Australia started to burn in September 2019. And last time I checked it’s now January 2020 and the fire is burning even stronger. Over 20 have died, 15 million acres have burned, and an estimated billion animals have died, according to ecologists at the University of Sydney. 

The powerful people of the world are doing next to nothing. The world’s billionaires donations to the cause are comical and they deserve the ridicule they are receiving on social media.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, donated $690,000. He earns that much in the time it takes you to make a bagel in the morning. He earns that in the time it takes you to get ready in the morning. He made that much money in the time it took him to tell his assistant to make a donation to Australia. 

Even Australian billionaires are being selfish and donated amusing amounts. In total, Business Insider reported that they have donated 54 million dollars. 

Let me put this in perspective for a moment: after a church partially burned down in France, donated over 500 million dollars within days. There was so much news coverage on this church that I don’t even have to say its precious name. 

The Australian fires didn’t even hit the media until late December after the continent had been burning for months. 

This in part is due to the regular person not caring about Australia either. Donations to rebuild the church eventually reached nearly a billion dollars. And a portion of that came from average people from around the world. These people are not in the same mood for giving when it comes to putting flames covering a continent to rest. 

There are people in the world who are doing their part in stopping this catastrophe. Kaylen Ward, also known as Naked Philanthropist, has raised a million dollars for Australia. She saw that the fires were still happening and wanted to do something about it. 

Ward offered a nude photo of herself to raise funds for Australia. In exchange for a screenshot confirmation of a ten dollar donation to a charity that’s helping Australia, she would send them a naked photo. 

This Twitter offer quickly went viral and the original tweet has over 90,000 retweets. Ward soon had to set up a team to respond to all of the DMs of people’s donation confirmations. 

This idea was innovative and selfless. Ward released a statement to Twitter saying, “I raised [1 million] for Australia at the sake of my naked body being exposed on the internet to millions and millions of people. That’s a scary feeling to be that vulnerable and exposed to the world. But I did it because I wanted to do something good.”

This is a global disaster that will soon affect us all. The smoke from the Australian fires has traveled across the world to South America. 

The world needs to support the world. It can’t just be a girl donating nudes online to raise money for a global natural disaster.