better."
Bezos is the second billionaire to reach the finish line in the so-called "billionaire space race," only following Virgin Galactic's (NYSE: SPCE) Sir Richard Branson. Meanwhile, back on the ground, inequality and climate change are ever-growing problems, and most of us won't have a rocket to escape them. The growing push for "space tourism" has received considerable push back from those who see it as a waste of time and money during increasingly desperate times.
Unfortunately, space tourism brings with it an even more direct impact on climate change: these flights release pollution and greenhouse gasses directly into the Earth's stratosphere which can wear away the protective layer blocking ultraviolet rays. While Blue Origin and others may claim that their flights will have minimal impact, an increase in flights means an increase in pollution.
During an interview with CNN a day before the flight, Bezos was asked what he thought of the criticism that his money and power would be better spent on "problems here on Earth."
"We have to do both. We have lots of problems in the here and now on Earth, and we need to work on those. And we always need to look to the future," Bezos said.
Bezos and his ex-wife Mackenzie Scott were the biggest charity donors in the U.S. last year, and climate change, which he calls the planet's "biggest threat," is one of the causes he has supported.
Regarding the criticism against the push for space tourism, Bezos argued that creating a "commercial airliner" for space travel would allow future generations to do "amazing things."
"If we can do that then we'll be building a road to space for the next generations to do amazing things there," Bezos said on CNN. "And those amazing things will solve problems here on Earth."