Richard Branson: Business Stripped Bare

I already had a lot of sympathy for the views of Jeffrey Sachs, outlined in his book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet , when he stated: ‘When it comes to problem-solving on a global scale, we remain weighed down by cynicism, defeatism and outdated institutions. A world of untrammelled market forces and competing nation states offers no automatic solutions to these challenges. The key will lie in developing new sustainable technologies and ensuring that they rapidly reach all those who need them.’

So I arrived in New York with Jackie McQuillan and Jean Oelwang, determined to make a public plea for the creation of an Environmental War Room. I intended opening with a Cousteau quotation: ‘There are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United States, no Russia, no China, no Taiwan. Rivers flow unimpeded across the swathes of continents. The persistent tides, the pulse of the sea do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on Earth.’

The president of the UN General Assembly, Srgjan Kerim, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs for Macedonia, chaired the session. As I remember it, this went under the banner ‘Addressing Climate Change: The United Nations and the World at Work’. Srgjan was a gracious host. Among the other participants were the Secretary-General and Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York. Also with me at the conference was the actress Daryl Hannah, a perceptive campaigner on climate change issues.

On 11 February, Srgjan introduced the session: ‘I am very much encouraged in that the climate is changing — in terms of the political climate at least — and that people have replaced ignorance with awareness. Awareness is now our ally but that’s not enough. We are not talking about long-term planning and the world of tomorrow. We’re talking about the emergencies of today.’

He explained that the United Nations was talking about partnerships and that a negotiation process was going on among member nations on setting up targets on greenhouse gases. But he said that only partnerships that included the business world, the media, the non-governmental organisations, and academics (such as those who made a contribution with the IPCC, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and helped politicians understand the magnitude of the problem) would work. He stressed that the UN could not do it all by itself. The chairman said that when he was preparing for his role as president of the General Assembly he had read about climate change — and he acknowledged the creation of the Virgin Earth Challenge. ‘It is not by chance that they are here; they inspired me,’ he said. ‘I invited them… this is why we are here together.’

I started in a sombre tone. At the last minute I dispensed with the poetic Cousteau intro and went straight for the jugular. ‘There are some eminent scientists who already believe that we have gone through the tipping point, that there is nothing mankind can now do to stop the Earth heating up by five degrees, with all the dire consequences that will come with that.’

I then cited Jim Lovelock, saying that he went further than the UN report and he predicted we would lose all the floating ice in the summer months in the Arctic Ocean within ten years and that the five-degree rise is likely within forty years, rather than the eighty years that had been predicted by the United Nations. However, unlike the UN report, he believes that the world will then stabilise at this five-degree rise and that there will be survivors. But much of the lush, comfortable world that we now enjoy will be gone. It will erode into a largely featureless desert. The loss of life is likely to be gigantic, and we will be in a world where not nearly enough food is grown, or enough fresh water is available, to support a large population.

‘Whether you believe we have gone through the tipping point or not, most scientists are in agreement that we are extremely close to it and it doesn’t look particularly good. History has taught us that in times of peril, when all seems lost, bringing together the minds of the greatest to work together with one common goal — survival — is the most effective way to prevail. I’m convinced a winning strategy can be devised. The great minds are out there — but they are fighting in isolation.

‘We all need to play a role to bring all the scientists, engineers and inventors worldwide together to come up with innovative, radical approaches to the issue, including finding a way to extract carbon out of the Earth’s atmosphere. If such a breakthrough could be made, mankind would be able to regulate the Earth’s temperature. By extracting carbon when it’s getting too hot — and by adding carbon when it’s too cold. We have certainly sorted how to add carbon — we just need to sort out how to extract it. But it cannot be beyond the wit of man to crack this problem.’

Then I made a strong offer of partnership to anyone out there really concerned about this. ‘Virgin has put up a $25 million prize to encourage scientists and inventors to put their mind to it. Today we’d like to urge the twenty wealthiest governments to match us in this endeavour so we can make this the largest scientific prize in history — a half-a-billion-dollar prize.’ Surely, this would get some traction! I’m still waiting for a call.

I feel that with enough determination the world can pull together to fight this common enemy. I believe that man’s ingenuity — driven in many cases by business acumen — can get on top of these catastrophic issues. And so I have begun to think of the way dark times focus great minds to a common goal. This is exactly what we need now: everyone has to work together and find the best solution. When Britain was faced with the prospect of war in Europe in the late 1930s, the Royal Air Force’s Operational Requirements Branch determined the specification for a monoplane design to take on the Nazis. They had two projects competing against each other. Reginald Mitchell’s Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane, designed by Camm, had to be able to hit an all-metal bomber 266 times to lethally damage it. The designers had to meet this challenge by firing 1,000 rounds a minute. Both succeeded. There are countless examples of new technologies emerging to overcome the odds in wartime — from the invention of cannons powerful enough to bombard castle walls, to the birth of modern computing among the Enigma code breakers at Bletchley Park in England, a team led by Alan Turing. So why not create a peacetime war room to fight the new common enemy — runaway climate change?

The Environmental War Room will be a unique combination of entrepreneurial muscle, the best possible data and the power to mobilise resources and inspire innovation. Representatives from big business and finance will work alongside representatives from ‘green’ organisations with whom they may previously have been at odds. It will be a collection of ‘best of class’ thinking, brought together for the good of all — and it will be truly global. The plan is to have a small, indepedent team that works closely with partners to ensure we don’t duplicate, but instead connect the dots on what is already happening, provide reliable information and help speed up the solutions.

The war room will identify all the best (and in some cases radical) ideas, map who is doing what, track and prioritise the impact of existing solutions on carbon reduction and the conservation of ecological systems. It will provide analyses of all the data collected, and identify and prioritise the best options.

Leadership is paramount here. During the questions and answers at the UN conference, the journalists were intrigued to find out who would lead our troops into battle — and I was asked several times about Al Gore. I deflected the questions because we were still considering who we should appoint — I acknowledged he would be a great person to lead us in such a battle, but I wasn’t sure how he might take it. We need a Winston Churchill or a Franklin D. Roosevelt figure — someone with the respect, stature and voice to assert their authority.