Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the “tech-for-good” discourse of Silicon Valley billionaires and their foundations. They present an optimistic perspective on the role of Silicon Valley in the climate crisis, overstating the potential of technofixes and understating the economic and political interests at stake.

Paper long abstract:

Tech moguls Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates use their not-for-profit organizations to present themselves as wealthy individuals that want to “do good”. Increasingly, these funds - the Bezos Earth Fund, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation - have been focused on the climate crisis. In the light of the conflation of climate politics, philanthropy and corporate interest that these funds represent, I ask: how do the funds and the individuals behind them claim to play a role in the climate crisis? What political message and vision on a better world can be found in their plans?

The aim of the paper is to develop a closer understanding of the worldview expressed by green tech philanthropy and of the personas of tech moguls through a close visual and textual analysis of tech-for-good discourse (websites and press conferences). I forward a critique of Silicon Valley’s climate ideology as it takes shape in the form of CEO activism. What is being sold, I argue, is a vision of these philanthropists as political advisors, ethical business partners and environmental crusaders, as well as a technocratic approach to climate crisis solutions. Finally, I relate these philanthropical practices to (new) ideological movements such as longtermism, effective altruism and effective accelerationism. The future visions that are materializing in Silicon Valley present, I argue, a limited, "ecomodernist" understanding of the climate crisis, overstating the potential of and need for technofixes, while imagining green energy sources as immaterial and inexhaustible.