This wasn’t the only time Branson’s claims to be committed to waging war on carbon came into conflict with his hard-nosed business instincts. He came out against the proposed climate tax in Australia and blasted a plan for a global tax on airlines, claiming it “would tax the industry out of existence.”IX, 59 It’s this pattern that convinced Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth U.K. that Branson’s reinvention as a guilt-ridden planet wrecker volunteering to use his carbon profits to solve the climate crisis was little more than a cynical ploy. “It comes across as a charitable act,” Childs warned
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