I've bumped into Richard Branson a couple times now, in vastly different settings. The first was in the high Arctic village of Clyde River, where he'd come to join his son Sam for a weeklong dogsled expedition. He introduced himself with what he admitted was a weakish pinky-tap, blaming his inability to lift his arm on having rolled an ATV at his African safari camp the week before.
When we met again a few days ago on a beach in the Maldives, again he extended just a pinky. This time he blamed it on a nasty cold, which he was politely attempting not to spread.
He had flown in for a few days to participate in the SLOWLIFE Symposium as I had; ironically he'd arrived by British Air from London, rather than aboard his own Virgin, which doesn't fly to Male, the capital of the Maldives. Given his longstanding competition and high-level squabbles with BA, he joked that he'd brought along his own "food taster." I assume he wasn't referring to his lovely wife Joan, who accompanied him.
During the course of three days spent in sessions where 80 or so participated in conversation and debate about subjects ranging from the consequences of not taking climate change seriously to the energy future of small island states, Branson sat in on every one, taking notes in a small red notebook, participating in round table debates.
It wasn't as if he didn't have plenty on his plate that might have kept him otherwise occupied: The bankruptcy of the American solar company Solyndra had cost him a bundle; his house on his Caribbean island paradise, Necker Island, had burned to the ground just a month ago (thanks to a lightning strike during Hurricane Irene); and in a few days time he would be outed by Wikileaks for participating in covert plots to oust Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, announce plans to have Virgin Atlantic Airways running on recycled industrial gases by 2014 and by the following weekend be testing a new submersible amongst great white sharks off the coast of Mexico.Continue reading Maldives in Peril: Richard Branson on impacting climate changeMaldives in Peril: Richard Branson on impacting climate change originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments
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