I was invited to speak at the World Trade Organisation Public Forum, held last month at the WTO’s headquarters on the shore of Lake Geneva. (More on the questionable wisdom of locating a pro-free trade institution in highly protectionist Switzerland will follow…) In the opening plenary session we were addressed by WTO Director General, the Prime Minister of Lesotho and the Chairman of Unilever, but one man stole the show: Ted Turner, the billionaire media mogul turned philanthropist. He’s is a fascinating character. A straight-taking maverick good ol’ boy, once married to Jane Fonda, he sports a pencil-thin white moustache and looks as though he’s most at ease on the saddle of his favourite old Paint, roaming the half million acre Vermejo Park Ranch in New Mexico. Ted owns more land in the US than any other citizen. Ted’s pitch, as simple as it was unexpected, is that energy crops offer a double-barrelled fix to two of the most pressing challenges that beset the global community: the stalemate in the WTO’s ‘Doha Round’ of trade liberalisation talks and (more importantly) our dependency on fossil fuels that cause global warming. (more…)