JEFF BEZOS, the boss of Amazon and the world's richest man, has long had a reputation as a peculiarly frugal plutocrat. A quarter of a century after Amazon was founded, the firm, now worth over a trillion dollars, still does not pay dividends to its shareholders. Lately, though, his personal purse-strings have loosened. Earlier this month Mr Bezos paid $i65m for a mansion in Beverly Hills. On February 18th he announced that he would be spending $iobn (around 8% of his fortune) setting up the Bezos Earth Fund. Climate change, he said, was the biggest threat facing humanity, and the fund's resources would be available to any effort that offered a "real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world".
展开▼