It was a startling announcement. I’ve been thinking about its implications ever since.
On Thursday, September 27, Lynda and Steward Resnick announced a pledge to California Institute of Technology. At $750 million, it was the second largest gift –ever—to a university. It was also the largest gift yet made toward combatting climate change.
The Resnicks, who are co-owners of The Wonderful Company, made a gift of $400 million with an additional $350 million to sponsor climate research and related efforts to create and build the technologies for a sustainable society.
Could this be a sea change in charitable giving?
Charitable Giving: Where the money goes |
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| This table presents a rank ordered list of the major categories for charitable giving for the latest available year, 2018. | ||
| Giving Category | $ Amount (in billions) | Change from Previous Year |
| All Giving | $427.71 | +0.7% |
| Religion | $124.52 | -1.5% |
| Education | $ 58.72 | -1.3% |
| Human Services | $ 51.54 | -0.3% |
| Foundations | $ 50.29 | -6.9% |
| Health Organizations | $ 40.78 | -0.1% |
| Public/Society Benefit | $ 31.21 | -3.7% |
| International Affairs | $ 22.88 | +9.6% |
| Arts, Culture, Humanities | $ 19.49 | +0.3% |
| Environment & Animals | $ 12.70 | +3.6% |
| Source: www.givingusa.org (from Giving USA 2019 for year 2018) | ||
A Modest Decline in the Normal Patterns of Giving
It could be the beginning. To understand, it helps to start with recent broad figures for charitable giving. As you can see from the table, total giving in 2018 was nearly $428 billion, up only slightly from the previous year. While religious giving is almost as great as the next three categories combined, all four experienced slight declines in actual dollars, still more when adjusted for inflation from the previous year.
Indeed, only three categories – International Affairs, up 9.6 percent; Environment and Animals, up 3.6 percent; and Art, Culture, Humanities, up 0.3 percent – showed actual increases in giving year-over-year. Some might speculate that both International Affairs and Environment and Animals are surrogates for climate change.
And that brings us to a troubling question. Suppose, as much evidence suggests, that we are now plunging into a period of massive climate change? What do you do for entire landmasses about to join Atlantis? Should you be concerned with alcoholism and drug addiction when global hunger has replaced post-industrial obesity?
New Questions in a World with a Doubtful Future
Consider the possibility that climate change trumps all other concerns.
Is it important to support education if climate change means the loss of human history? Should we bother to search for a cancer cure when global life expectancy may begin to decline due to food and water scarcity and gigantic population displacements? Should individual lives be treasured if they are seen as just another addition to the total carbon footprint of our species?
Dark Visions
To be sure, those aren’t bright and shiny thoughts. But my questions are far from the darkest visions. Skeptics should consider a book by Roy Scranton, “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization,” (City Lights Open Media, available on Amazon in paperback, audio and kindle editions)
The Anthropocene Epoch, by the way, is a new geological era – the era of man, when human activity began to change the planet. (You can see a brief explanation of the term here, on YouTube.)
By nature, I’m an optimist. I’ve always assumed that no matter what the misdeeds of some (think Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot) that Martin Luther King Junior’s “arc of justice” was also an arc of goodness. On balance, I like to believe, we create more than we destroy. And we do more good than evil.
But perhaps that’s just another expression of anthropomorphic vanity.
I don’t have an answer or a solution here. And I hate thumb-sucking.
So help me out. Let me know if you’re thinking about this differently today than a few years ago. And, if so, what you are thinking? What changes have you made? What changes do you expect to make?
One thing I can say for certain is that if I’m thinking about something, lots of other people are. So let me know. Write me at scott.burns@dallasnews.com. (And, if you think I’ve gone wacko, let me know that, too.)
I’ll read it all and report back.
Related columns:
Scott Burns, “A giving lesson from Charlie Mahoney,” 12/19/2014 https://scottburns.com/a-giving-lesson-from-charlie-mahoney/
Sources and References:
Abigail Hess, “The Wonderful Company co-owners donate $750 million to Caltech for environmental research,” 09/27/2019 https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/the-wonderful-company-co-owners-donate-750-million-to-caltech.html
The wonderful company website: “Who we are” http://www.wonderful.com/who-we-are.html
GivingUSA.org website and annual report: https://givingusa.org/giving-usa-2019-americans-gave-427-71-billion-to-charity-in-2018-amid-complex-year-for-charitable-giving/
The Center for Climate & Security website https://climateandsecurity.org/resources/u-s-government/defense/
This information is distributed for education purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, product, or service.
Photo: George Desipris from Pexels
(c) Scott Burns, 2019