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Virgin Earth Challenge

-- Adam -- 02/09/2007

Richard Branson just annouced he's offering, as part of his Virgin Earth Challenge, $25 million to someone who can develop a technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, Reuters reports. Caps and reducing emissions alone may not be enough to prevent some of the many horrendous impacts from climate change. He said, "Unless we can devise a way of removing CO2 (carbon dioxide) from the earth's atmosphere we will lose half of all species on earth, all the coral reefs, 100 million people will be displaced, farmlands will become deserts and rain forests wastelands." The winner will be identified by a panel of judges, including Branson and scientist James Hansen. There are ways in development to store carbon dioxide once it's captured, but a big piece of the puzzle, cleaning out gases we've already released, may need this new incentive to become reality before much devastation has occured. Hopefully we can look forward to new attention from the scientific community and more solutions available to policymakers.