Over the past two weeks, there were two announcements in the newspapers which caught my particular attention.
On September 21, Sir Richard Branson made headlines the world over by committing $3 billion dollars over the next 10 years from his various business units toward research and development in technologies to fight global climate change.
2006-09-21 – BBC NEWS – Branson makes $3bn climate pledge.pdf
But then on September 28, Sir Richard again made headlines by unveiling the model of spaceship that his new venture, Virgin Galactic, will build in an effort to open space up to tourism.
2006-09-28 – BBC NEWS – Branson unveils Virgin spaceship.pdf
At the first article I applauded, thinking here is a guy with money and influence that is finally willing to stand up and do something important with it.
At the second, I am severly disheartened, and realize that Sir Richard clearly has either an extremely short attention span, can’t add 2 and 2, or has other motivations.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with the entrepreneurial spirit seeing an opportunity to make money with more climate friendly technologies. The whole concept of the Green Party’s Tax Shifting policy is to support exactly that.
But I do have a problem with Sir Richard pledging money to the climate change battle because it is politically expedient and makes good headlines, saying at the press conference that we cannot be the generation that ruins the environment for our children, and then, a mere one week later, promoting a completely contradictory venture which has no merits other than making money at the expense of those future generations.
He has clearly shown that he does not really care about those future generations or has no real understanding that the real challenge of climate change comes from those among us who believe that we can keep on with business as usual and rely solely on technological fixes to clean up our messes, rather than addressing the mental attitude that allows us to pollute ecosystems in the first place.
Another aspect to this, of course, is to view both stories from the persective of Peak Oil which should have several impacts:
- The price of $100,000 pounds for a trip to space will surely be higher when oil is soaring to hundreds of dollars per barrel, putting the venture out of reach for the merely rich and leaving only the obscenely rich as potential customers.
- Those climate change R&D dollars are supposed to be funded by profits from Sir Richards airline units, which really don’t have much of a future when fuel is too expensive for people to fly.
- But then again, if people aren’t flying, they are not polluting so much, so this might be a good trade off.
So will I watch Sir Richards reality TV show? I think not.
