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Rabat – World Food Programme (WFP) Director David Beasley has called on the world’s richest billionaires to help save 42 million people from starvation.
As the world’s richest billionaires unveil plans for their own space station, or complain about paying taxes, Beasley raised the issue of 42 million people “knocking on famine’s door.”
Beasley took to CNN to plead with the world’s two richest men to “just help me with them, one time.” The Nobel-Prize winning WFP’s director described the choice as “not complicated” amid a “heartbreaking” crisis.
Beasley is asking Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk for $6 billion that would save 42 million people from starving. That amount may seem substantial at first glance, yet Bezos alone has seen his net worth increase by $64 billion alone over the last year. Musk in the last week alone, gained in net wealth the total $6 billion required to save 42 million from imminent starvation.
While people are facing “a perfect storm of conflict, climate change and COVID-19,” Beasley is requesting for 10% of the increase in Bezos’ wealth. Bezos and Musk together are worth nearly half a trillion dollars, with their fortunes only set to further swell.
Both billionaires have used their vast wealth on projects that appear geared towards building their prestige or establish a legacy with pioneering projects in space exploration that compete with already existent state-funded space programs.
“People that are literally going to die”
WFP Director Beasley is now asking for a one-time donation of 0.36% of their net worth, emphasizing that “governments are tapped out.” The CNN anchor interviewing Beasley highlighted that billionaires had gained almost $1 trillion in wealth during the pandemic while both Bezos and Musk had splurged on space programs.
“The world’s in trouble and you are telling me you can’t give 0.36% of your net worth increase to help the world in trouble in times like this?” Beasley asked the billionaires in question “what if it was your daughter starving to death, what if it was your family starving to death?”
Beasley told billionaires to “wake up, smell the coffee and help” and extended an invitation to “any billionaire” to “come with me on one trip and let me show you the reality.”
The WFP Director emphasized that the 400 richest billionaires’ had seen their net worth rise by $1.8 trillion over the past year. “This isn’t a humanitarian scheme to raise money, I want to put the World Food Programme out of business,” Beasley highlighted.
Beasley emphasized he only needed a one-time donation of “$6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them.”
On October 20, Beasley wrote on Twitter that “every 17 hours a billionaire is created, and every 17 hours, 17,000 people die from hunger. Shame on us. Yes, make $$$$. AND, yes, help those in need. Do both!”
Both Musk and Bezos have not responded to the once-in-a-lifetime offer to save 42 million lives. Musk and Bezos instead tweeted about their latest space adventurism.
