Broughton Quarterly - Winter 2007 - (Page 33)

“I’m an airline owner ; I would dearly like it to go away. It’s certainly inconvenient to me to acknowledge that global warming exists.” Branson’s Necker Island (opposite) is a green traveler’s paradise, a 7-acre tropical haven powered by wind and solar energy. Ever the visionary, Sir Richard (left) hopes the eco-friendly isle will inspire the rest of the Caribbean to follow suit. Jesse Nash: Why are issues like global warming now such a concern to businessmen and politicians, when the warning signs have been around for decades? Richard Branson: Good question. I read a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist a few years ago and it sent me down the wrong path. It’s really only been in the last two to three years that I’ve started reading books like The Weather Maker by Tim Flannery and meeting scientists, and I’ve realized how wrong one can be. How worryingly wrong one can be. Books like The Skeptical Environmentalist were quite pleasant. You started thinking, well, we’ve had nice Mediterranean summers and winters, and we’ll have a very pleasant life. That may well be the case, but the horrendous effects on the poorer countries is ghastly. And if global warming continues on its current path, it’s not just going to be Bangladesh that’s going to be affected. It’s going to be New York and many other places, as well. And then, ultimately, obviously we’re going to start losing species completely…Mankind itself is going to be threatened. So, anyway, I accepted this and accepted that I went down the wrong path. What do you say to critics who think there is a lot of bandwagoning on this issue? There is not one sensible scientist who is doubting that we have a global warming issue now. What’s worrying is you still get articles saying that there are some skeptics out there. But the skeptics are all, most invariably, the oil companies or the coal companies. There is no rational person who has got a question mark on it. I’m an airline owner; I would dearly like it to go away. [Laughs] It’s certainly inconvenient to me to acknowledge that global warming exists. If it didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about it. And I wouldn’t have to invest a lot of money into an industry where, obviously, there are a lot of big risks in doing it. If we’re going to put three billion into a clean fuel industry, and if conventional fuel budgets collapse, it’s going to cost us a lot of money. But it’s something I feel we should do. I think it’s the right thing to do. Even if there wasn’t a hundred percent chance of global warming, even if there was just a twenty percent chance, and if that is ultimately going to destroy the world, then, my God, we’d be taking out insurance. I mean, if there was only a twenty percent chance of New York being hit by an earthquake and a potentially avoidable catastrophe in a few years time, I mean, every single person in New York would be working to avoid it. The big problem we’ve got with CO2 is that people can’t see it. It’s a bush fire getting brighter and brighter by the day, but people can’t see it. If they can’t see it, it’s not tangible. It’s not real. I think that’s the real problem…The only way to actually get people to take action is to come up with ideas that make people money. That’s always an effective way of www.BroughtonQuarterly.com 33 http://www.BroughtonQuarterly.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Broughton Quarterly - Winter 2007

Broughton Quarterly - Winter 2007 Contents Contributors Plugged In Notes Calendar 1000Words Destination Wine & Cuisine Introducing Doctor Robot In the Desert Stillness Richard Branson Marketplace Spotlight

Broughton Quarterly - Winter 2007

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