The sky is falling...the sky is falling....

..... now we got to figure out how to make money by scaring the bejaysus out of everybody! From today's Herald Tribune:

At island retreat, Branson and friends seek to save a world 'on fire'

By Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thursday, March 20, 2008

NECKER ISLAND,British Virgin Islands: Richard Branson was lounging under the starry midnight sky on this palm-dappled speck of an island recently when he popped a sobering question.
"So, do we really think the world is on fire?" Branson, the British magnate and adventurer, asked several guests, as a manservant scurried off to fetch him another glass of pinot grigio.
What he wanted to know was whether his high-powered visitors, among them Larry Page of Google, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, thought global warming threatened the planet.
Branson does - and so did most of his guests. So on this recent weekend on his private hideaway in the crystalline waters between the islands of Tortola and Anegada, they tried to figure out what to do about it and perhaps get richer in the process.
Some of them, like Page, carbon-consciously jet-pooled in from Silicon Valley, where the financiers who bankrolled the Web boom of the 1990s have started chasing the new "New New Thing": green power. In an era of $100-plus oil, venture capitalists like Vinod Khosla, another invitee, are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into young companies that cook up biofuels and harness the power of the sun.

I guess the only thing better'n havin' a zillion dollars is being able to use some of them to swindle a few zillion more out of the great unwashed. 'Psst, hey buddy, wanna buy a few carbon credits?'