This Changes Everything

“The Green Billionaires Won’t Save Us” (Pages 230-232)

Klein tells the story of billionaire businessman Richard Branson’s conversion to the green cause. He was visited by Al Gore in 2006 and convinced of the huge danger the planet was facing from global warming. A year later, he pledged to spend $3 billion on developing biofuels as alternatives to oil and gas and on technology to battle climate change. The funds would come directly from the profits made in his fossil fuel-intensive transport businesses. He also launched the Virgin Earth Challenge, offering $25 million to an inventor who could find a way to take 1 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere.

He put his own business and fortune forward as a test case for how billionaires and big business could voluntarily drive a climate solution. His pledge was met with great approval from major politicians and environmentalist groups, but Klein notes that his goal was finding a miracle, new-technology solution that would enable his main businesses and way of life to carry on as usual.

“Billionaires and Broken Dreams” (Pages 232-238)

For moderate greens, Branson was a dream come true: He showed that fossil fuel-reliant companies could be convinced to change and could lead the way to a green future, using profit as a potent tool. This offered the possibility of a solution that isn’t about confronting the rich and powerful but persuading them to join the good fight.

Klein lists a few other major green philanthropists, including Jeremy Grantham and Warren Buffet, both of whom, she argues, talk a good talk on fighting climate change and lay down considerable funds but continue to pollute and profit from pollution. Buffet, for example, owns several, huge, coal-burning utilities and holds large stakes in ExxonMobil while also being a major player in the reinsurance business (which profits from providing insurance against increasingly common natural disasters).

She notes positively the case of Tom Steyer, a major donator to climate causes who left his business because he found it to conflict with his environmentalist principles. By contrast, she points out that Michael Bloomberg, T. Bonne Pickens, and Bill Gates have used their green philanthropy to shape the kinds of climate solutions on offer, and none of them have been convinced by renewable energy, looking instead to “silver bullet techno-fix” solutions (237) (in Gates’s case) or to natural gas, in the case of Pickens. Machines that suck carbon out of the atmosphere and clever types of nuclear reactors offer the possibility of a solution to the climate crisis that doesn’t require changing how we live or how our societies and economies are configured, hence their appeal to billionaire philanthropists.

Branson, Klein points out, offers the most interesting and promising case of the green philanthropists because he pledged to lead a new model of green business and green capitalism and put his own company on the line as a test case to show what was possible. Ten years on from his bold pledge, Klein says it’s time to check in on the progress he’s made.

“The Pledge that Turned into a Gesture” (Pages 238-244)

Klein reflects on what happened to Branson’s bold pledge. Its goal was to discover a new green fuel, and were it successful, it would make Branson considerably wealthier and more powerful. That said, no miracle biofuel has emerged from Branson’s research and green investments. Corn ethanol was tried but did not deliver. He shifted instead to a wider portfolio of green projects with fewer risks and more short-term profit potential.

In terms of the scale of investment, it hasn’t come close to the initial promise of $3 billion by 2016; as of 2013, a total investment of around $230 million leaves Branson a long way from that headline-grabbing target. The pledge has been renamed a “gesture.” The figures and promises have become vaguer, and his focus has shifted to bringing green technology to his two private Caribbean islands. As Klein points out, there’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s a long way from the green business revolution he promised.

At the same time, Branson has been continuing with his climate-damaging business interests. In 2007, he launched a new airline to compete in the American domestic market, which expanded quickly to running 177 flights a day to 23 destinations by 2013. He also set up a UK domestic airline and extended several new routes for Virgin Atlantic internationally. In turn, Virgin Group's greenhouse emissions increased by 40%, and a study showed the new Virgin fleets to be faring badly on relative fuel efficiency. Branson has invested a lot in expanding airlines, and so far, they have been losing money, which has meant less money for his green pledge investments.

At the same time, Branson has found huge sums to invest in fossil fuel-intensive ventures like F1 racing and Virgin Galactic, his dream of starting commercial space travel. The estimated $200 million invested in this fossil fuel-intensive luxury is comparable to the money he has spent at the same time on his green projects. When asked about the $3 billion pledge Branson points to shortfalls in his airline business, but he wasn’t short of money to spend elsewhere. Klein notes his net worth has risen from 2.8 billion in 2006 to 5.1 billion in 2014.

“The Incredible Disappearing Earth Challenge” (Pages 244-248)

Klein looks at what happened to The Virgin Earth Challenge, the $25 million prize Branson offered for a technology that could pull carbon from the atmosphere on a wide scale. By 2010, 2,500 ideas had been received, but as Branson put it, there was no “slam dunk winner” (245). In 2011, he reinvented the prize at an event in Calgary, Alberta (near the tar sands and home to the Canadian oil industry).

Branson’s Sustainability Consultant, Alan Knight (someone with ties to the fossil fuel industry) presented the 11 most promising entries to investors and oil companies at the event, encouraging their interest and investment in these technologies. The choice of venue is telling: the prize was being pitched to people with a huge vested interest in the continued burning of tar sand oils, which are three to four times more carbon intensive than conventional fossil fuels. Knight and Branson pitched the 11 entries to this audience as a way of continuing to extract and burn oil. These tech ideas held the promise of taking the carbon dioxide from the air that was causing climate change so we could carry on as normal. Worse still, several of the ideas showed how they could take that carbon dioxide and recycle or sell it.

Here, the choice of audience is key. The unconventional methods of oil extraction needed to tap into the vast oil reserves in Alberta require huge amounts of carbon dioxide as part of the drilling and tapping process. If viable, these technologies, which were originally designed to help the planet, could be used to gather and sell carbon dioxide to companies to extract and burn oil that was previously thought to be unreachable. The good of drawing carbon dioxide from the air would be canceled by its use to recover and burn more carbon. As such, Branson’s bold green agenda has fallen a long way short of its initial hopes and ambitions. It’s looking considerably dirtier.

“A Regulatory Avoidance Strategy” (Pages 248-255)

Klein takes a further look at Branson’s brand of environmentalism. Relaunching the Virgin Earth Challenge in Alberta sent a clear message. At the time, there was a movement in Europe to ban the use of carbon-intensive tar sand oil. Branson was appealed to boycott it in his airlines by a coalition of environmentalists, but he refused and instead took the Earth Challenge to Alberta, effectively legitimizing the oil sector’s work there.

The possibility presented by the prize of a miracle technology solution, just over the horizon, could be seen as a way of justifying continuing pollution, distracting from the real issue and buying time to pollute further.

Branson has also thrown his weight behind the controversial Heathrow London airport expansion and come out strongly against climate regulations and higher taxes on aviation. There is, Klein points out, a significant disconnect between his green talk and the reality of many of his business decisions. Some have gone as far as to see Branson’s conversion to the green cause and his $3 billion pledge as a cynical ploy, a way of appearing like the good guy and convincing governments that business can solve the problem of the environment best without interference, taxation, and regulation. Klein points out that around the time Branson launched his green crusade, tighter regulations to curb emissions were on the table. This could all be just another clever piece of branding to “take some of the heat out of aviation as a political issue” (250); after Branson’s pledge, one could feel good about flying again, knowing the profits from flights and carbon emissions were being driven into finding a long-term environmental solution. His stance was that “business is the key to solving the financial and environmental crisis” (251).

Klein offers a more charitable interpretation. She grants Branson’s good intentions in trying to help avert climate chaos and acknowledges he has come up with some creative mechanisms to channel fossil fuel profits into green research. However, she argues, Branson’s good intentions were always going to come second to his business instincts and the capitalist imperative to grow and make more money: “Branson set out to harness the profit motive to solve the climate crisis but the temptation to profit from practices worsening the crisis proved too strong to resist.” (251). The bottom line: In capitalism, profit motives come first.

Klein argues that this shows how capitalism in itself can’t save the world from the crisis that it played a large part in creating: “We’ve tried it Branson’s way. The soaring emissions speak for themselves”. (252) We are no closer to a miracle technology that will waive the problem away and let us carry on as normal. The same goes for other billionaires turned green saviors, green consumerism, and other market solutions like cap-and-trade and fracking.

Klein stresses that Branson was onto something with the idea at the heart of his pledge: channeling profits from the polluting sectors into green solutions. However, large fossil fuel businesses and wealthy individuals cannot be relied on to do this voluntarily. We need public legislation to tax and regulate polluting industries to enact and enforce this change.