This morning the police arrested nine Extinction Rebellion activists after they smashed at least 19 windows at HSBC’s Canary Wharf office. In replacing the destroyed glass, HSBC will now see masses of carbon and sulphur dioxide emitted into the air, totally undermining Extinction Rebellion’s aims. To counteract the pollution in glass production and reduce emissions, Frugalpac’s Frugal Bottle have launched Britain’s first cardboard wine and gin line, the packaging of which is 84% less polluting to produce than typical glass bottles. Guido enjoyed his afternoon saving the planet. Don’t smash – get smashed…

*Guido received no payment for this post – other than the wine…

In new polling that has been specially released on Earth Day, Ipsos MORI has found that the majority of the British public, along with the Indians, Russians, Aussies, and Americans agree with the statement that:

“Government should focus on helping the economy to recover first and foremost, even if that means taking some actions that are bad for the environment.”

Despite the clearly leading question, asking respondents to explicitly back their Government taking “actions that are bad for the environment” rather than more neutral phrasing such as not intervening as much to reduce carbon emissions, the economy still won. The clearly disappointing Earth Day results were buried at the bottom of the press release…

Turns out that despite mass-environmentalist virtue-signalling, people care more about not being poor. Happy Earth Day.

Was it only a decade ago that Sir Richard Branson joined the wilder ranks of global warming theorists and committed to spending $3 billion to tackle climate change? The billionaire pledged all profits from his Virgin air and rail interests over the next 10 years to combating rising global temperatures. Sort of…

His $3 billion “donation” would not go to independent charities, it would be invested in a new subsidiary of the Virgin conglomerate, Virgin Fuels. So it was just a re-investment of profits.

Blair’s Downing Street spokesman was full of praise: “This is an extremely generous offer. The prime minister met Richard Branson and other business leaders in California in the summer and came back very impressed with the positive steps all the companies were taking to reduce their impact on global warming.” Bill Clinton slapped him on the back, Al Gore was ecstatic

As ever with Branson things might have been a little over-hyped. Virgin Fuels doesn’t exist today. It appears to have mutated into the Virgin Green Fund (VGF) as a way of making investments in renewable energy and earning fund management fees. The fund unfortunately closed down in 2014.

Did Branson ever put that promised $3 billion of profits over the decade from his transport groups into “fighting global warming”? It seems not? So on Earth Day Guido asks, as he asks governments around the world from Australia to Britain to bail out his transport businesses, what happened to the profits he pledged? Did they go to fight global warming? If not, could they not be used to bail out his airlines?