Giving in High Gear.

Silicon Valley's green billionaires might just clean up the planet.

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, I VENTED AT Silicon Valley greed--the scandalous rise in rents, increasing income disparities and the low salaries paid to Latin American immigrants clean the offices of dot-com moguls.

But the Valley doesn't live by greed alone, striking evidence of which can be seen in the recent philanthropic work of former Intel CEO Gordon E. Moore.

In 1998, Moore and his wife Betty donated US$35 million to the nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based Conservation International. At the time, it was one of the largest donations ever given to preserve the environment. In November 2000, Moore outdid himself, by far, giving $5 billion to create the nation's seventh largest charitable foundation to finance higher education, science and medical research and environmental causes. "Never before have we been in such a position to create real change," Moore said at the time.

At 71, Moore is the fifth richest person in the United States-his fortune is estimated at $26 billion by Forbes magazine--and he is renowned as a major developer of the semiconductor. Now retired, he travels at least twice a year with Conservation International. He was traveling when I called his office for comment.

Moore's fortune is being spent on a crusade to save so-called global hot spots, 25 of the most threatened natural places on earth. These areas cover a mere 1.4% of Earth's land surface, yet they shelter 60% of the world's animal and plant species.

An avid outdoorsman with a passion for fishing, Moore has visited several of these spots, such as Brazil's Pantanal wetlands (where he helped persuade several large landowners to sell their properties to Conservation International) and the Amazon jungle.

Latin America and the Caribbean are home to seven of the 25 hot spots, including parts of Mexico and Central America, the Andes mountain range and Brazil. Environmentalists say the beef industry is the most important cause of deforestation from Mexico to Panama; mining, oil exploration and seasonal burning and grazing wreak havoc in Andean nations from Colombia to Chile; and clear-cutting for crops and cattle in Brazil's rainforests and central plateau regions have seriously degraded fragile ecosystems.

Lost ground. Each year, the planet loses about 31 million acres of tropical rainforests. Brazil and Bolivia are among the top four nations in the ranks of destruction, along with Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Some scientists argue that these places can be saved for as little as $5 billion over the next 10 years-money that could be obtained from a new generation of green billionaires like Moore. Their donations could finance new national parks and wildlife reserves, buy timber and mining rights and pay for sustainable development projects. Instead of clear-cutting to graze cattle or slash-and-burn subsistence farming, forest residents could earn more with economic ventures such as eco-tourism, tropical fruits, pharmaceutical plants, nuts, cocoa and fruit juice-and save their surroundings.

Does this mean a small group of billionaires will achieve what thousands of environmental activists have tried to do in vain? Maybe not.

"That Gordon Moore is leading the charge is really inspiring," says Gretchen C. Daily, director of the Tropical Research Program at Stanford University "But you just can't go in there, buy up a hot spot and declare victory. We need a revolution in the way people think about the environment."

While we wait for that race to the barricades, however, it's nice to know people like Moore are leaving behind such a progressive--and generous--legacy.