Eight years ago, Richard Branson, the tie-loathing adventurer (as his Twitter feed has it) and figurehead of Virgin Atlantic airlines, Virgin Galactic space travel and so on, pledged to invest around $3bn (£1.85bn) in green technologies by 2016. A $25m investment went into the Virgin Earth Challenge, a prize for inventing something to suck up all the planet-wrecking carbon emitted by gas-guzzling industries like his own. Some goes into developing low-carbon fuels. Some pays for the snazzy Carbon War Room, a sort of green-tech Dragons' Den. "Gaia capitalism", Branson has called his vision. "We have to make it a win-win for all concerned."
That 2016 deadline is fast approaching. How much, Naomi Klein asked Branson, will he have put into his pledge by then? "I suspect it will be less than $1bn right now," he confessed. He has been busy elsewhere in the meantime, launching Virgin America airlines, V Australia airlines, Virgin Atlantic Little Red airlines, and investing heavily in Virgin Galactic, perhaps because as he has started saying he has a plan to move to Mars. Klein doesn't necessarily follow the people who see Branson's green shenanigans as "a cynical ploy" to build his brand and confuse his critics. But you can grant him his good intentions and still think all this greenwash doesn't make a lot of sense.
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