Friends of the Earth's Tony Juniper quits - and attacks hypocrital "green" celebs
Friends of the Earth is probably the world's most famous green organisation. It was set up in Britain in 1971.
But its director, Tony Juniper, has recently quit, calling "green" celebrities hypocrites. In the article, he attacks Naomi Campbell, Richard Branson, Sienna Miller, Ruth Kelly MP and Lord Browne.
Though he does praise Prince Charles, a prince known for his views on the environment and who recently spoke at a conference as a hologram rather than actually flying there. Tony Juniper says of the future King Charles III: "He is an absolute rock. When he talks, people listen."
Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper sensationally quits - and attacks hypocritical 'green' celebrities
by TONY JUNIPER
27th January 2008
Daily Mail
Friend of the Earth: Tony Juniper has quit as director of the green organisation
It isn't every day you chase a Conservative MP down the corridors of Parliament. But that morning in 1996, something snapped.
I had sat in the Commons watching Matthew Banks wreck a Private Member's Bill designed to protect wildlife habitats.
The then Tory MP for Southport had talked for so long that the Bill ran out of Parliamentary time.
I could take no more. I confronted Banks as he emerged from the chamber, asking why he had been so destructive. He scurried off. I ran after him, shouting.
When I started working for Friends Of The Earth 18 years ago, I had no idea green campaigners did that sort of thing. Neither did I know I would be obliged to take supermodels on trips to the rainforest or be held at gunpoint by panicking Swiss policemen.
These days, however, everybody wants to be green: big companies, Prime Ministers and celebrities. Sometimes the famous and powerful help the cause; at other times they just provide a lot of hot air.
And for all their eco-rhetoric, too many decisions by the Labour Government have been cowardly and lacking in vision.
This year I will be stepping down as Friends Of The Earth's director. I plan to continue with my life's work, but it will be someone else's job to front the organisation. To prop up the bar talking to pop stars, barrack American politicians or discuss climate change with Madonna over lunch. It has been a wonderful job, but I need a change.
Little in my childhood marked me out as a future activist. I was brought up in a council house in Oxford, where my father was a British Leyland worker. I was passionate about wildlife, and kept budgies and cockatiels.
Naked truth: Naomi Campbell (right) championed PETA's anti-fur crusade - but later modelled a fur-lined jacket
I studied psychology and zoology at Bristol University and got my first big environmental job at the International Council for Bird Preservation.
One experience shaped my thinking more than any other. In 1990, I went to north-east Brazil, where my Brazilian colleagues and I discovered the last wild Spix's Macaw. Here was a bird doomed to extinction, its forest home destroyed by grazing goats, logging and soya farming.
This was my epiphany. It became clear that protecting birds was part of a bigger picture: the world economy was impinging on this defenceless creature. If I was to make a difference, I had to tackle the underlying causes of its plight.
Sienna Miller: A green hypocrite?
Just before I left for Brazil I had applied to work on Friends Of The Earth's rainforest campaign. Despite my lack of lobbying experience, I got the £10,000-a-year job.
Friends Of The Earth was founded in Britain in 1971, inspired by the American environmental movement. My new office was exciting if a little anarchic, and a culture shock.
I was a neatly dressed scientist with short hair. Friends Of The Earth's headquarters, then in a run-down part of North London, was populated by radical and politically savvy campaigners.
No one could have accused us of profligacy with rare timber. My desk was a plank on two filing cabinets. But we had an annual budget of £4million, 85 staff and a mission to change the system, reform capitalism and switch to a pure green lifestyle. Nothing too ambitious, then.
Eighteen years ago, the green movement was on the very fringes of mainstream politics.
Although several decades old, environmentalism was still dismissed by many as all brown rice and tree-hugging.
In fact, we meant business. I was dispatched with a colleague to Ghana to meet an official but secret organisation uncovering corruption between the Ghanaian government and British companies which were robbing the country of its forests.
We came back with enough evidence to make a television documentary. Even then, however, I realised that celebrity could help persuade people better than demonstrations and placards.
In 1991, I had a call from Hello! magazine. Would I like to take supermodel Yasmin Le Bon on a trip to Malaysia to see the devastating effects of logging? I managed to convince myself of the merits of such a trip.
But there was a hitch. Yasmin was six months pregnant. Not that this dimmed her enthusiasm. She'd already posed topless and heavily pregnant for a photograph that was auctioned to help finance our campaigning.
Nevertheless, I felt a twinge of guilt as we made our way by truck and speedboat up a river to a rudimentary logging camp. Yasmin took it all in her stride.
As we stood talking to the loggers, I heard a creak and a rush of leaves and branches. A huge tree - more than 100ft high - toppled towards Yasmin, narrowly missing her as it smashed to the ground. Fortunately, she was unharmed.
By the mid-Nineties, we were starting to win arguments with campaigns such as the one against the Newbury bypass in Berkshire; steering a fine line between civil disobedience and quiet persuasion.
The bypass was built in the end, but not without a fight, and one result of the campaign was to help end the Government's massive road-building programme. The battle against genetically modified crops was a clearer success. There is still no commercial GM farming in Britain.
If the logging trip hadn't convinced me that going green can be hazardous, a stunt we hatched in January 2001 certainly did.
We had a brilliant wheeze to make a point about the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, a yearly gathering of politicians, bankers and businessmen. Deals are done behind closed doors at this exclusive Swiss ski resort without considering global warming, biodiversity and poverty. We thought we'd try to put that right.
Three of us dressed up as fat-cat Davos delegates , decked out in voluminous padded suits, our corpulent appearance matching our apparent corporate greed.
So there we were, a comic sight queuing in the snow at the security gates accompanied by TV crews. Our fake ID gave our names as Yoshi Yen, Frank Suisse and Dave Dollar. On our cards, WEF stood for World-Eating Fatcats. At that point an armoured car, a water cannon and armed police rolled up.
We assumed the game was up. Given that we were handing out bright orange leaflets, it was obvious they would spot us. I feared the worst.
But I was wrong: the police assumed we were real VIPs. They whisked us past the queues and into the venue, where we continued to hand out leaflets. I even gave one to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. We basked in our success for about ten minutes before the police realised something was wrong. An officer walked up to me and pointed a pistol.
"What do you think you're doing?" he asked. "Raising awareness about the planetary environmental crisis," I responded. He wasn't amused.
We were marched out to a wood and stood in the snow surrounded by uniformed men barking German and pointing machine guns at us. For a moment, I was quite worried. We were then taken to a police station, where a stout officer asked us to remove our jackets, revealing our body padding. At first he thought we had explosives.
Then, thinking we were mocking fat people, he had a sense-of-humour failure. Eventually, we were let off. It was a questionable prank before September 11. I certainly wouldn't advise it now.
Friends Of The Earth made waves again when a group of activists and I started slow-handclapping Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State, at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002. America had refused to sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change and I thought he should know how we felt. Only three of us started off the clapping, but almost everyone in the conference hall joined in.
Over the years, I have learned to be more pragmatic. I still want to change society and politics. But there isn't now time enough to alter the fundamentals.
So, instead of trying to reform the system, I have led Friends Of The Earth towards trying to change the way we live within the system.
Global warming: Tony Juniper (right) dressed as a fatcat while campaigning at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
When I took over running the organisation in March 2003, the annual budget had risen to £11million and the 170 staff were professional, organised and focused. We had slightly more sophisticated furniture, too - all from green sources, of course.
Indeed, now every company and celebrity is vying to be the greenest in the land. That's fantastic, but goodwill needs to be translated into action if we are to avoid losing the meaning of being green.
Over the years I have solicited the help of celebrities - one can't underestimate the power they have in drawing attention to valuable causes.
In 2005, I had lunch with Madonna to persuade her to take part in our Big Ask campaign for a tougher Climate Change Bill.
Madonna was thoughtful and well-read. I thought I was making progress. On the way out we stopped at the cloakroom, her to collect her coat, me to pick up my folding pushbike.
She was fascinated that I should go round London on a bike. Sadly, she has not yet joined our campaign - nor have I seen her on a bike.
I used to dismiss all pop-star involvement in green campaigns as celebrities picking up on fashionable causes to win PR points.
But one man in particular changed my mind. In 2006, I found myself propping up a bar with Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Tory leader David Cameron and David Miliband, who had just been appointed Environment Secretary.
Thom had written them each a note inviting them to a gig organised by Friends Of The Earth at the Koko nightclub in North London. Thom was performing, along with fellow Radiohead man Jonny Greenwood.
Thom was giving Miliband a piece of his mind about tackling global warming. Over that drink he helped convince Miliband to bring in a law to make it compulsory to reduce our carbon emissions. This was a great boost to our Big Ask campaign. A Bill is in Parliament and will become an Act later this year.
Thom is one of the high-profile names committed and willing to understand the detail of global warming. Others include Johnny Borrell from Razorlight, X-Files actress Gillian Anderson and Cold Feet's Helen Baxendale.
However, over the years I've seen celebrities adopt worthy causes purely for their own means. Naomi Campbell signed up for a People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA) campaign against fashion's use of fur, only to be seen modelling it on the Milan catwalk months later. PETA soon dropped her.
Indeed, the way corporations and pop stars jump on the green band-wagon can backfire.
Yasmin Le Bon highlighted the problem of logging in Malaysian rainforests in 1991
An organisation called Global Cool launched last year. It seemed to me a bit of a PR flash in the pan, but it's managed to enlist stars such as Pink and Stephen Fry. Yet some of its campaigns seem ill-prepared and have already inadvertently caused embarrassment for those offering to help.
Sienna Miller became its roving ambassador, touring India calling for action on climate change. Later she admitted on Radio 4's Today programme that, as an actress, she couldn't avoid flying but intended to take fewer baths. I hadn't come across Miller before, but in my view it's sad that through no fault of her own, she has done herself and the green cause harm.
It's the same with companies such as Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Fuels with its biofuel that, it claims, is "needed" to power jumbo jets. Branson jumped on the global-warming bandwagon with aplomb.
He plans to use biofuels in his trains and aircraft, but has failed to see the limitations of these alternative fuels in combating global warming.
One of my biggest professional disappointments has been BP and its Beyond Petroleum campaign which, ironically, I helped create.
I remember standing on the top floor of BP's office looking over the City of London with the then chief executive, Lord Browne. He had seen the light, and the light was green. He told me: "I'm convinced. We will bring in a new era at BP, we will be a sustainable business."
I was excited, but it didn't last. The rebranding looked persuasive, but it was just that - rebranding. Most of BP's budget still goes into oil and gas exploration - not solar or wind power. Shell is just as bad. Like BP, it claims to have green credentials, but both companies are going deeper than ever into fossil fuels. In fact, they have recently reduced their involvement with renewable energy.
I am just as sceptical about the efforts of other corporate giants. In 2006 Tesco announced it would award loyalty points to shoppers for reusing plastic bags. But until supermarkets reduce the energy used in their stores, minimise food miles and treat farmers better,
saving a few plastic bags is just window dressing.
Then, of course, there's the Government. When Labour came to power in 1997 it promised bold initiatives. And there have been successes, although the Climate Change Bill was brought on to the agenda only by the great efforts of Friends Of The Earth.
The Government is terrified of saying anything that will upset business or the electorate.
We can do a lot as individuals, but it is laws that will make a real difference - and this Government is bigger on talk than it is on action.
In 2004, I asked Prime Minister Tony Blair why he could not do more to curb household energy waste. He could, for instance, insist on energy-saving light bulbs. His answer made my blood boil.
"We can't act on these things until there is a public demand," Blair said. I thought: What about the Iraq War? There was no public demand for that.
Of course, I was polite and I respect the way he managed to get climate change on the agenda at international meetings such as G8. But he let himself down with his lack of leadership on practical action at home.
Gordon Brown sees the environment as even less pressing. One day he makes a powerful speech on global warming, the next he speaks in favour of a third runway at Heathrow airport.
The expansion of aviation could easily cancel out the reductions in greenhouse gas emission the Government is committed to. Brown might think he can side-step this contradiction, but he's yet to grasp the challenge of improving Britain's environment while profiting from it.
Meanwhile, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly has been told by Brown that transport is a driver of economic growth - which means building more runways, roads and ports. When we talk to Kelly, it sometimes seems as if we are speaking a foreign language.
David Cameron, on the other hand, has made himself an important force in green politics.
He has put pressure on Brown and I only hope that he implements what he has talked about if he ever gets into power. It would be tragic if his green talk turns out to be no more than a cynical Tory rebranding.
One thing has not changed in the past two decades. Prince Charles has been an absolute rock of the green movement. He's been told to stay out of politics, but he has done a huge amount to force big firms and politicians to take notice. He's a commanding figure: when he talks, people listen.
Green goddess: Gillian Anderson supports Friends of the Earth
So, after 18 years with Friends Of The Earth, I am passing on the baton. I remain committed to the green cause, but it's time for a change. After a couple of decades, you find yourself making the same arguments too many times. It has been my pleasure and pain to lobby the last seven Environment Secretaries.
There is some justice in the world, it seems. Matthew Banks, the Tory who destroyed the Wildlife Bill in 1996, lost his seat the following year, thanks perhaps in small part to our campaigning in his Southport constituency. A version of the Bill became law in 2000.
The Spix's Macaw also survived. Birds were discovered in private zoos and a breeding programme set up to preserve the species. I hope that one day soon captive birds will be released into restored forests.
The green cause has enjoyed a great many such small successes in my time, but there is much to do. We must explain how we can make our lives greener and still have jobs, eat well and go on holiday - the green lobby needs to do much more on that.
Persuading families to use less energy, cut pollution and generate less waste need not be a problem if done in the right way. Saving money, having warmer homes, safer streets and better health can all be part of a greener society. We need politicians with the leadership skills to tackle the environment crisis - inspiring figures with the vision to persuade people that protecting the planet needn't threaten our comfort.
Britain can be a leader in innovative green technology just as it was once at the forefront of abolishing slavery. There are parallels. Much the same arguments were advanced against banning slavery at the beginning of the 19th Century that are now made about curbing greenhouse gasses.
If we stopped trading in slaves, it was claimed, other nations would continue to profit from it. That didn't happen and we led the way for emancipation. Now sceptics say China and India will continue to pump out greenhouse gasses regardless of what we do. That need not be the case. British technology could set the pace in halting climate change, with British business reaping the rewards of being world leaders.
My children are now ten, 13 and 16. I hope that, in their lifetime, we will pull back from the brink of environmental disaster. It will take determination, sacrifice and sweat. It might be preferable, however, if it didn't require pregnant supermodels or body-padding.
• How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take To Change A Planet? by Tony Juniper is published by Quercus. For more information go to the Friends Of The Earth website, www.foe.co.uk, or www.off-grid.net
dailymail.co.uk
Friends of the Earth is probably the world's most famous green organisation. It was set up in Britain in 1971.
But its director, Tony Juniper, has recently quit, calling "green" celebrities hypocrites. In the article, he attacks Naomi Campbell, Richard Branson, Sienna Miller, Ruth Kelly MP and Lord Browne.
Though he does praise Prince Charles, a prince known for his views on the environment and who recently spoke at a conference as a hologram rather than actually flying there. Tony Juniper says of the future King Charles III: "He is an absolute rock. When he talks, people listen."
Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper sensationally quits - and attacks hypocritical 'green' celebrities
by TONY JUNIPER
27th January 2008
Daily Mail
Friend of the Earth: Tony Juniper has quit as director of the green organisation
It isn't every day you chase a Conservative MP down the corridors of Parliament. But that morning in 1996, something snapped.
I had sat in the Commons watching Matthew Banks wreck a Private Member's Bill designed to protect wildlife habitats.
The then Tory MP for Southport had talked for so long that the Bill ran out of Parliamentary time.
I could take no more. I confronted Banks as he emerged from the chamber, asking why he had been so destructive. He scurried off. I ran after him, shouting.
When I started working for Friends Of The Earth 18 years ago, I had no idea green campaigners did that sort of thing. Neither did I know I would be obliged to take supermodels on trips to the rainforest or be held at gunpoint by panicking Swiss policemen.
These days, however, everybody wants to be green: big companies, Prime Ministers and celebrities. Sometimes the famous and powerful help the cause; at other times they just provide a lot of hot air.
And for all their eco-rhetoric, too many decisions by the Labour Government have been cowardly and lacking in vision.
This year I will be stepping down as Friends Of The Earth's director. I plan to continue with my life's work, but it will be someone else's job to front the organisation. To prop up the bar talking to pop stars, barrack American politicians or discuss climate change with Madonna over lunch. It has been a wonderful job, but I need a change.
Little in my childhood marked me out as a future activist. I was brought up in a council house in Oxford, where my father was a British Leyland worker. I was passionate about wildlife, and kept budgies and cockatiels.
Naked truth: Naomi Campbell (right) championed PETA's anti-fur crusade - but later modelled a fur-lined jacket
I studied psychology and zoology at Bristol University and got my first big environmental job at the International Council for Bird Preservation.
One experience shaped my thinking more than any other. In 1990, I went to north-east Brazil, where my Brazilian colleagues and I discovered the last wild Spix's Macaw. Here was a bird doomed to extinction, its forest home destroyed by grazing goats, logging and soya farming.
This was my epiphany. It became clear that protecting birds was part of a bigger picture: the world economy was impinging on this defenceless creature. If I was to make a difference, I had to tackle the underlying causes of its plight.
Sienna Miller: A green hypocrite?
Just before I left for Brazil I had applied to work on Friends Of The Earth's rainforest campaign. Despite my lack of lobbying experience, I got the £10,000-a-year job.
Friends Of The Earth was founded in Britain in 1971, inspired by the American environmental movement. My new office was exciting if a little anarchic, and a culture shock.
I was a neatly dressed scientist with short hair. Friends Of The Earth's headquarters, then in a run-down part of North London, was populated by radical and politically savvy campaigners.
No one could have accused us of profligacy with rare timber. My desk was a plank on two filing cabinets. But we had an annual budget of £4million, 85 staff and a mission to change the system, reform capitalism and switch to a pure green lifestyle. Nothing too ambitious, then.
Eighteen years ago, the green movement was on the very fringes of mainstream politics.
Although several decades old, environmentalism was still dismissed by many as all brown rice and tree-hugging.
In fact, we meant business. I was dispatched with a colleague to Ghana to meet an official but secret organisation uncovering corruption between the Ghanaian government and British companies which were robbing the country of its forests.
We came back with enough evidence to make a television documentary. Even then, however, I realised that celebrity could help persuade people better than demonstrations and placards.
In 1991, I had a call from Hello! magazine. Would I like to take supermodel Yasmin Le Bon on a trip to Malaysia to see the devastating effects of logging? I managed to convince myself of the merits of such a trip.
But there was a hitch. Yasmin was six months pregnant. Not that this dimmed her enthusiasm. She'd already posed topless and heavily pregnant for a photograph that was auctioned to help finance our campaigning.
Nevertheless, I felt a twinge of guilt as we made our way by truck and speedboat up a river to a rudimentary logging camp. Yasmin took it all in her stride.
As we stood talking to the loggers, I heard a creak and a rush of leaves and branches. A huge tree - more than 100ft high - toppled towards Yasmin, narrowly missing her as it smashed to the ground. Fortunately, she was unharmed.
By the mid-Nineties, we were starting to win arguments with campaigns such as the one against the Newbury bypass in Berkshire; steering a fine line between civil disobedience and quiet persuasion.
The bypass was built in the end, but not without a fight, and one result of the campaign was to help end the Government's massive road-building programme. The battle against genetically modified crops was a clearer success. There is still no commercial GM farming in Britain.
If the logging trip hadn't convinced me that going green can be hazardous, a stunt we hatched in January 2001 certainly did.
We had a brilliant wheeze to make a point about the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, a yearly gathering of politicians, bankers and businessmen. Deals are done behind closed doors at this exclusive Swiss ski resort without considering global warming, biodiversity and poverty. We thought we'd try to put that right.
Three of us dressed up as fat-cat Davos delegates , decked out in voluminous padded suits, our corpulent appearance matching our apparent corporate greed.
So there we were, a comic sight queuing in the snow at the security gates accompanied by TV crews. Our fake ID gave our names as Yoshi Yen, Frank Suisse and Dave Dollar. On our cards, WEF stood for World-Eating Fatcats. At that point an armoured car, a water cannon and armed police rolled up.
We assumed the game was up. Given that we were handing out bright orange leaflets, it was obvious they would spot us. I feared the worst.
But I was wrong: the police assumed we were real VIPs. They whisked us past the queues and into the venue, where we continued to hand out leaflets. I even gave one to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. We basked in our success for about ten minutes before the police realised something was wrong. An officer walked up to me and pointed a pistol.
"What do you think you're doing?" he asked. "Raising awareness about the planetary environmental crisis," I responded. He wasn't amused.
We were marched out to a wood and stood in the snow surrounded by uniformed men barking German and pointing machine guns at us. For a moment, I was quite worried. We were then taken to a police station, where a stout officer asked us to remove our jackets, revealing our body padding. At first he thought we had explosives.
Then, thinking we were mocking fat people, he had a sense-of-humour failure. Eventually, we were let off. It was a questionable prank before September 11. I certainly wouldn't advise it now.
Friends Of The Earth made waves again when a group of activists and I started slow-handclapping Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State, at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002. America had refused to sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change and I thought he should know how we felt. Only three of us started off the clapping, but almost everyone in the conference hall joined in.
Over the years, I have learned to be more pragmatic. I still want to change society and politics. But there isn't now time enough to alter the fundamentals.
So, instead of trying to reform the system, I have led Friends Of The Earth towards trying to change the way we live within the system.
Global warming: Tony Juniper (right) dressed as a fatcat while campaigning at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
When I took over running the organisation in March 2003, the annual budget had risen to £11million and the 170 staff were professional, organised and focused. We had slightly more sophisticated furniture, too - all from green sources, of course.
Indeed, now every company and celebrity is vying to be the greenest in the land. That's fantastic, but goodwill needs to be translated into action if we are to avoid losing the meaning of being green.
Over the years I have solicited the help of celebrities - one can't underestimate the power they have in drawing attention to valuable causes.
In 2005, I had lunch with Madonna to persuade her to take part in our Big Ask campaign for a tougher Climate Change Bill.
Madonna was thoughtful and well-read. I thought I was making progress. On the way out we stopped at the cloakroom, her to collect her coat, me to pick up my folding pushbike.
She was fascinated that I should go round London on a bike. Sadly, she has not yet joined our campaign - nor have I seen her on a bike.
I used to dismiss all pop-star involvement in green campaigns as celebrities picking up on fashionable causes to win PR points.
But one man in particular changed my mind. In 2006, I found myself propping up a bar with Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Tory leader David Cameron and David Miliband, who had just been appointed Environment Secretary.
Thom had written them each a note inviting them to a gig organised by Friends Of The Earth at the Koko nightclub in North London. Thom was performing, along with fellow Radiohead man Jonny Greenwood.
Thom was giving Miliband a piece of his mind about tackling global warming. Over that drink he helped convince Miliband to bring in a law to make it compulsory to reduce our carbon emissions. This was a great boost to our Big Ask campaign. A Bill is in Parliament and will become an Act later this year.
Thom is one of the high-profile names committed and willing to understand the detail of global warming. Others include Johnny Borrell from Razorlight, X-Files actress Gillian Anderson and Cold Feet's Helen Baxendale.
However, over the years I've seen celebrities adopt worthy causes purely for their own means. Naomi Campbell signed up for a People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA) campaign against fashion's use of fur, only to be seen modelling it on the Milan catwalk months later. PETA soon dropped her.
Indeed, the way corporations and pop stars jump on the green band-wagon can backfire.
Yasmin Le Bon highlighted the problem of logging in Malaysian rainforests in 1991
An organisation called Global Cool launched last year. It seemed to me a bit of a PR flash in the pan, but it's managed to enlist stars such as Pink and Stephen Fry. Yet some of its campaigns seem ill-prepared and have already inadvertently caused embarrassment for those offering to help.
Sienna Miller became its roving ambassador, touring India calling for action on climate change. Later she admitted on Radio 4's Today programme that, as an actress, she couldn't avoid flying but intended to take fewer baths. I hadn't come across Miller before, but in my view it's sad that through no fault of her own, she has done herself and the green cause harm.
It's the same with companies such as Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Fuels with its biofuel that, it claims, is "needed" to power jumbo jets. Branson jumped on the global-warming bandwagon with aplomb.
He plans to use biofuels in his trains and aircraft, but has failed to see the limitations of these alternative fuels in combating global warming.
One of my biggest professional disappointments has been BP and its Beyond Petroleum campaign which, ironically, I helped create.
I remember standing on the top floor of BP's office looking over the City of London with the then chief executive, Lord Browne. He had seen the light, and the light was green. He told me: "I'm convinced. We will bring in a new era at BP, we will be a sustainable business."
I was excited, but it didn't last. The rebranding looked persuasive, but it was just that - rebranding. Most of BP's budget still goes into oil and gas exploration - not solar or wind power. Shell is just as bad. Like BP, it claims to have green credentials, but both companies are going deeper than ever into fossil fuels. In fact, they have recently reduced their involvement with renewable energy.
I am just as sceptical about the efforts of other corporate giants. In 2006 Tesco announced it would award loyalty points to shoppers for reusing plastic bags. But until supermarkets reduce the energy used in their stores, minimise food miles and treat farmers better,
saving a few plastic bags is just window dressing.
Then, of course, there's the Government. When Labour came to power in 1997 it promised bold initiatives. And there have been successes, although the Climate Change Bill was brought on to the agenda only by the great efforts of Friends Of The Earth.
The Government is terrified of saying anything that will upset business or the electorate.
We can do a lot as individuals, but it is laws that will make a real difference - and this Government is bigger on talk than it is on action.
In 2004, I asked Prime Minister Tony Blair why he could not do more to curb household energy waste. He could, for instance, insist on energy-saving light bulbs. His answer made my blood boil.
"We can't act on these things until there is a public demand," Blair said. I thought: What about the Iraq War? There was no public demand for that.
Of course, I was polite and I respect the way he managed to get climate change on the agenda at international meetings such as G8. But he let himself down with his lack of leadership on practical action at home.
Gordon Brown sees the environment as even less pressing. One day he makes a powerful speech on global warming, the next he speaks in favour of a third runway at Heathrow airport.
The expansion of aviation could easily cancel out the reductions in greenhouse gas emission the Government is committed to. Brown might think he can side-step this contradiction, but he's yet to grasp the challenge of improving Britain's environment while profiting from it.
Meanwhile, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly has been told by Brown that transport is a driver of economic growth - which means building more runways, roads and ports. When we talk to Kelly, it sometimes seems as if we are speaking a foreign language.
David Cameron, on the other hand, has made himself an important force in green politics.
He has put pressure on Brown and I only hope that he implements what he has talked about if he ever gets into power. It would be tragic if his green talk turns out to be no more than a cynical Tory rebranding.
One thing has not changed in the past two decades. Prince Charles has been an absolute rock of the green movement. He's been told to stay out of politics, but he has done a huge amount to force big firms and politicians to take notice. He's a commanding figure: when he talks, people listen.
Green goddess: Gillian Anderson supports Friends of the Earth
So, after 18 years with Friends Of The Earth, I am passing on the baton. I remain committed to the green cause, but it's time for a change. After a couple of decades, you find yourself making the same arguments too many times. It has been my pleasure and pain to lobby the last seven Environment Secretaries.
There is some justice in the world, it seems. Matthew Banks, the Tory who destroyed the Wildlife Bill in 1996, lost his seat the following year, thanks perhaps in small part to our campaigning in his Southport constituency. A version of the Bill became law in 2000.
The Spix's Macaw also survived. Birds were discovered in private zoos and a breeding programme set up to preserve the species. I hope that one day soon captive birds will be released into restored forests.
The green cause has enjoyed a great many such small successes in my time, but there is much to do. We must explain how we can make our lives greener and still have jobs, eat well and go on holiday - the green lobby needs to do much more on that.
Persuading families to use less energy, cut pollution and generate less waste need not be a problem if done in the right way. Saving money, having warmer homes, safer streets and better health can all be part of a greener society. We need politicians with the leadership skills to tackle the environment crisis - inspiring figures with the vision to persuade people that protecting the planet needn't threaten our comfort.
Britain can be a leader in innovative green technology just as it was once at the forefront of abolishing slavery. There are parallels. Much the same arguments were advanced against banning slavery at the beginning of the 19th Century that are now made about curbing greenhouse gasses.
If we stopped trading in slaves, it was claimed, other nations would continue to profit from it. That didn't happen and we led the way for emancipation. Now sceptics say China and India will continue to pump out greenhouse gasses regardless of what we do. That need not be the case. British technology could set the pace in halting climate change, with British business reaping the rewards of being world leaders.
My children are now ten, 13 and 16. I hope that, in their lifetime, we will pull back from the brink of environmental disaster. It will take determination, sacrifice and sweat. It might be preferable, however, if it didn't require pregnant supermodels or body-padding.
• How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take To Change A Planet? by Tony Juniper is published by Quercus. For more information go to the Friends Of The Earth website, www.foe.co.uk, or www.off-grid.net
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