Transcript: I think I'd ask George Bush why.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: Well Steven Hawkins believes that one day man will . . . that mankind on earth will be destroyed. You know, it could be millions of years. It could be tomorrow. And he said it will either be an asteroid. It could be an experiment that goes wrong which creates disease that wipes out mankind. Whatever. For whatever reason. So he believes that we should at least, you know, populate another planet. And . . . and . . . and as part of that beginning of that potential dream of his, I mean not a very nice dream the first part, but the second part, Virgin Galactic Airways will . . . will be born over the next year or two. And the initial stage will be to send people in a – almost completely environmentally friendly way by the way, but I’ll talk about that in a minute – into sub orbital space travel. And then from there we will go into orbital space travel. From there we’ll build hotels in space. And we will . . . Our engineers will . . . You know, man’s natural instinct is to keep trying to improve themselves. Our engineers will keep pushing themselves. They already looking at seeing whether we can’t go New York to Australia in half an hour by hopping a spaceship out of the earth’s atmosphere and then straight back down again. And I think that maybe in my lifetime we might . . . we might achieve that; but definitely I think in my son’s lifetime. And so then we’re looking at giant sailing ships that can be _______ by solo that can go off . . . that can go off into future galaxies and see what’s going on out there. Anyway, exciting, exciting things to dream about.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: Well this is where government comes in. I mean you do need government to set the rules. And you need government that are educated; who read well; who listen to the vast majority of the scientists; who realize that we do have a catastrophe on our hands; and who set the rules. And if the rules are set properly, then coal companies will have to put their carbon back into the earth’s atmosphere. It’s something that can be done. It is actually, you know, the coal fire-producing power stations that are doing the most damage in the world. And even if, you know, there’s an earthquake one day and some of that carbon’s released, it will give us time to come up with maybe ways of getting the carbon out of the earth’s atmosphere, and maybe ways of coming up with clean fuels. So governments need to set the rules. Governments should say to all the petrol stations, you know, they need to have an ethanol plant in every petrol station. Or at least in every, you know, one in every three petrol stations. Governments need to say that, you know, that every five years, the amount of the use of clean fuels must go up by, you know, by say 10 percent every few years. So that these things need to be mandated to force it through. Brazil, you know . . . 75 percent of their cars are now run on clean fuels. It can be done. It’s not that difficult a thing to do.

Instead, instead interestingly, America forbids the importation of sugar. There is sugar awash in the world. Sugar produces clean fuels six times more efficiently than corn. You could produce . . . every single car in America could be running on sugar-based ethanol, and no carbon emissions going out whatsoever. The whole of Europe could be run on, you know, sugar-based ethanol. In fact, you know, most likely it would be butanol because it’s more powerful than ethanol, but that needs to be developed. But . . . and so instead of being counterproductive to global warming, they need to be productive.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: In Britain we’ve just banned smoking in public. And it’s working. People who were smoking in public are looking like they’re gonna give up smoking in public. And I think the same applies to television. If you, you know . . . if you give people decent television and there isn’t, you know, absolute garbage next door to that decent television, people will watch decent television. Maybe they’ll . . . they’ll learn a lot from watching decent television. If you sit in front of American television networks, you know, finding a story about almost any . . . any country outside America apart from Iraq at the moment is impossible. There is a war going on in Somalia at the moment. Ethiopia has invaded Somalia in the last three months. I don’t think many people in America would know that. It could have enormous ramifications for the whole of Africa. And you know, if militant Islam react really badly as a result of that invasion. . . It just needs to be more debate, more discussion.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: I think the media . . . the media has to regulate itself, and the government should only intervene if the media becomes anti-competitive. What we need is more competition. And I think you can get more competition you’ll have a lot more balance media. I think what governments have got to be careful about is letting too much media be owned by too few people. And of course when those media barons support the government, they are out to be allowed to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it takes a brave government to stand up to them.

In Britain, we’ve finally got a government that is, I think, drawing a line in the sand with Rupert Murdock and has referred a number of decisions that he has taken recently to the Monopolies Mergers Commission. And I think that was a brave government to do that.

Recorded on: 7/5/2007 at The Aspen Ideas Festival

Transcript: I mean you know, Ted Turner, he’s not dead; but he’ll be turning over in some . . . in his bath robe or in his grave right now. And you know I’m incredibly sad to see . . . to see what’s happened. Look. There are good people on CNN, but they just shouldn’t . . . they shouldn’t spoil, you know . . . Anderson Cooper, he’s good; but they shouldn’t spoil those people by having others that . . . that are xenophobic.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: I think the power of the media is terrifying. The media have enormous power, and they therefore again have enormous responsibility. They have enormous responsibility to wield that power responsibly. And the media in America, I think, has a lot to answer for.

I won’t go as far as saying it was deliberate. They certainly made the most of a spectacle. I mean, you know, the gung ho attitude say of Fox Television sort of going into Iraq. No thoughts at all for the civilians and the children. I thought, you know, the whole reporting was unbelievably irresponsible.

Recorded on: 7/5/2007 at The Aspen Ideas Festival

Transcript: When I was young, I watched people marching against wars, and I thought they must be extreme left-wingers and, you know, completely unrealistic, etc. As I got older, I’ve actually realized that there are alternatives to wars and wars are completely unnecessary in this day and age. And all of us must campaign to make sure that there are no future wars. Robert McNamara did this brilliant film _______ when he was maybe 87 years old. And to say that he made a dreadful mistake taking America into the Vietnamese War . . . the whole premise was a mistake; but because the war had started, he couldn’t actually back out. The submarine that he thought had fired at the American fleet hadn’t been a submarine at all. It had been a ripple, a wave rippling through the . . . through the sea. But they started carpet-bombing North Vietnam. By then it was too late.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: Well I mean, the kinds of people I aspire to be like are people like Nelson Mandela. I mean Nelson Mandela, you know, is the best example living in this world of somebody who . . . He was imprisoned for 27 years. He forgave his captors. He came out of prison. And he embraced his captors. He brought them into his government. You know, he set the most brilliant, brilliant example to the rest of the world. And through his inspiration . . . I mean actually interestingly, you know with Peter Gabrielle, we’ve been looking to see if there are 12 other elders in the world who can, you know . . . who can look at issues of the world that . . . that national governments are not looking at, and look at issues of the world that the United Nations can’t look at. Who can maybe try to avert wars before they happen? If there are conflicts, maybe they can use their moral authority – their global moral authority – and the respect that they have from the world community to go in and sort these problems out. And that’s something I’ve been working and planning on for about seven years, and it’s now coming to fruition.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: I try to become a slightly more responsible person than perhaps I was many years ago. Let’s just think. I mean I think, you know . . . Now I’m being a bit repetitive. But I just don’t want to waste the position I’m in. And it would be easier almost just to say, you know, it’s school holiday time and I’m just gonna go off to the beach, etc., etc. But then there are . . . Well actually when the kids were growing up, you know, I did make sure I planned family time for the family. But now that the kids have grown up, I can make sure I found the time to say yes to people who have asked me to do things which will make a real difference in the world. And that’s what I plan to do.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: I decided, you know, I didn’t want to waste the position we found ourselves in. And with wealth comes enormous responsibility. And capitalism has enormous faults. I’m going to say it’s the only system that seems to work, but it also throws out this enormous wealth. Tennis players, you know, tennis players enormously wealthy. Thousands of tennis players very poor. And you know basketball players, footballers the same. Rife throughout society is this extreme, extreme wealth that’s created by capitalism. So if you’re one of those lucky people who, you know, who are in that position where you get that extreme wealth, you’ve just got to make sure that wealth goes back to society in some form or another. Whether it’s creating more jobs, or whether it’s tackling the problems of the world . . . that money must not languish in a bank account and be unproductive.

You can make a big difference. And you know for a relatively small amount of money, you can make a big difference to a lot of people’s lives. So over the years I think we have continued in that spirit, but we never really had the resources to really make a difference. And we never really, you know . . . I never really had the power to be able to say . . . pick up the phone to Clinton or Mandela, or whoever in the world, and get straight through and get things done. So now I’m in that position, and it would be very sad to waste that position and just to carry on trying to accumulate wealth and more and more wealth. And you know it’s important we have the Virgin machine to generate the wealth; but then it’s very important not, not . . . It’s also very important for the staff who work for Virgin to know that wealth is going to be spent in a constructive way, and that’s what we plan to do.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: I’ve been brought up in the 60s. It was a time where . . . well it was hippie times. I wore long hair. I wore the clothes that I wanted to wear. It was a time when people cared about minority groups. You know, the gay community became accepted by . . . you know . . . by people in the 60s. The lesbian community . . . it was a time of embracing. . . people embracing, embracing society, embracing each other. And I’d like to think that’s rubbed off on me. And one of the Sex Pistol’s songs was something along the lines of “old hippies never die”. And I think I’m an old hippie, and hopefully I’ll never die either.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: I think that it’s maybe too soon to say, “What is Virgin beyond the Virgin brand?”  I mean Virgin will mean different things to different people.  You know I’d like to think we’ve transformed people’s way of traveling on planes.  Before we started out 21 years ago, the experience was diabolical. I mean you were lucky enough to have a chicken dumped in your lap . . . let alone having any entertainment system to watch.  And let alone having a cabin crew person who actually smiled at you.  And you know I think that that’s one example where we came and we shook up an industry.  And other airlines – I think apart from American carriers – have, you know, moved forward with the times and have tried to catch up.  And I think we’ve done that to, you know, quite a lot of industries.  And the rail industry, when we took it over 10 years ago, was . . . it was worse than India.  And you know, we’ve now made it the best in Europe and something which British people can be proud of.  And that’s our reason for being.  We just love going into sectors where things are badly run and seeing if we can . . . seeing if we can really change them.  At the same time, we have 50,000 people at Virgin who want to make a real difference. And Virgin Unite is our charitable arm, and Virgin Unite is doing some wonderful things.  And I think actually Virgin one day could be better known for what we can achieve through Virgin Unite than from actually what we’ve achieved in business.  And you know, but that’s for another chapter.  And we’ve got 20 or 30 years to prove that point.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: the president of Nigeria contacted me and said we’ve got planes that crash in West Africa and we don’t have any safe airlines. Could you please come and set up a safe airline for us? Now we never expected to make a lot of money from that, but you know, it’s the right thing to do. So we’ve set up Virgin Nigeria. And you know, now people can fly on a safe airline and know that they can get from A to B safely. And it also will help the economy dramatically. And then there’s just putting our social skills to the enormous problems of Africa, and generally trying to see whether we can make a real difference there. And that’s something which we’re spending a lot of time and energy on looking at. And looking at the . . . looking at HIV and, you know, trying to see whether there’s a different way of sort of saving the millions of lives that have been lost over time. Looking at malarias . . . trying to see if there’s different ways of tackling those problems and so on.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: Well at an early age . . . I mean I didn’t know I was dyslexic at the time, but I am dyslexic. And therefore when I went off to school, I found conventional school work hopeless. You know, IQ tests I would turn them upside down. And whichever way I turned them I couldn’t make sense of them. And so, you know, I decided at a very young age that I needed to get out of this environment and carve my own way in life. And fortunately I felt that I was strongly anti Vietnam War that was taking place at the time. I was very keen on the idea of students being able to have a voice, and you know, students to be able to try and change the, what I thought, archaic way that we were taught to do things. And so I left school at 15 to start a magazine to try to change the world and put the world right.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: Well, I was fortunate to be brought up by two very loving parents, and they were great believers in bestowing a lot of praise upon their children, a lot of encouragement. And I think that gave me a lot of confidence. And they also – particularly my mother – very much wanted us to stand on our own two feet from a young age. And you know, to the extreme case of pushing me out of the car at age six and asking me to make my way home. About three miles from home and myself getting lost. But anyway that was the kind of thing she would do to try to get us to . . . you know . . . not to be too “_________” as she would put it. So I think the upbringing, a combination of love, and encouragement, and a desire to see us doing things rather than watching other people doing things I think helped me in the future.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: You know, do we really need to go through, you know, all those horrors, those trials and the executions? Isn’t there a better way? In America, do we still need to execute, you know, thousands of people every year for crimes? I mean it just seems . . . It’s dehumanizing our souls allowing that to happen, knowing that a lot of those people are innocent. It’s just a fact of life that a lot of those people are gonna be innocent. So it's another question I’ll ask is, “Why can’t we become civilized?” You know, we’re intelligent people. We should become civilized.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Question: What should we be doing that we’re not?

Transcript: I think that the world . . . I think the western world almost needs to apologize for the mess it’s made in Iraq. We obviously needed to get rid of Sadam Hussein, but we didn’t need to kill and maim a million people in the process. And that’s created more terrorists than, you know . . . than anything. You know when you . . . Okay, the invasion. After the invasion, instead of doing what American did in Japan at the end of the Second World War and telling the army, “You’re still the army”, the police force, “You’re still the police force,” they just laid all these people off. They just gave them no salaries, no work. They told them to go home. And they basically said, you know, “You’re now terrorists. You’re now alienated against us.” And they just haven’t learned from history. And I think we almost, as a start, need to say we’re sorry. We made a dreadful mistake. And obviously we’re going to get new leadership in America. We’ve have new leadership in Great Britain. That’s a chance, I think, to try to embrace our fellow ______ in the Middle East and around the rest of the world and say we’re sorry. We did it for the right reasons but we did it the wrong way. We need . . . we need to move forward. And I think if we do that, I think the world has, you know . . . potentially is in the best position it’s been in a long time. We can overcome malaria in Africa. We can make sure that everybody who is HIV positive gets antiretroviral drugs and lives a normal life, and a life long enough to see their children grow up, and be able to bring their children up properly. We can whip TB. We can make sure that nobody suffers from fistula. We can make sure that, you know, most conflicts do not develop into full blown out wars. I think that it just needs leadership, and it needs a mindset. And I think that is all possible.

Question: What are we doing right?

Transcript: Sweden has said that by 2020 they will not be emitting any carbon. That’s an incredibly bold statement. It’s a statement which I believe they can fulfill. If America said that, and Europe . . . the rest of Europe said that, and China said that, and India said that, we’d whip the problem. It’s doable. We’ve got the tools at hand to do it. And it’s a big, bold statement like that that is needed. Not this, you know, 25 percent reduction by you know, 2025, etc. We need something much bolder than that.

Question: What should we be doing as individuals?

Transcript: Well apart from sort of campaigning governments, I mean, there are all the mundane things that all of us can do and all of us, you know, should do our bit to try to do. No light bulb should be short lasting. They should all be long lasting. In fact, any government that hasn’t banned short lasting light bulbs by now should be kicked out. I mean it’s ridiculous. Air conditioning, you know, I mean . . . You know I still fight with my wife. I know how difficult some of these things are. But anyway, air conditioning should be turned off as often as possible, and in the evening you just turn it off for five minutes. It’s better than leaving it on. And so as much as possible you should turn it off. And try to share your car with people as much as possible. Try to take the train rather than the plane if there is a train going the same route that the plane is going. You know, it’s just lots and lots of little things that can add up. You’re boiling the kettle just to get enough water for two cups of tea if there are only two of you having tea. If everybody did these things, again that would make an enormous difference.

Question: What are you doing to realize these ambitions?

Transcript: Well Stephen Hawking believes that one day man will . . . that mankind on earth will be destroyed. You know, it could be millions of years. It could be tomorrow. And he said it will either be an asteroid. It could be an experiment that goes wrong which creates disease that wipes out mankind. Whatever. For whatever reason. So he believes that we should at least, you know, populate another planet. And . . . and . . . and as part of that beginning of that potential dream of his, I mean not a very nice dream the first part, but the second part, Virgin Galactic Airways will . . . will be born over the next year or two. And the initial stage will be to send people in a – almost completely environmentally friendly way by the way, but I’ll talk about that in a minute – into sub orbital space travel. And then from there we will go into orbital space travel. From there we’ll build hotels in space. And we will . . . Our engineers will . . . You know, man’s natural instinct is to keep trying to improve themselves. Our engineers will keep pushing themselves. They already looking at seeing whether we can’t go New York to Australia in half an hour by hopping a spaceship out of the earth’s atmosphere and then straight back down again. And I think that maybe in my lifetime we might . . . we might achieve that; but definitely I think in my son’s lifetime. And so then we’re looking at giant sailing ships that can be _______ by solo that can go off . . . that can go off into future galaxies and see what’s going on out there. Anyway, exciting, exciting things to dream about.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript: I’m optimistic because I think the global community is moving in the right direction. The concerts that took place prior to Nelson Mandela’s release. . . People like Peter Gabrielle, the songs like ________, that saw Mandela’s release that brought about the end of Apartheid . . . those great concerts were . . . were a sign of the times. I think that wonderful concerts are taking place on global warming and concerts . . . That’s the sign of the times. It shows that the people are now wanting their voices to be heard and governments are gonna to have to listen.

Transcript: 7/5/07

Transcript: going back to McNamara, he said that there is too much power vested in one individual, you know, the president at the time. And you need more people to be able to make those decisions before you go into a war situation. You had a situation there that Bush had been given permission to take. You know, a momentous decision of taking his country down a terrible path. And so I think there needs to be more checks and balances to make sure that mistakes like that don’t get made again. But it’s also, I think, a . . . It is also, I think, a . . . almost spiritual approach. I mean, I think you’ve got to come more from the premise that war is evil, and that war is unnecessary, and that war is going to kill children. And it’s gonna kill . . . you know it’s going to kill women. It’s going to kill pregnant woman. Unbelievably in Iraq they’re still using cluster bombs in a war that everybody knew was going to be won in a week. I mean why scatter cluster bombs all over . . . all over the place for children and women to be maimed straight after the war? We’ve got a lot of questions we need to ask ourselves both in Britain and American as a result of what happened there, and just to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I think the power of the media is terrifying. The media have enormous power, and they therefore again have enormous responsibility. They have enormous responsibility to wield that power responsibly. And the media in America, I think, has a lot to answer for.

I won’t go as far as saying it was deliberate. They certainly made the most of a spectacle. I mean, you know, the gung ho attitude say of Fox Television sort of going into Iraq. No thoughts at all for the civilians and the children. I thought, you know, the whole reporting was unbelievably irresponsible.

Question: Would you have done things differently?

Transcript: Well I don’t own any media outlets I’m afraid. I’ve got a 10 percent stake in one; but if I did own a media outlet, I would hope . . . hope I could own it responsibly. And I hope that the news would be dispassionate. You know, it’s sad today to see Lou Dobbs on CNN. You know, CNN _____ very dispassionate TV channel that, you know, is the voice of the world, speaking so _______ and speaking without any dispassion whatsoever. I mean this is meant to be a news channel, and here he is spouting forth his views before anybody has a word to say, you know . . . to say anything in response. And that’s, you know . . . I think that’s wrong.

Question: Who should regulate the media?

Transcript: They . . . I think the media . . . the media has to regulate itself, and the government should only intervene if the media becomes anti-competitive. What we need is more competition. And I think you can get more competition you’ll have a lot more balance media. I think what governments have got to be careful about is letting too much media be owned by too few people. And of course when those media barons support the government, they are out to be allowed to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it takes a brave government to stand up to them.

In Britain, we’ve finally got a government that is, I think, drawing a line in the sand with Rupert Murdock and has referred a number of decisions that he has taken recently to the Monopolies Mergers Commission. And I think that was a brave government to do that.

Question: The value of dispassionate viewing.

Transcript: I honestly don’t think so. I mean I think . . . You know, you take the BBC as an example. Although it’s government owned, you know, people respect the BBC; but they also watch the BBC because they know it’s dispassionate. And they know they’re going to get an honest viewpoint. And it is the biggest news channel in the UK. And you know if the BBC can have that, you know . . . If there was an equivalent channel in America, I think it would be watched by people. I think it’s wrong to think that just because a TV channel is not gung ho that everybody is going to switch off in their . . . in their millions. I think people actually want the truth. They want dispassionate viewing. But if I’m wrong, I still think it’s important that TV stations give people the truth and give people a more balanced outlet.

I mean you know, Ted Turner, he’s not dead; but he’ll be turning over in some . . . in his bath robe or in his grave right now. And you know I’m incredibly sad to see . . . to see what’s happened. Look. There are good people on CNN, but they just shouldn’t . . . they shouldn’t spoil, you know . . . Anderson Cooper, he’s good; but they shouldn’t spoil those people by having others that . . . that are xenophobic.

I think that . . . In Britain we’ve just banned smoking in public. And it’s working. People who were smoking in public are looking like they’re gonna give up smoking in public. And I think the same applies to television. If you, you know . . . if you give people decent television and there isn’t, you know, absolute garbage next door to that decent television, people will watch decent television. Maybe they’ll . . . they’ll learn a lot from watching decent television. If you sit in front of American television networks, you know, finding a story about almost any . . . any country outside America apart from Iraq at the moment is impossible. There is a war going on in Somalia at the moment. Ethiopia has invaded Somalia in the last three months. I don’t think many people in America would know that. It could have enormous ramifications for the whole of Africa. And you know, if militant Islam react really badly as a result of that invasion. . . It just needs to be more debate, more discussion

Question: When you read the newspaper or watch the news, what issues stand out for you?

Transcript: Well I mean the number one priority must be global warming. And I think that every government, every government department in the world should have . . . I mean like the minister of transportation, safety, and global warming. Those three should be their two number one priorities and everything else should come underneath. The minister of telecommunications, safety, global warming. Those should be their two priorities. The minister of aviation, safety, and global warming. Those should be their priorities. And if we treat global warming that seriously, we can overcome that problem. It is a worse problem than 1939, you know, where we were facing Hitler invading Britain, and we must treat it as such. You know, we need leaders on every country in the world to put it back that high a priority. And people in this day and age should not be dying from diseases, and that should be the second most important priority. Let’s get out there and make sure that we don’t allow people to die of diseases. We certainly should make sure we don’t allow people to die from famine. It’s unforgivable. You know people should be educated, and we must make sure that on a global basis that the resources are given to educate people. And then overriding most of those things – maybe not global warming – conflict. You know if you have conflict, you can’t deal with all these other problems. So we’ve got to make sure that we avoid conflict. And you know everybody in the world must rise up against countries that are going to use conflict as their weapon of first use. And it should be absolutely and utterly the . . . The absolute last use should be to use weapons of mass destruction.

Question: You had a change of heart on global warming. Why?

Transcript: I had read the book “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. I think his basic premise was we are heading for an ice age, and I should . . . It’s quite nice that we got global warming because that will slow us up heading towards the ice age. And as an airliner I thought that was quite convenient. And that meant that I could say, “Thank you very much” and get on with business as normal. Subsequent to that, I started meeting scientists who vehemently disagreed with him. I then had the privilege of having Al Gore, you know, come to my home and spend two hours in London – before “The Inconvenient Truth” was launched – giving me a personal lecture as to why I should use myself to get out and try to campaign and do something about global warming. Maybe make a grand statement. And after he left, you know, I read a number of books. The . . . Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” was an excellent book, and obviously James Lovelock’s books. James Lovelock’s very, very concerned about global warming. He actually thinks we . . . we’ve actually gone beyond the tipping point where mankind is doomed; but most other scientists don’t believe we’ve gone that far. And then I was sitting in the bath one day and I thought, “Damn it! We . . . we own a dirty business. The airline business. I own lots of other businesses. I can afford to put 100 percent of all the other profits I make from our airline businesses around the world into seeking out clean fuels, and seeing if we can come up with a fuel that can actually . . . can actually tackle global warming.”

We made the announcement a week later – the Clinton initiative – and said that we would invest three billion dollars over the next 10 years in trying to come up with an alternative fuel. And . . . and then we put up the price of 25 million dollars to . . . in case Lovelock was correct in that we had gone beyond the tipping point; and therefore the only way of saving the world is to come up with a way of extracting the carbon that’s already out there. So we put out this prize to see if people could extract the carbon out of the earth’s atmosphere. And then subsequent to that we had the most fascinating year or so learning about ethanol and butanol and isobutanol – it sounds boring, but it’s actually fascinating – and wind powers and factory power and trying to come up with something which will make the coal companies and the oil companies shake in their boots

The downside of putting three billion dollars into one project, you know. . . I mean generally speaking the Virgin Group, we would spread that across, you know, 20 or 30 projects and some would work and some wouldn’t work. By putting it all into clean fuels, you know, it may work spectacularly or we may fall flat on our face. But . . . but the . . . but it’s incredibly important that somebody does it. And it’s incredibly important that not just ourselves do it, but a lot of people do it. The opportunity is to come up with a fuel that can power our planes, our trains, our buses, our lorries, our cars that doesn’t put out any carbon . . . that doesn’t dig up dirty fuel from underground. Anything that we dig up from under the earth . . . We shouldn’t dig up the dead because it’s wrong to dig up the dead. And so anything that comes up from under the ground is basically going to put out carbon. Anything we can produce above the ground shouldn’t put out . . . put out carbon. And so I’m hopeful that we will come up with a fuel that, you know, we’ll be able to use. First of all we’re . . . next year we’re going to fly a 747 we hope. We’ve said we will. We’re going to have to now deliver. But we will at any price with a clean fuel. And then we’re gonna have to see whether we can then manufacture that fuel so it can look after all planes in the world. We’re already beginning to develop fuels which I think will be cleaner and cleaner for cars, and lauries and buses too.

Question: Should the government be doing more?

Transcript: I mean you do need government to set the rules. And you need government that are educated; who read well; who listen to the vast majority of the scientists; who realize that we do have a catastrophe on our hands; and who set the rules. And if the rules are set properly, then coal companies will have to put their carbon back into the earth’s atmosphere. It’s something that can be done. It is actually, you know, the coal fire-producing power stations that are doing the most damage in the world. And even if, you know, there’s an earthquake one day and some of that carbon’s released, it will give us time to come up with maybe ways of getting the carbon out of the earth’s atmosphere, and maybe ways of coming up with clean fuels. So governments need to set the rules. Governments should say to all the petrol stations, you know, they need to have an ethanol plant in every petrol station. Or at least in every, you know, one in every three petrol stations. Governments need to say that, you know, that every five years, the amount of the use of clean fuels must go up by, you know, by say 10 percent every few years. So that these things need to be mandated to force it through. Brazil, you know . . . 75 percent of their cars are now run on clean fuels. It can be done. It’s not that difficult a thing to do. Instead, instead interestingly, America forbids the importation of sugar. There is sugar awash in the world. Sugar produces clean fuels six times more efficiently than corn. You could produce . . . every single car in America could be running on sugar-based ethanol, and no carbon emissions going out whatsoever. The whole of Europe could be run on, you know, sugar-based ethanol. In fact, you know, most likely it would be butanol because it’s more powerful than ethanol, but that needs to be developed. But . . . and so instead of being counterproductive to global warming, they need to be productive.

Recorded on: 7/5/07