At island retreat, Branson and friends seek to save a world ‘on fire‘
By Andrew Ross Sorkin Published: Thursday, March 20, 2008
British Virgin Islands — Richard Branson was lounging under the starry midnight sky on this palm-dappled speck of an island recently when he popped a sobering question.
“So, do we really think the world is on fire?” Branson, the British magnate and adventurer, asked several guests, as a manservant scurried off to fetch him another glass of pinot grigio.
What he wanted to know was whether his high-powered visitors, among them Larry Page of Google, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, thought global warming threatened the planet.
Branson does – and so did most of his guests. So on this recent weekend on his private hideaway in the crystalline waters between the islands of Tortola and Anegada, they tried to figure out what to do about it and perhaps get richer in the process.
Some of them, like Page, carbon-consciously jet-pooled in from Silicon Valley, where the financiers who bankrolled the Web boom of the 1990s have started chasing the new “New New Thing”: green power. In an era of $100-plus oil, venture capitalists like Vinod Khosla, another invitee, are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into young companies that cook up biofuels and harness the power of the sun.
Blair, who is now a senior adviser to JPMorgan Chase, squeezed in a few idyllic days here between assignments (he left early for Jerusalem).
Another attendee only sort-of showed up. The Medusa, the 198-foot, or 60-meter, yacht owned by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, was moored off Necker Island all weekend, but Allen never came ashore.
At island retreat, Branson and friends seek to save a world ‘on fire’ – The New York Times
Warms the cockles of my blackened heart to see very rich folks lounge at the beach deciding how to rip off the rest of us with schemes based on hysteria.
Branson may already be taking steps in the making money category. He’s moved Virgin’s HQ to Switzerland and if he establishes a hub in this non EU country, he’ll have a competative advantage over other intercontinental carriers since he airplanes won’t pay carbon taxes.
Has it escaped Branson’s keen mind that jets are one of the most egregious emitters of atmospheric GHGs? Having Branson as a champion for saving the planet fron GHGs is like having a notorious pedophile leading a campaign to protect children from sexual predators, is it not? 🙂
Blair is adviser to JP Morgan? Didn’t they just lose 5 billion while gambling in London?
No problem Dirk, as long as it is JP’s money. They make enough profit to cover all that. My fear is that these A-Holes are going to enchant enough morons to rahc into our pockets.