Everything on Earth is getting better—except the environment

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos doesn’t want to go back in time.  

Almost everything, including infant mortality, global literacy and global poverty rates, has improved over the last 50 years, Bezos said at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit last month — except for one factor.

“When people talk about the good old days, that’s such an illusion,” Bezos said. “Almost everything is better today than it was … with one exception, which is the natural world.” The world’s oceans, rivers and forests have been polluted and depleted to fuel humankind’s growth over the last five centuries, he added.

Amazon is part of that story: It emitted 70.74 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022, according to a company sustainability report — equivalent to roughly 1.1% of the entire U.S.’ total emissions and significantly more than its rival Walmart that year.

Carbon emissions play a large role in global climate change. Amazon’s annual emissions are gradually dropping, and it aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, according to its 2023 sustainability report.

Broadly, Bezos’ quality-of-life observation echoes a similar comment from the late billionaire investor Charlie Munger, who said in 2022 that people shouldn’t underestimate how much the world changed for the better during his lifetime alone.

“People are less happy about the state of affairs than they were when things were way tougher,” said Munger, who was 98 at the time. “It’s weird for somebody my age, because I was in the middle of the Great Depression when the hardship was unbelievable,” he added.

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Bezos is betting a lot of money on a potential solution to Earth’s natural resource deficiencies that’s reminiscent of science fiction: He’s spent billions per year for the past two decades to fund his aerospace company Blue Origin, which works on rockets, spacecrafts, space stations and lunar landers.

Blue Origin and its competitors could help address Earth’s natural resource deficiencies, with other planets and outer space possibly able to provide “infinite energy, infinite raw materials,” Bezos said. Some natural resources, like oxygen, water and methane, could be mined from Mars, according to NASA.

Bezos’ company has successfully completed nine human spaceflights, most recently in November 2024. It’ll eventually “be the best business I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s going to take a while,” said Bezos.

Notably, Bezos’ stated goals for space exploration differ from those of another prominent billionaire with an aerospace company: Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a mission of “making humanity multiplanetary,” according to its website.

By contrast, Bezos said he wants Blue Origin to help keep humanity happy on Earth.

“There is no plan B. We have to save Earth,” he said. “We’ve sent robotic probes to all of the planets in the solar system. This is the good one.”

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