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By May 2007, Mandela and Graça had decided on a list of twelve proposed Elders. Leaving the bustle of Jo’burg behind for the serenity of the bush, we flew to Ulusaba for Nelson Mandela’s first address to them. It was a magical, overwhelming moment: as Mandela began walking up the hill, the pathway turned into a cacophony of noise and emotion as our staff spontaneously burst into song. Mandela danced along in a trademark multicolored shirt, holding hands with the locals.
The wind continued to be with us: when Kofi Annan, traveling on UN commitments, videoconferenced in, Mandela asked him simply: “Would you become an Elder?”
“How can I say no when you have me on the screen?” Kofi laughed. “Of course I’m in.”
The finances fell into place, too. We set ourselves challenges to raise the money needed to cover the costs of running the Elders for three years: $18 million. I was so convinced by the idea that it was easier than expected to convince others.
We chose 18 July, Mandela’s eighty-ninth birthday, for the launch at Constitution Hill in Jo’burg. Originally a prison during the apartheid years, it had been transformed into the home of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. As I walked down a long hallway lined with artwork created during the Truth and Reconciliation movement, I stopped as I came upon a beautiful memorial to the people who had been kept imprisoned there. A sprawling series of crosses were etched along the wall—one for every day of Mandela’s twenty-seven years in jail. I knew we had chosen the right place to introduce this new force for peace in the world.
Many of the Elders were there: Mandela and his wife Graça Machel, Kofi Annan, President Carter, former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Peace prize-winner Muhammad Yunus. Also named as Elders, but watching from afar, were Self-Employed Women’s Association of India founder Ela Bhatt, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Panic struck as two generators blew before we started the launch. I frantically ran backstage to find Miles Peckham had organized a third. Then Peter and I introduced the Elders concept, before he performed a heart-stopping rendition of “Biko.” President Carter and Kofi spoke eloquently, while Arch’s speech made us laugh and cry: “We owe our freedom to extraordinary people,” he told the assembled crowd. “The bad, the evil, doesn’t have the last word. It is ultimately goodness and laughter and joy and caring and compassion.”
Madiba, meanwhile, made the most stirring speech I have heard in my life. “Let us call them Global Elders, not because of their age, but because of their individual and collective wisdom. This group derives its strength not from political, economic or military power, but from the independence and integrity of those who are here. I believe that, with your experience and your energies, and your profound commitment to building a better world, the Elders can become a fiercely independent and robust force for good, tackling complex and intractable issues.”
They were powerful words, powerfully spoken: like everyone in the room, I was deeply moved. It was so rewarding to be there to witness it. It was rewarding, too, to see how quickly the Elders moved into action following the launch. They quickly convened and began outlining a plan of action together, starting with a first trip to learn more about the humanitarian situation in Darfur and see how they could help. Our idea had come to life: the Elders had assembled.
CHAPTER 18
Climate Change
In late summer 2006, Al Gore asked if I would see him for a meeting. We had never met before, so arranged to get together in London for breakfast. After he’d finished speaking, I didn’t feel like eating anymore.
Strange as it might sound for a man in the process of setting up his third airline, I was becoming increasingly preoccupied with a seemingly contradictory subject: climate change. But that meeting with Al Gore took my concerns further. It wasn’t a social call—he was there to show me the world was staring a global disaster in the face and doing nowhere near enough about it. And show me he did. I had already been looking into the subject, but nothing prepared me for the impact Al’s presentation made. Will Whitehorn and Jean Oelwang sat quietly alongside me, listening intently, and we were all shocked by what Al said. His words were so clear and his evidence so overwhelming that I knew we had to start acting before it was too late.
Al’s presentation went on to become the powerful documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which brought climate change to the attention of millions of people. He was eager for a business leader to speak out on the problem, and encourage other CEOs to follow suit.
“You are in a position to make a difference,” he told me. “If you can make a giant step forward other people will follow.”
After Al left, I did some soul-searching. How can a businessman who runs three airlines and a trainline commit to helping lead the fight against climate change? I went back to my previous research into the issue, reading the likes of The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjørn Lomborg and James Lovelock’s Gaia books. I went to meet Jim Lovelock and his analysis only reinforced my changing view. There is no doubt humans are increasing the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at an exponential rate, and that the ever-thickening blanket around the Earth that this creates is driving up temperatures. It was clear to me that unless more was done the consequences would pose potentially catastrophic risks to the Earth’s environment, economies, species, cultures and people. I thought about what kind of planet my generation wanted to leave to my children’s children. My conclusion was that we had to do all we could to help.
But how could I do that? I decided that for the next few years we should divert all of the dividend profits made by the Virgin Group from our transportation businesses to investments in renewables research and developing new clean technologies—sustainable, low-carbon transport fuels in particular. As you may have established by now, I believe strongly in people. Entrepreneurship has helped create many of the wonders of the world today, and it can help us overcome many of our challenges for a better tomorrow. New initiatives could help us get to the root of the problem.
I was then invited by President Bill Clinton to speak at the Clinton Global Initiative coming up in September. Bill is a shrewd operator and never misses a trick: after I agreed to attend, he called me asking if there was any particular pledge I would like to make. I realized this would be the perfect opportunity to share my plan and when I explained it to President Clinton, he was delighted, and decided to make the announcement the centerpiece of his event.
On 21 September I was in the Sheraton Hotel in Midtown, New York, when President Clinton took to the stage and gave me a glowing introduction. In front of an audience including Bill Gates, French President Jacques Chirac, Rupert Murdoch and Warren Buffett, he described me as “one of the most interesting, creative, genuinely committed people I have ever known.” I was flattered, or at least I would have been if I hadn’t missed my cue and was in the loo at the time!
As the assembled leaders looked around to see where I was, I finally made it onstage and ran through our plan: “What we’ve decided to do is to put any proceeds received by the Virgin Group from our transportation businesses into tackling environmental issues,” I said. Unaware of the impending global financial crisis, in an interview afterward I estimated these profits could be as high as $3 billion over the next decade.
“Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents,” I argued. “It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world. We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment.” I discussed our new venture, Virgin Fuels, which would invest in biofuels and other innovations to develop clean aviation fuel. Together with Shai Weiss and Evan Lovell from Virgin Group, we decided to expand from biofuels development to mo
re environment-focused investments, setting up Virgin Green Fund in early 2007. This independent private equity firm would invest growth capital in the renewable energy and resource efficiency sector more broadly.
“The only way global warming is going to be beaten is to invest in new fuels (and energy) that can actually replace fossil fuels,” I concluded.
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Climate change has not been the only major issue that has concerned me in recent years: the matter of drugs has continued to energize me, and lead me to taking up a role as a Global Drug Commissioner.
When I was growing up in the sixties and launching a record label, drugs were never far away. Our stores became places where young people could hang out and listen to music. I was one of thousands of young people who would join friends on a beanbag, listening to the latest Pink Floyd record and sharing a spliff. But aside from the occasional joint, I was never really much of a user myself: my work and adventures have always given me much more of a buzz.
One exception came when I traveled to Jamaica in 1974 to convince Peter Tosh to sign for Virgin Records. I felt Peter was the only person in reggae as talented as Bob Marley, and when I heard he was leaving the Wailers and going solo I was determined to sign him. I flew to Jamaica, found out where Peter lived and knocked on his front door. There was no answer, but I could hear noises inside the house. I sat down on the dusty ground outside and waited for what seemed like three days. From people coming and going, I got the impression that Peter knew I was outside, and was testing how keen I was to sign him. Eventually he came to the door.
“I guess you better come in,” he boomed, offering me the floor in his living room. He then disappeared into the hall, before returning with an enormous box of ganga. I sat there, goggle-eyed as he rolled the longest spliff I’ve ever seen. We stayed up (well, lay prostrate on the floor!) for two days, which was how long it took to empty the box. Somehow, I passed his initiation test and he signed to Virgin Records. The following year we released Legalize It, his pro-marijuana anthem.
While Peter used marijuana both recreationally and creatively, many other musicians were becoming reliant on much harder drugs. I’ve seen plenty of people struggle with addiction, including some of our artists, from Sid Vicious to Boy George. As I grew older I began to see how their addictions were made so much worse by the ongoing criminalization of drug users. The amount spent on enforcing drug laws—more than $100 billion a year—is equivalent to the amount spent globally on foreign aid. But instead of helping, this extraordinary sum is being used to fund a war against people, to enormous human, economic and social cost around the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have been criminalized, and hundreds of thousands more have been killed. The war on drugs has also effectively kick-started the $320-billion-a-year criminal drug industry, fueled terrorism—and done nothing to reduce drug production, supply and use.
My own experiences strengthened my conviction that drug addiction and abuse should be treated as a public health issue, not a criminal problem. As the century turned, I continued to speak out and quickly learned that many around me felt the same way, but were afraid to raise their voice. In this climate, I saw a need for more evidence-based drug policies to spread throughout the world. The key would be proving to governments, who did not want to hear it, that the war on drugs had failed and that there was a better approach.
In 2010, I was invited by former President of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso to join the newly formed Global Commission on Drug Policy. This unprecedented group began carrying out an enormous amount of research into worldwide drug policies. Many of the members had seen the results of draconian laws firsthand as presidents and prime ministers of countries including Colombia, Mexico, Switzerland and Greece, and were determined to make amends for not doing more when they were in power. Kofi Annan also joined us, alongside the likes of Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and George Shultz, former US Secretary of State. In the years to come, leaders from Chile, the Czech Republic, the UK, Portugal, Peru, India, Pakistan, Poland and America joined the Commission and evidence continued to build.
As the only business leader on the Commission, I came at the problem from an entrepreneurial standpoint. When I attended Commission meetings, from Switzerland to the US, I would state what I would do if it were a business: “The war on drugs is killing millions of people, and putting billions of dollars into the pockets of drug lords,” I argued at a meeting at MoMA in New York. “If the war on drugs was a business, I would have shut it down decades ago, and tried something else. It’s time the world did exactly that.”
The new millennium had brought some radical changes rooted in the realization that business as usual was not an option. From Switzerland to South America, new evidence-based policies to treat drugs as a health issue were put into practice. I was particularly taken with Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines. In December 2011, I visited the country on behalf of the Global Commission to congratulate the Portuguese on the success of their drug policies and see their impact firsthand. Nothing is straightforward when it comes to drugs, but the figures here are persuasive. I saw people with drug addictions being treated with therapy, rather than slung in jail. The number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction had more than doubled. The majority of heroin addicts dropped their habit and became useful members of society again (whilst in America, where prohibition reigns strong, the number of people now dying from opioid overdoses every year is higher than that of US soldiers killed in the Vietnam War).
By June 2011 we were ready to release our first report, calling for a major paradigm shift in global drug policy. Backed by solid evidence and announced by experienced leaders, we demanded an end to the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others. In its stead, we urged countries to ensure that human rights and harm reduction policies were enforced, for people who use drugs as well as those involved in the lower ends of illegal drug markets, from petty sellers to farmers. We also encouraged governments to experiment with legal regulation of drugs (especially cannabis) to safeguard the health and security of their citizens.
Announcing the report, I said: “The war on drugs has failed to cut drug usage, but has filled our jails, cost millions in taxpayer dollars, fueled organized crime and caused thousands of deaths. We need a new approach, one that takes the power out of the hands of organized crime and treats people with addiction problems like patients, not criminals. The one thing we cannot afford to do is go on pretending the war on drugs is working.”
I was very proud when Sam and his production company Sundog Pictures went on to make a documentary following the Commission’s work and depicting the failed war on drugs in all its horror. Breaking the Taboo quickly amassed millions of views online and continues to stream on Netflix, convincing more people that the war on drugs must end. We hosted community discussions at screenings of Breaking the Taboo everywhere I visited, bringing drug policy reform to the mainstream in Morocco, Sweden, Ukraine and multiple US cities.
Change was beginning to happen, but not quickly enough: by 2015 the Global Commission on Drug Policy had been calling for drugs to be treated as a health issue, not a criminal problem, for five years. There were signs of progress, especially with marijuana in the US. Then it was announced that in April 2016 the first special session of the United Nations General Assembly to discuss drug policy would be held for eighteen years. It was a perfect opportunity to frankly debate the war on drugs and its devastating negative impacts on people and communities everywhere.
Ahead of this, I was thrilled to get word that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which has shaped much of global drug policy for decades, was intending to make a major statement. In an embargoed press release circulated to the BBC, myse
lf and others, I learned that UNODC were intending to call on governments around the world to decriminalize drug use and possession for personal consumption for all drugs. It was massive news. I wrote a response to share once UNODC launched the document at the International Harm Reduction conference in Malaysia on 18 October. I also carried out embargoed interviews with the BBC and other press, where I applauded the organization for choosing a new path of sensible, evidence-based policy: “This is a refreshing shift that could go a long way to finally end the needless criminalization of millions of drug users around the world,” I drafted. “My colleagues on the Global Commission on Drug Policy and I could not be more delighted.”
On the eve of the conference, however, I learned UNODC were distancing themselves from their own release. My sources told me that politics had got in the way and at least one global superpower was pressuring them to backtrack.
“It looks as if Russia is strong-arming the UN into cutting the release,” our advocacy director Matthias Stausberg told me. Russia is committed to a hardline approach on drugs and has roadblocked progressive policy reform before.
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked.
“It doesn’t look like it. Our contacts say many at the UN are supportive of this move and want the story to come out. But they are going to bury it before it ever sees daylight.”
I paused for a moment. We already had the report. What was to stop us sharing it? Sure, embargoes, protocol, international relations. But this was important. This document could legitimately help to save lives.
“Fuck it,” I said. “If the UN won’t release it, I will. Let’s post the whole paper anyway and commend them for their good work—even though they’ve bottled it.”
Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography Page 16