Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumHeroic Entrepreneur Delivers Jack Shit (Less Than 10%) Of Pledged $3 Billion For Clean Fuel
Richard Branson has failed to deliver on his much-vaunted pledge to spend $3bn (£1.8bn) over a decade to develop a low carbon fuel. Seven years into the pledge, Branson has paid out only a small fraction of the promised money well under $300m according to a new book by the writer and activist, Naomi Klein.
The British entrepreneur famously promised to divert a share of the profits from his Virgin airlines empire to find a cleaner fuel, after a 2006 private meeting with Al Gore.
Branson went on to found a $25m Earth prize for a technology that could safely suck 1bn tons of carbon a year from the atmosphere. In 2009, he set up the Carbon War Room, an NGO which works on business solutions for climate change. But by Kleins estimate, Bransons firm commitment of $3bn failed to materialise.
So the sceptics might be right: Bransons various climate adventures may indeed prove to have all been a spectacle, a Virgin production, with everyones favourite bearded billionaire playing the part of planetary saviour to build his brand, land on late night TV, fend off regulators, and feel good about doing bad, Klein writes in This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs The Climate.
EDIT
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/13/richard-branson-failed-climate-change-pledge
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)scamming us.
Perhaps, as he hints, at the moment there just isn't any place to invest that 3 billion.
Nihil
(13,508 posts)He's funded a number of feasibility studies through his "prizes" but isn't going to throw
the big bills into the pot until he can see what is going to actually deliver.
I like Naomi Klein but if she wants to talk about dipshits who promise things without delivering,
she only needs to list the political attendees at the various COP conferences ...
PoutrageFatigue
(416 posts)....The one thing that Richard Branson is very, very good at, is promoting Richard Branson..