- #1
ACG
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Hi!
I just read that Richard Branson or someone like that offered $25M to someone who was able to do something which would reverse global warming. While that's admirable, it just seems to me that it's too low. It would probably take millions of dollars to simply do the experiments etc. to get the technology working.
So, I started thinking. Would it make sense for the UN to sponsor a HUMUNGOUS prize (at least a billion dollars US) to something which will prevent global warming without reducing humanity's standard of living? You could have a sliding scale similar to what they had for the longitude prize, something like
$25B for technology that will reduce the amount of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere to preindustrial values by 2025
$10B if done by 2050
$5B by 2100
$10B for cheap technology that will provide power worldwide without further messing up of the environment by 2025
$5B by 2050
and so forth.
The technology has to be applicable on a global scale to get the prize (maybe country scale will get 10% of the prize but the contest will still go on).
I'm thinking of an exact parallel to the longitude competition and X-Prize, but with the stakes far higher because it's global (not just European) and life and death are at stake and not travel. Since it's global, either the US should run it or the most powerful superpower at the time (which in this case would be the US, though I would argue that individual countries should stay out of it because a superpower might lose its superpower status at some point).
Maybe this "Bureau of Greenhouse Affairs" would be willing to fund some international school which gets as much funds as it needs -- regardless of politics and so forth -- as long as the projects being funded are intended to help the environment.
Do you think this will help at all? Obviously, I personally don't have the money :)
ACG
I just read that Richard Branson or someone like that offered $25M to someone who was able to do something which would reverse global warming. While that's admirable, it just seems to me that it's too low. It would probably take millions of dollars to simply do the experiments etc. to get the technology working.
So, I started thinking. Would it make sense for the UN to sponsor a HUMUNGOUS prize (at least a billion dollars US) to something which will prevent global warming without reducing humanity's standard of living? You could have a sliding scale similar to what they had for the longitude prize, something like
$25B for technology that will reduce the amount of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere to preindustrial values by 2025
$10B if done by 2050
$5B by 2100
$10B for cheap technology that will provide power worldwide without further messing up of the environment by 2025
$5B by 2050
and so forth.
The technology has to be applicable on a global scale to get the prize (maybe country scale will get 10% of the prize but the contest will still go on).
I'm thinking of an exact parallel to the longitude competition and X-Prize, but with the stakes far higher because it's global (not just European) and life and death are at stake and not travel. Since it's global, either the US should run it or the most powerful superpower at the time (which in this case would be the US, though I would argue that individual countries should stay out of it because a superpower might lose its superpower status at some point).
Maybe this "Bureau of Greenhouse Affairs" would be willing to fund some international school which gets as much funds as it needs -- regardless of politics and so forth -- as long as the projects being funded are intended to help the environment.
Do you think this will help at all? Obviously, I personally don't have the money :)
ACG