This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

“It was quite an experience having a brilliant communicator like Al Gore give me a personal PowerPoint presentation,” Branson writes of the meeting. “Not only was it one of the best presentations I have ever seen in my life, but it was profoundly disturbing to become aware that we are potentially facing the end of the world as we know it. . . . As I sat there and listened to Gore, I saw that we were looking at Armageddon.”4 As he tells it, Branson’s first move following his terrifying epiphany was to summon Will Whitehorn, then Virgin Group’s corporate and brand development director. Together “we carefully discussed these issues and took the decision to change the way Virgin operates on a corporate and global level. We called this new Virgin approach to business Gaia Capitalism in honor of James Lovelock and his revolutionary scientific view” (a reference to Lovelock’s theory that the earth is “one single enormous living organism and every single part of the ecosystem reacted with every other part”). Not only would Gaia Capitalism “help Virgin to make a real difference in the next decade and not be ashamed to make money at the same time,” but Branson believed it held the potential to become “a new way of doing business on a global level.”5