Hey, Elon Musk: We made a $6 billion plan to end world hunger

Elon Musk says he is ready to sell $6 billion in Tesla stock if United Nations representatives can show how it will “solve world hunger.”

The 50-year-old billionaire, who is the wealthiest person in the world, said he would make the donation in response to comments made by the United Nations’ World Food Programme director, David Beasley, last week.

While speaking to CNN, Beasley called on a one-time donation of $6 billion from the world’s billionaires to “help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them,” citing a “perfect storm” of conflict, climate change and COVID-19.

“What if it was your daughter starving to death? What if it was your family starving to death? Just, wake up, smell the coffee and help,” Beasley said, specifically calling on Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Musk.

As the CNN story picked up steam online, Musk tweeted on Sunday that he would be willing to sell $6 billion in stock from his electric vehicle company, Tesla, to help solve world hunger if the World Food Programme could describe, on Twitter, how it would work.

Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, currently has a total net worth of more than $300 billion, and as per Beasley, 2 per cent of this wealth – which is approximately around $6 billion – will “help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated.” UN Responds Later on, Beasley shared a clarification tweet and wrote: “We’ve never said $6B [billion] would solve world hunger. This is a one-time donation to save 42 million lives during this unprecedented hunger crisis. The $8.4B you refer to covers what we needed to reach 115 million people in 2020 with food assistance. We need $6B plus NOW on top of our existing funding requirements due to the perfect storm from the compounding impact of Covid, conflict and climate shocks.”