sceptic turned campaigner

China Post editorial:


One planet for us all to inhabit

Two items of news covered the whole of last Wednesday's front page; one was extremely worrying, while the other was exciting and perhaps offers a silver lining to the gloom hanging over Homo Sapiens' future.

On the eve of the climate summit in Copenhagen, the first piece asked whether humankind collectively has the ability, the will, and even sufficient time to reverse the tide of global warming. The upbeat sidebar on opportunities offered to Taiwanese firms in the multi-billion-dollar-funded search for emission-curbing technologies notwithstanding, the article focused mostly on the challenges ahead and made for pretty depressing reading.

The second piece applauded the unveiling of what is planned as the world's first commercial spacecraft by multi-billionaire entrepreneur-turned-adventurer Richard Branson. If the predictions by the Virgin conglomerate's boss of US$200,000-per-person suborbital space flights offering views back at the entire Earth and experiences of weightlessness within 18 months are realized, this will represent the most important advance in manned space exploration since American Neil Armstrong took his “one giant leap” in 1969 and the Russians launched Space Station Mir in 1986.

Of course such a realization is far from certain. Branson and chief designer Burt Rutan's budget has already risen signifaica ntly and their deadlines have already been postponed from 2008 to 2011. And this in just the space of five years since Rutan won the Ansari X Prize and Collier Trophy for designing and launching the first privately funded and flown craft to reach space in 2004, the same year in which Branson launched his wholly— owned Virgin Galactic subsidiary promising to cater for space tourists at a fraction of the tens of millions of dollars per person charged by the Russian space agency.

Last week's unveiling is still a significant step forward and worthy of the intense media coverage it received. Nevertheless, it is a relatively small step compared with the hyperbolic leaps of imagination that some journalists and legions of bloggers succumbed to in its wake. This, they predicted, would just be a first step towards launch of a permanently inhabited space station, colonization of other planets, and so forth.

While this kind of dream has long held a fascination for the human race—perhaps ever since it came to realize that there were other planets and solar systems and not just spots of light in the heavens—and may indeed one day be realized, we would be better rewarded spending our time, money and efforts ensuring the future of the only inhabitable planet known to date. We should also work to make it a better place for all its inhabitants to live.

Which brings us back to climate change. Branson and Rutan, whose political ideologies are often well to the right of center, were for a long time outspoken skeptics on the issue. While Rutan still is—he explains it as part of his “fear of governmental expansion”— Branson has changed sides and for some time has been throwing his considerable financial resources behind environmental causes in general and that of tackling climate change in particular.

In 2006 he pledged to invest profits from Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains in research for environmentally friendly fuels. In 2007, he announced the Virgin Earth Challenge, offering a reward of US$25 million for anyone coming up with a commercially viable design that results in the net removal of manmade global-warming gases annually for at least a decade and which does not have harmful side effects. The next year he promised to open a chain of healthcare centers offering homeopathic therapies alongside conventional medical treatments, and this year he has shown interest in helping rescue the deeply troubled Formula One motor-racing sport by investing in or taking over one of the teams, but only on the condition that the whole operation develop a more environmentally responsible image and adopt a cleaner fuel.

Perhaps most significantly in the long term will turn out to be his contribution as one of The Founders in helping underwrite the establishment and organization of The Elders, a group of world figures led by Desmond Tutu and including people like Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing and Mary Robinson. While The Elders have a wide agenda ranging from settlement of conflicts such as that in the Middle East to defeating poverty and starvation, one of its recurrent and most pressing issues is tackling climate change.

Thus, while Branson shares every child's dream of exploring outer space — and has the immense wealth needed to indulge his fantasy—he is clearly sensible enough to know that for the time being, not to mention the foreseeable future, Homo sapiens will only have one planet to inhabit, and that we must do everything we can to protect it.