Larry Ellison Hawaii Lanai

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison purchased approximately 98% of the 141 sq. km. large Bay of Lanai for $500 million four month ago. Now he says he will turn it into a lasting haven with electrical vehicles, bio-farms and sun energy. Since the purchase of Lanai, the 3,000 inhabitants of the village have not seen a sound of Ellison, so of course they were quite interested in what he was planning to do with the place.

"We will make Lanai a role-model for a sustainable economy," he said to Maria Bartiromo. "I' m the owner of the power station. Electricity supplier will be concentrated photovoltaics and concentrating on converting seawater into freshwater."

So he wants to run the entire volcano with solarenergy, even with Solarthermie, in order to operate a seawater desalinator, which supplies it with oxygen. We will also have ecological farming: "We' ve got droplet watering, where we'll have biological holdings all over the isle. We hope to be exporting products - really the best biological products to Japan and elsewhere," he said.

We' re gonna have electrical vehicles. An' eco-lab' with electrical vehicles, solarenergy and biological agriculture - right-wing extremists will undoubtedly have a good feeling here ("It's like Captain Planet's hiding place", mocks Bill O'Reilly somewhere). Dad, Ellison hasn't sat down for a county assembly yet.

3,000 poeple lived on the isle and had to find out what the multimillionaire had in mind for her in a TV broadcast at prime time. What somehow seems feudal: here comes the place-maker who brings work for all unhappy islanders who are now at his grace. Looks Ellison is suffering a little from TEDliness here; the faith that a few good thoughts, a pile of money and a thought guide can take away the worries of the while.

It' good that Ellison wants to spent a few of his 41 billion dollars on planting an isle, but come on, go on, go on. Speak to your town. Give us a call at Reception and we' ll let you know. You can see how many of Lanai's inhabitants work on an ecological estate and driving an electrical vehicle. This is the kind of ethic we need more of; open debate about why PVs and PVs work, participative effort to do it.

While Ellison may make some news with his multimillion dollars old-fashioned ecological altruism laboratory, any truly sustained (and scalable) decarbonisation strategy will be decarbon.