by Naomi Klein
With this in mind, several of Branson’s group of eleven finalists have pitched themselves as the start-ups best positioned to supply the oil industry with the steady stream of carbon dioxide it needs to keep the oil flowing. Ned David, president of Kilimanjaro Energy, one of Branson’s finalists, claimed that machines like his have the potential to release huge volumes of oil once assumed untappable, similar to what fracking did for natural gas. It could be, he said, “a money gusher.” He told Fortune, “The prize is nearly 100 billion barrels of U.S. oil if you can economically capture CO2 from air. That’s $10 trillion of oil.”51
David Keith, who has been studying geoengineering for twenty-five years, and who is the inventor of another one of the carbon-capture machines to make Branson’s list, was slightly more circumspect. He explained that if carbon that was removed from the air were used to extract oil, “you’re making hydrocarbon fuel with a very low life-cycle [of] carbon emissions.” Maybe not so low, because according to a study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, EOR techniques are estimated to be almost three times as greenhouse-gas intensive as conventional extraction. And the oil is still going to be burned, thereby contributing to climate change. While more research is needed on the overall carbon footprint of EOR, one striking modeling study examined a similar proposal that would use CO2 captured not from the air but directly from coal plants. It found that the emissions benefit of sequestering CO2 would be more than canceled out by all that extra oil: on a system-wide basis, the process could still end up releasing about four times as much CO2 as it would save.52
Moreover, much of this is oil that is currently considered unrecoverable—i.e., not even counted in current proven reserves, which as we know already represents five times more than we can safely burn. Any technology that can quadruple proven reserves in the U.S. alone is a climate menace, not a climate solution. As David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council puts it, air capture has “morphed very rapidly from a technology whose purpose is to remove CO2 to a technology whose purpose is to produce CO2.”53 And Richard Branson has gone from promising to help get us off oil to championing technologies aimed at extracting and burning much more of it. Some prize.
A Regulatory Avoidance Strategy?
There was something else worth noting about Branson’s decision to allow his Earth Challenge to cobrand with the Alberta oil sector. The Calgary event took place at a moment when the San Francisco–based Forest Ethics had been upping the pressure on large corporations to boycott oil derived from the Alberta tar sands because of its high-carbon footprint. A fierce debate was also unfolding over whether new European fuel standards would effectively ban the sale of tar sands oil in Europe. And as early as 2008, the NRDC had sent open letters to fifteen U.S. and Canadian airlines asking them “to adopt their own corporate ‘Low Carbon Fuel Standard’ and to publicly oppose the expansion” of fuel from the tar sands and other unconventional sources, and to avoid these fuels in their own fleets. The group made a special appeal to Branson, citing his leadership in “combating global warming and developing alternative fuels.”54
It seemed like a fair enough demand: the Virgin chief had enjoyed enormous publicity for his very public climate-change promises. None of them had yielded much, but surely, while he was waiting for an algae-based jet fuel to materialize or for someone to win the Earth Prize, Branson could make the relatively minor concession of refusing to power his rapidly expanding fleet of airplanes with one of the most carbon-intensive fuels on the market.
Branson did not make that commitment. Alan Knight publicly stated, “I do not believe supporting a boycott is fair” and claimed that it was “impossible for an airline to boycott fuel made from oil sands”—a position contradicted by many experts.VII55 But Branson went further than refusing to participate in the boycott. By bringing the Earth Challenge to Calgary, Branson in effect did for the tar sands what his grand (but largely ephemeral) climate gestures have been doing for Virgin all these years: dangled the prospect of a miracle technological fix for carbon pollution just over the horizon in order to buy time to continue escalating emissions, free of meddlesome regulation. Indeed it can be argued—and some do—that Branson’s planet-savior persona is an elaborate attempt to avoid the kind of tough regulatory action that was on the horizon in the U.K. and Europe precisely when he had his high-profile green conversion.
After all, 2006 was a pivotal year for the climate change debate. Public concern was rising dramatically, particularly in the U.K. where the movement’s radical, grassroots flank was dominated by young activists who were determined to stop the expansion of the fossil fuel economy in its tracks. Much as they oppose fracking today, these activists used daring direct action to oppose new airports, as well as the highly controversial proposed new runway at Heathrow, which the airport claims would increase its number of flights by more than 50 percent.56
At the same time, the U.K. government was considering a broad climate change bill that would have impacted the airline sector, and Gordon Brown, Britain’s chancellor at the time, had attempted to discourage flying with a marginal increase of the air passenger duty. In addition, the EU was entertaining a proposal to lift the airline industry’s exemption from paying a Value Added Tax and introduce an additional tax on aviation fuel. All these measures taken together posed a significant threat to the profit margins of Branson’s chosen industry.57
Branson often talks a good game about supporting government regulation (saying he favors a global carbon tax, for instance), but he consistently opposes serious climate regulations when they are actually on the table. He has, for instance, been a hyperbolic, even bullying advocate of British airport expansion, including that new runway at Heathrow. He is so hungry for the expansion, in fact, that he has claimed, at various points, that its absence “will turn us into a third world country,” that “global corporations will turn their back on London in favour of better connected cities,” and that “Heathrow will become a symbol of British decline.”)VIII58
This wasn’t the only time Branson’s claims to be committed to waging war on carbon came into conflict with his hard-nosed business instincts. He came out against the proposed climate tax in Australia and blasted a plan for a global tax on airlines, claiming it “would tax the industry out of existence.”IX59
It’s this pattern that convinced Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth U.K. that Branson’s reinvention as a guilt-ridden planet wrecker volunteering to use his carbon profits to solve the climate crisis was little more than a cynical ploy. “It comes across as a charitable act,” Childs warned of the $3 billion pledge, “but I think he is also trying to take some of the heat out of aviation as a political issue. If you are running a transport company, you must have realized by now that climate change is going to be a massive issue for you.”60
Was he right? Well, one immediate impact of Branson’s pledge was that, all of a sudden, you could feel good about flying again—after all, the profits from that ticket to Barbados were going into Branson’s grand plan to discover a miracle green fuel. It was an even more effective conscience cleaner than carbon offsets (though Virgin sold those, too). As for punitive regulations and taxes, who would want to get in the way of an airline whose proceeds were going to such a good cause? And this was always Branson’s argument: let him grow, unencumbered by regulation, and he will use that growth to finance our collective green transition. “If you hold industry back, we will not, as a nation, have the resources to come up with the new clean-energy solutions we need,” Branson argued. “Business is the key to solving the financial and environmental crisis.”61
So the skeptics might be right: Branson’s various climate adventures may indeed prove to have all been a spectacle, a Virgin production, with everyone’s favorite bearded billionaire playing the part of planetary savior to build his brand, land on late night TV, fend off regulators, and feel good about doing bad. It is certainly noteworthy that the show has been significantly
less voluble ever since the Conservative-led government of David Cameron came to power in the U.K. and made it clear that Branson and his ilk faced no serious threat of top-down climate regulations.
But even if the constantly moving goalposts in Branson’s climate initiatives merit that kind of cynicism, there is also a more charitable interpretation of what has gone wrong. This interpretation would grant Branson his obvious love of nature (whether it’s watching the tropical birds on his private island or ballooning over the Himalayas). And it would credit him with genuinely trying to figure out ways to reconcile running carbon-intensive businesses with a profound personal desire to help slow species extinction and avert climate chaos. It would acknowledge, too, that between the pledge, the prize, and the Carbon War Room, Branson has thought up some rather creative mechanisms to try to channel profits generated from warming the planet into projects that could help keep it cool.
But if we do grant Branson these good intentions, then the fact that all of these projects have failed to yield results is all the more relevant. 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 great to resist. Again and again, the demands of building a successful empire trumped the climate imperative—whether that meant lobbying against needed regulation, or putting more planes in the air, or pitching oil companies on using his pet miracle technologies to extract more oil.
The idea that capitalism and only capitalism can save the world from a crisis created by capitalism is no longer an abstract theory; it’s a hypothesis that has been tested and retested in the real world. We are now able to set theory aside and take a hard look at the results: at the celebrities and media conglomerates that were supposed to model chic green lifestyles who have long since moved on to the next fad; at the green products that were shunted to the back of the supermarket shelves at the first signs of recession; at the venture capitalists who were supposed to bankroll a parade of innovation but have come up far short; at the fraud-infested, boom-and-bust carbon market that has failed miserably to lower emissions; at the natural gas sector that was supposed to be our bridge to renewables but ended up devouring much of their market instead. And most of all, at the parade of billionaires who were going to invent a new form of enlightened capitalism but decided that, on second thought, the old one was just too profitable to surrender.
We’ve tried it Branson’s way. (And Buffett’s, Bloomberg’s, Gates’s, and Pickens’s way.) The soaring emissions speak for themselves. There will, no doubt, be more billionaire saviors who make splashy entrances, with more schemes to rebrand capitalism. The trouble is, we simply don’t have another decade to lose pinning our hopes on these sideshows. There is plenty of room to make a profit in a zero-carbon economy; but the profit motive is not going to be the midwife for that great transformation.
This is important because Branson was onto something with his pledge. It makes perfect sense to make the profits and proceeds from the businesses that are most responsible for exacerbating the climate crisis help pay for the transition to a safer, greener future. Branson’s original idea—to spend 100 percent of the proceeds from his trains and airlines on figuring out a way to get off fossil fuels—was, at least in theory, exactly the kind of thing that needs to take place on a grand scale. The problem is that under current business models, once the shareholders have taken a slice, once the executives have given themselves yet another raise, once Richard Branson has launched yet another world-domination project and purchased another private island, there doesn’t seem to be much left over to fulfill the promise.
Similarly, Alan Knight was onto something when he told his tar sands clients that they should use their technological prowess to invent the low-carbon and renewable energy sources of the future. As he said, “The potential narrative is perfect.”62 The hitch, of course, is that, so long as this vision is left to the enlightened self-interest of oil and airline executives, it will remain just that: a narrative—or rather, a fairy tale. Meanwhile, the industry will use its technology and resources to develop ever more ingenious and profitable new ways to extract fossil fuels from the deepest recesses of the earth, even as it fiercely defends its public subsidies and resists the kind of minor increases to its tax and royalty rates that would allow governments to fund green transitions without its help.
In this regard, Virgin is particularly brazen. The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers estimates that Virgin Trains has received more than £3 billion (the equivalent of $5 billion) in subsidies since British railways were privatized in the late 1990s—significantly more than Branson pledged to the green fund. As recently as 2010, Branson and the Virgin Group received £18 million in dividends from Virgin Trains. Branson insists that the characterization of him as a freeloader is “garbage,” pointing to sharp increases in the number of passengers on Virgin trains and writing, “far from receiving subsidies, we now pay more than £100m a year to the taxpayer.” But paying taxes is part of doing business. So when Branson pays into the Green Fund, whose money is it really—his own or the taxpayers’? And if a substantial portion of it originally belonged to taxpayers, wouldn’t it have been a better arrangement never to have sold off the rails in the first place?63
If that were the case, the British people—with the climate crisis in mind—might have long ago decided to reinvest rail profits back into improving their public transit system, rather than allowing trains to become outdated and fares to skyrocket while shareholders of private rail companies like Branson’s pocketed hundreds of millions in returns from their taxpayer-subsidized operations. And rather than gambling on the invention of a miracle fuel, they might have decided to make it a top political priority to shift the entire system over to electric trains, with that power coming from renewable energy, rather than have the system partially powered by diesel, as it is now. No wonder 66 percent of British residents tell pollsters they support renationalizing the railway companies.64
Richard Branson got at least one thing right. He showed us the kind of bold model that has a chance of working in the tight time frame left: the profits from our dirtiest industries must be diverted into the grand and hopeful project of cleaning up their mess. But if there is one thing Branson has demonstrated, it is that it won’t happen on a voluntary basis or on the honor system. It will have to be legislated—using the kinds of tough regulations, higher taxes, and steeper royalty rates these sectors have resisted all along.
* * *
Of course there is still a chance that one of Branson’s techno-schemes could pan out. He might yet stumble across a zero-carbon jet fuel, or a magic machine for safely and cheaply removing carbon from the skies. Time, however, is not on our side. David Keith, inventor of one of those carbon-sucking machines, in which Bill Gates is a key investor, estimates that the technology is still decades away from being taken to scale. “There’s no way you can do a useful amount of carbon dioxide removal in less than a third of a century or maybe half a century,” he says.65 As always with matters related to climate change, we have to keep one eye on the ticking clock—and what that clock tells us is that if we are to have a solid chance of avoiding catastrophic warming, we will need to be burning strictly minimal amounts of fossil fuels a half century from now. If we spend the precious years between now and then dramatically expanding our emissions (as Branson is doing with his airlines, and as Knight’s clients are doing in the tar sands), then we are literally betting the habitability of the planet on the faint hope of a miracle cure.
And yet Branson (a notorious risk addict with a penchant for crash-landing hot air balloons) is far from the only one willing to stake our collective future on this kind of high-stakes gamble. Indeed the reason his various far-fetched schemes have been taken as seriously as they have over the years is that he, alongside Bill Gates with his near mystical quest for energy “miracles,” taps into what may be our culture’s most intoxicating narrative: the belief that technolog
y is going to save us from the effects of our actions. Post–market crash and amidst ever more sinister levels of inequality, most of us have come to realize that the oligarchs who were minted by the era of deregulation and mass privatization are not, in fact, going to use their vast wealth to save the world on our behalf. Yet our faith in techno wizardry persists, embedded inside the superhero narrative that at the very last minute our best and brightest are going to save us from disaster.
This is the great promise of geoengineering and it remains our culture’s most powerful form of magical thinking.
* * *
I. The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment has funded a broad range of large environmental groups, ranging from The Nature Conservancy to Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund to 350.org.
II. It should be noted that though Steyer has separated out his personal funds from Farallon, he remains a limited partner and has also promoted the use of natural gas, helping to fund the EDF research that went into its pro-fracking study and enthusiastically endorsing natural gas in The Wall Street Journal.
III. Those policies have been criticized for favoring big developers over vulnerable communities and for using a green veneer to push through mega real estate development projects with dubious environmental benefits, as Hunter College urban affairs professor Tom Angotti and others have written. Communities heavily impacted by Hurricane Sandy, meanwhile, have claimed that Bloomberg’s post-disaster rebuilding plans were made with only token input from them.
