Branson’s Learning Curve, Part 2

This is the second in a four part series on the Virgin Earth Challenge (VEC) proposed by Richard Branson. Parts are excerpted from “The Age of Sustainability.”

The Prize

Some of the ideas submitted in the VEC that became finalists, while interesting, do not appear to have been thought through and are outside of the parameters set for the competition — dangling $25 million before the world will do that. For instance, some proposals wanted to reflect solar radiation back into space using aerosols or orbiting reflectors. This might reduce the amount of radiation reaching the planet’s surface and also the amount of heat that could be trapped but it could easily miss the mark, too. And what of the green plants that depend on sunlight to capture carbon and to make food? Also, reducing the energy reaching the surface might have unpredictable and deleterious effects on weather so such proposals seem to suggest fixing one problem by creating another.

More troubling, proposals like reflecting sunlight, avoided the central point of the challenge — removing carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere to reduce the threat of global warming and climate change. For instance, some of the solutions sought ways to capture pollution “at the smoke stack” (that is, preventing its release while still burning carbon) or they captured carbon but then relied…