Virgin Earth Challenge
The Virgin Earth Challenge is a competition offering a $25 million prize for the first person or organization to come up with a way of scrubbing greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere in the battle to beat global warming.
Similar in concept to former competitions like the Orteig Prize for flying across the Atlantic or the Ansari X Prize for flying into space. The winner will come up with a way of removing one billion metric tons of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years; $5 million of the prize being paid at the start of removal operatons and the remaining $20 million to be paid at the end of the 10 years.
The prize will initially only be open for five years, with ideas assessed by a panel of judges including Richard Branson (a British Entreprneur), Al Gore (former Vice President of the USA) and Crispin Tickell (British Diplomat) as well as climate specialists James Hansen, James Lovelock and Tim Flannery. If the prize remains unlaimed at the end of five years the panel may elect to extend the period.
The prize was conceived and financed by Sir Richard Branson a successful British entrepreneur and was announced in London on Feb-9 2007 by Branson and Al Gore whose film An Inconvenient Truth released in 2006 spread the message that the world was at risk from climate change caused by carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse gas' emmissions.
Around two hundred metric gigatons of carbon dioxide have accumulated in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, raising concentrations by 100 parts per million. The Virgin Earth Challenge is intended to inspire inventors to find ways of bringing that back down again. Top scientists predict that global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to human activities potentially putting millions of people at risk from rising sea levels, floods, famines and storms.