Stories like this make me think of this quote from C.S. Lewis:<p>> Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities [committed by one’s enemies] in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed forever in a universe of pure hatred.<p>Bezos is a complicated figure, and there are other causes that could also use money, but this appears to be an inarguably good thing, so let's take the win.
Wow, I'm not entirely clear what the grantees are specifically doing from reading this announcement, but I am sure there will be tons of awesome work accomplished.<p>I do wonder exactly what the theory of change here is - this is a huge amount of money, and I am surprised it's a great way to spend it, especially when the Inflation Reduction Act just authorized so much money for similar goals. I didn't dig into the individual grants, though the ones I peeked at didn't get too specific on what that work is.<p>Parks, trees, and community gardens are all great. My general expectation in my experience is that poor urban communities are disproportionately often in park-heavy areas (not for justice reasons, for floodplain reasons). I guess they need work to make them better? I like community gardens, but I am just shocked if folks are helping much to solve anything that matters by dedicating dozens or hundreds of millions of dollars to promoting them.<p>I am extremely skeptical that the climate mitigations cited are very well-accomplished by the green spaces mentioned. It's obligatory to cite climate change in everything, which gets frustrating, especially because we are engaged in so few of the things that would actually help.
> <i>The Greening America’s Cities initiative launches with $50 million for urban greening efforts in five cities–Albuquerque, Atlanta...</i><p>This is ironic given that Atlanta currently has 85 acres of prime greenspace that the city is spending $90M+ to turn into a police training center:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_City" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_City</a>
The US modern politically correct language is about obscuring things.
"Underserved urban U.S. communities"<p>To upquote Carlin:
They are black.
They are poor.
They are hungry.
They live in bad neighborhoods.
They have arees have a substantial problem with crime.
and often with drugs.<p>They need money, food, opportunity, education and
jobs that pay a living wage.<p>Bezos being part of the 0.01% (?) super rich elite,
lounges in his luxury ivory tower and thinks well
"well what the negros need are trees and grass
that will make it all so much better"<p>No,
What Bezo needs to do is start paying his workers a living wage,
full health insurance, allow them to unionize. give their kids
a better chance at higher education.<p>Stop treating the workers and slave automatons that go to the bathroom
far too often and get hurt on the job far too often.<p>As long as Bezo derives his wealth in part because of his exploitation
of "Underserved urban U.S. workers" he is despicable no matter how
many feet of grass or trees he is sponsoring out of the petty cash drawer.
Quite confused by this. Trees and parks are obviously beneficial in numerous real ways.<p>...but if you ask someone that is really struggling I doubt their answer as to what they need is "more trees outside my door".<p>From my admittedly ignorant and priviledged position the answer is more likely to be "I can't apply to jobs if i don't have internet".<p>With people that have their back against the wall you have to address the showstopper issues. That's not to say they don't deserve trees, but given finite resources, prioritize.
Some overlap, it seems, with this:<p><a href="https://www.rei.com/action/network/campaign/outdoors-for-all" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.rei.com/action/network/campaign/outdoors-for-all</a><p>though I don't see any direct connections.
Congratulations! You did it!<p><a href="https://youtu.be/lI5w2QwdYik" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/lI5w2QwdYik</a>
Albuquerque is a desert, as such greening the city by planting anything is bad. They can still use parks, but parks there need to respect nature and that means very little grass or trees. (not zero of either, but the ground needs to be mostly bare).<p>Hopefully they don't try to force what would be the correct green for the climate of one place on another. We have too much of that already.