Virgin honcho pledges billions to fight global warming |
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Published
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Fri, 22 Sep 2006 10:05
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NEW YORK - British multi-billionaire Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, announced that he would be investing at least $3 billion over the next decade in order to fund renewable energy projects and technologies and thus fight global warming.
"Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents," Branson said at the Clinton Global Initiative. "We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment. We must hand it over to our children in as near pristine a condition as we were lent it from our parents." He was at the annual conference of the initiative and made the announcement in the company of President Bill Clinton.
Branson said he was hoping to promote renewable energy sources through a spin-off of the Virgin Group called Virgin Fuels. "We must rapidly wean ourselves off our dependence on coal and fossil fuels," he said, adding that it was vital for industry leaders like himself to "be at the forefront of developing environmentally friendly business strategies."
Branson stressed that moneymaking was not the motive here. It was important to look for alternate sources of energy to secure the future, he said. “Some will be profitable, some will not be profitable,” he said at a news conference. “But the only way global warming is going to be beaten is to invest in new fuels that can actually replace fossil fuels.”
The 56-year-old Branson added that the present generation had the talent, resources and more importantly the willpower to find alternate sources. "I really do believe the world is facing a catastrophe and there are scientists who say we are already too late, but I don't believe that is the case," he observed.
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