Bloomberg’s Leadership May Hold Clues to His Future Giving, Suggests Fast Company

As Michael R. Bloomberg he eyes the end approaching of his third and final term as New York’s mayor, his Michael R. Bloomberg’s bold leadership on public health and environmental issues may offer clues to the future of his philanthropy, according to an article in the August issue of Fast Company.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has given away hundreds of millions of dollars to charity to date, reveals little to the magazine about his plans after his term ends in at the close of 2013. But the article paints a picture of what the billionaire mayor, whose wealth is valued at $18-billion by Forbes, might have in mind. His foundation, says the magazine, is likely to play a key role in next steps. “What our foundation’s trying to do is fund things nobody else is interested in,” Mr. Bloomberg tells the magazine.

Such programs include the smoking-cessation program to which he pledged $125-million in 2006, and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a collective group of city leaders from around the world who are joining forces to fight global warming. Mr. Bloomberg, who became chairman of the C40 Group and has pledged to give the organization $6-million annually, thinks federal governments can’t address climate change because they get mired in the issue’s politics of the issue of the issue. Cities, on the other hand, and mayors in particular, he believes, are the ones most capable of supporting and enacting creative solutions to the problems associated with climate change.

“It is not the mayor’s job to survey the public and see whether or not the public thinks that climate change is something to worry about,” he says. “It is the mayor’s job to point out today forget—50 years from now—that our water is getting less pure, that our air is getting dirtier, that our congestion is getting worse.”

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