Saving For The Future

With climate disasters on the rise, philanthropists are focusing their efforts toward protecting the planet.

- Alyson Krueger

At the start of 2020, Chris Larsen, who made his fortune as co-founder of e-Loan and Ripple, among other technology start-ups, considered himself an advocate for the planet.

“I always thought I was doing a good job on sustainability,” he tells Robb Report. Climate change was high on his list of priorities when elections rolled around, and after he started an online lending company, “I thought, ‘Think of all the paper applications I have eliminated’!”

But then the climate in Northern California, where he lives with his children, now aged 12 and 15, started becoming unbearable. In August 2020, there were so many fires in his area that it was unsafe to breathe the ash-filled air. “It was the height of COVID, it was August, and for two months the smoke was so thick you couldn’t go outside because it was dangerous,” he says. “The kids were in masks inside, and (I thought), ‘Wait a minute, this is an untenable situation’.”

On top of that, his family’s annual hiking trip to Yosemite, one they had been taking for 20 years, was cancelled because of the blazes. There were so many fires Larsen kept thinking, “There won’t be any trees left in California.” And his fears weren’t entirely unfounded.

As a philanthropist, he had donated to many causes. At the start of the pandemic, for example, Larsen gave US$5 million to food banks in the Bay Area. But after the summer of 2020, he realised he needed to dedicate all his efforts to mitigating climate change. “It was right in my face,” he says.