John North Editor & Publisher

I was floored when I was not invited to join a group of wealthy entrepreneurs for a weekend conference on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands to talk about making the planet greener, fighting global warming and developing bio-fuels — all while kite-surfing, breakfasting on the beach and working on that golden tan.

Of course, while I am an entrepreneur, I definitely don’t qualify — at least not financially — for the post-industrial jet-set crowd.

Not to mention that the work of headlines and deadlines in the newspaper business doesn’t allow me the leisure to lollygag and lip-flap with those whose prosperity leaves them with time to burn in such an exotic way.

In fact, I barely had a moment to skim the story in The New York Times last Saturday about the beach retreat, headlined “On an island paradise, seeking global warming’s silver lining.”

I mean, look at these hard-to-imagine captains of industry.

Here’s the host, Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Records and Virgin Trains — he even owns the Virgin Island where this soirée was held — scheming to put together a “coalition of the most respected people in business to help champion environmental best practices” to governments and multi-national companies to develop environmentally sound policies.

Who does Mr. Branson think he is?

Why isn’t this British tycoon acting like a proper corporate fat-cat by gathering “yes” men to plot ways to dodge environmental laws while feathering his own nest further?

And the issue of global warming — where did that come from? According to the self-proclaimed “all-knowing” Rush Limbaugh, it’s nothing but a liberal conspiracy cooked up by the likes of crazy Al Gore, who wasn’t there. However, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was.

Now wait a minute — didn’t Blair side with U.S. President George Bush on virtually everything? Bush hasn’t put much stock in global warming. Yet Blair was there with this misguided magnates, talking about his new Breaking the Climate Deadlock Initiative, which is intended to get the world’s nations to work together to tackle climate change — as opposed to invading more Muslim countries. What gives, Mr. Blair?

Others at the conference included Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems and one of the most successful Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Of all things, Khosla is now pouring his money into clean technology for producing biolfuels.

Also making a splash was Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, who described the difficulties his firm was having in getting permits to use solar energy. Page even boasted that when one of his engineers said he could produce energy at 10 cents per kilowatt, he told him to “think really big” and get it down to 3 cents per kilowatt.

Another mogul soaking up sun like a solar cell was Elon Musk, a co-founder of Paypal, who noted that he owns Tesla Motors, which makes sexy electric sports cars for $100,000 each.

The incredible conference was the brainchild of Richard Stromback, a former professional hockey player who has remade himself as a clean-technology entrepreneur.

The Times story aptly underscored the bizarre nature of the scene and quoted Stromback, the chief executive of Ecology Codings:

“A gathering like this might seem nefarious to some people. ‘In James Bond movies, evil-doers meet in exotic settings to plot the destruction of the planet,’ Mr. Stromback said, puffing on a cigar before dinner. ‘This is the opposite of that.’”

Yeah, right ....

You might say that I’m just envious of missing out on this tropical getaway. Oh, no — I’m convinced these people are hell-bent on depriving us of our precious nuclear waste, gas-guzzling cars and smoke-belching power plants.

Who could believe that among the wealthy and powerful of this planet are some who might possibly have the best interests of humanity’s future at heart?

Knowing that most — if not all — of these well-heeled eco-fanatics arrived via their extravagant jets and pleasure yachts, I can’t help but leap to the assumption that this is all just another corporate public-relations gimmick.

Why, if they were really genuinely concerned about all this “green” nonsense, they would have paddled in from Miami in  low-tech canoes made from recycled tires.

Right, Rush?
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John North, publisher and editor of the Daily Planet, may be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .