Screw Business as Usual…

I mentioned in my Giveaway post that one part of the wonderous prize, was Richard Branson’s book Screw Business as Usual.

I did also say that I it might arrive at the winner’s house “pre-read”.
And I have indeed, now read it.

And it’s really pretty good (there you go Mr B, you can even put that on your book blurb thing if you like :))

I hadn’t quite computed what an environmental activist Richard Branson is.
He set up Virgin Unite to “unite people and entrepreneurial ideas to reinvent how we live and work in the world to help make people’s lives better. Our aim is to do our bit to revolutionize the way businesses, government and the social sector work together – driving business as a force for good.  We also incubate new, independent approaches to leadership including the Elders, the Carbon War Room, and the Branson Centres of Entrepreneurship.”

The Carbon War Room aims to “mobilise capital, innovation, expertise and international collaboration in order to build new business models to tackle carbon emissions and deliver profit” and Capitalism 24902 aims to encourage every single business person to take responsibility for the planet and the people that inhabit it.

And in true Richard Branson style, he is actually doing it.

The man is a force of nature. I have no idea how he does it all, how he gets so many people to sign up to his innovative ideas and really make change happen.

On the one hand I found the book hugely inspiring, seeing how many businesses, and how many influential people with the power and money to make things happen, are out there, and doing the ‘right’ things business wise and making huge strides in cutting back on carbon emissions, and in driving business towards a greener future.
But on the flip side, it was a little depressing, and more than a bit terrifying, to think that with all the Great and the Good people involved the many projects that Branson discusses in the book, why aren’t bigger changes happening? Why aren’t governments sitting up and taking notice and adopting the kind of policy changes that really could start to pull us back from the brink?
And then, as ever, when I read anything Climate Change related, I felt very powerless. As an individual, yet again, it is hard to see where I/we fit into the picture.

But action on Climate Change will only ever work if Governments, Big (and small) businesses, AND individuals, ALL start to ‘do our bit’ and more.
If each and every one of us decided to make a stand and take action-in our homes, and our businesses, then surely, as many individuals are business owners, and there are even some individuals I am told, who are politicians… If we ALL, as individuals, decided to take action, and do whatever it was we could, as individuals, as families, employers, employees, CEO’s, Prime-Ministers, Presidents, then we might just have a chance of fixing or at least slowing down this whole Climate Change juggernaut.

I think Richard Branson’s next book should be “Screw Life as Usual” (I would write it, but I don’t think it would quite the same impact..)-imploring every single person, not just every single business person, to take responsibility for the planet and the people that inhabit it.

PS. We have a winner on the Giveaway!
Thankyou to everyone who left a comment-there were 24 of you in the hat, and picked at random by the lovely hubby was….
Katrina Shaw!
Congratulations Katrina-please can you e-mail me jen_mmdamy@yahoo.co.uk with your address, so I can post you your prize!