Under Trump, billionaire climate champions have gone quiet

Over the past decade or so, a group of America's wealthiest individuals, largely from the tech industry, became some of the world's biggest climate champions, pledging billions in highly public campaigns.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, committed $10 billion of his own money in 2020 to start the Bezos Earth Fund, a charity focused on climate and nature issues.

Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, has put more than $1 billion toward a campaign to close coal plants and block petrochemical plants.

Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder, poured billions of his fortune into Breakthrough Energy, an umbrella organization working to address climate change.

Laurene Powell Jobs created a foundation to promote climate solutions and said it would spend $3.5 billion. Marc Benioff, the co-founder of Salesforce, spun up an initiative to plant a trillion trees.

And big tech companies, from Google to Meta to Amazon, made ambitious pledges to reduce emissions and support clean energy.

But over the past few weeks, many of these voices have gone quiet as President Donald Trump has slashed environmental protections, promoted planet-warming fossil fuels and taken steps to dismantle US climate policy.

On his first day in office, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord, set in motion plans to open Alaskan wilderness to drilling and mining, halted federal approvals for new wind farms, told federal agencies to stop subsidising electric vehicles, and paused approvals for renewable energy projects on public lands. Since then, his assault on climate initiatives promoted by the Biden administration has continued.

With the exception of Bloomberg, none of the leaders, including Bezos, Gates, Powell Jobs and Benioff, have made statements opposing the Trump administration's actions. Silicon Valley's major tech companies that have committed to reducing their emissions have also been silent.

None of the executives or companies mentioned responded to requests for comment for this article.

The silence from this slice of the billionaire and technology world was in line with the deferential posture of much of the rest of corporate America.

Instead of loudly and vociferously opposing Trump, as was often the case during his first term in office, many business leaders across industries have opted to court the president, or at least remain silent as he has upended not just climate policy, but foreign policy and the federal bureaucracy as well. Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google were among the companies that donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee.

"Companies and business leaders are going to find that they need to decide what their red lines are," said Aron Cramer, CEO of BSR, a group that promotes corporate sustainability efforts. "I'm not sure they're doing that right now."

A reversal from Trump's first term

The muted response marks an about-face for these billionaires.

In 2017, when Trump withdrew from the Paris accord for the first time, many tech moguls spoke out against the decision.

"Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement is bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and it puts our children's future at risk," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Facebook.

Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, wrote on Twitter in 2017 that the "decision to withdraw from the #ParisAgreeement was wrong for our planet."

And Sundar Pichai, the Google CEO, wrote on Twitter that he was "disappointed" with the decision to withdraw.

Even Elon Musk opposed the move. "Climate change is real," he wrote on Twitter in 2017. "Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world."

This time around, Zuckerberg, Cook, Pichai and Bezos attended Trump's inauguration. Musk is working closely with Trump to slash the federal workforce, and Trump has put the Environmental Protection Agency in his crosshairs.

In the days before Trump was sworn in for his second term, Gates dined with the then president-elect at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and declared himself "impressed" in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Also before the inauguration, Powell Jobs held a "Demo Day" event showcasing some of her charitable endeavors, but steered clear of politics.

It is unclear what, if anything, will cause executives and companies to speak out. During the first Trump administration, there were episodic flare-ups as corporate leaders reacted to actions on immigration, climate and white nationalism.

This time, Cramer said, Trump is moving much faster and the stakes are much higher.

"Events are moving so quickly and so unpredictably with such volatility that I don't think the strategy of staying quiet is going to be of lasting benefit," he said.

'What You Are For'

None of the billionaire-funded foundations or tech companies I reached out to said they were changing their plans to fight climate change because of Trump. All said they remain committed to reducing their own emissions and supporting climate solutions.

In January, Bloomberg said his charity would step in to help fund the United Nations climate body following the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement.

"The American people remain determined to continue the fight against the devastating effects of climate change," he said in a statement, lamenting what he called "a period of federal inaction."

The muted response from some of the companies that had previously spoken out on climate issues raises the question of how the rest of the corporate world will respond as Trump's assault on former President Joe Biden's climate policies continues, and possibly begins to take an economic toll in red states.

Cramer said he expected to see major corporations champion projects they cared about, while steering clear of criticizing the president.

"It needs to be about what you are for, not who you are against," he said. "Those are two different things."