Elon Musk Is Fighting to End World Hunger?
Elon Musk had offered to donate $6 billion to end world hunger if a reasonable plan was proposed ahead of time.
Elon Musk seems to always be one to start a fight if he thinks he’s in the right. That much has been apparent throughout his time with Tesla, SpaceX, and now, of course, Twitter. But few might know that he has been battling another world as well. Elon Musk has ramped up the fight to end world hunger.
David Beasley, the director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme, had been engaged in a Twitter back-and-forth with Tesla CEO and the world’s wealthiest person, Elon Musk, whose net worth sits at approximately $288 billion. It was all about Musk shedding some of that wealth to end world hunger.
To be clear, the back-and-forth between the two had not been contentious in the least, more like a challenge and then information gathering. It all started when Beasley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, was speaking on an interview with CNN in which he put forth to the billionaires of the world to “step up now, on a one-time basis” to wipe out world hunger. Beasley then went on to specifically call out the two richest men in the world: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Beasley said that giving $6 billion, or 2% of Musk’s then net worth, would end world hunger. To Elon Musk’s credit, he listened to Beasley and through Twitter, responded in kind by telling Beasley and the World Food Programme that if they could fully describe how they plan to use the $6 billion on his Twitter thread to solve world hunger, then he (Musk) would sell Tesla stock to make it happen.
Elon Musk added a caveat to his request, stating that the response must be open-source accounting. He wants the public (and the world for that matter) to see exactly where the money is going and how it will solve world hunger.
Beasley then went to work on a 1,000-word executive summary explaining exactly how it would happen. The number went up to $6.6 billion but laid out in exact detail how the United Nations would handle deploying meals and vouchers to feed over 40 million starving people across the 43 countries that the UN says are “on the brink of famine.”
In the executive summary Beasley posted and linked to Elon Musk, the World Food Programme says $3.5 billion would purchase and deliver food directly. He said that $2 billion of the funds would be for “cash and food vouchers (to include the transaction fees) in places where markets can function.” Beasley said that $700 million more would need to be spent to manage new food programs that would be adapted to each specific country’s conditions and to also make sure the food assistance reaches those who are most in need.
Finally, Beasley said another $400 million would need to be used to deal with supply chain coordination and for those in the program’s “operations management, administration, and accountability.” Along with Beasley’s link to his executive summary, he noted in a tweet, “The world is on fire,” Beasley wrote. “I’ve been warning about the perfect storm brewing due to Covid, conflict, climate shocks & now, rising supply chain costs. IT IS HERE.”
He then told Elon Musk that he had asked, and the World Food Programme responded. “You asked for a clear plan & open books. Here it is! We’re ready to talk with you – and anyone else – who is serious about saving lives.”
The world was already at a world hunger crisis tipping point even before COVID began to dominate. Climate change and mass conflict in third-world countries were taking their brutal toll, leaving over 42 million people fighting for the basics in food.
So far, there has been no response from Elon Musk, but it hasn’t stopped people from chiming in with their two cents. Many have been critical of the money Beasley is asking for, wanting to know what happens next, thinking a one-time $6.6 billion payment won’t solve the issue at hand.
Not everyone, though, was questioning Beasley’s $6.6 billion request.
Still, there were more questions and comments concerning the future. Is the $6.6 billion the end-all or just a stop-gap? And will Elon Musk really go for it? You can read Beasley’s 1,000-word executive summary here.
As an update to this, with Elon Musk turning over a considerable piece of his fortune in order to buy Twitter, to the tune of $44 billion dollars, it appears the world hunger issue has been tabled for now. This isn’t all that surprising in the grand scheme of things, seeing as how this was mostly political blustering from the get-go.
And with Twitter apparently taking a good deal of his time of late, especially as he works to overhaul the social media platform, there is some chance that this whole thing will go away completely.
That being said, we’ve seen Elon Musk more than willing to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to massive, macro moves. It’s really been the story of his career in starting Tesla, bankrolling SpaceX and eventually purchasing Twitter. The dude has that go-big or go-home mentality that few others possess.
And with global hunger issues not going anywhere anytime soon, it stands to reason we see him round back on this issue at some point. When you are the reported richest man in the world, the bigger the problem, the bigger the desire to sometimes get involved.
