Calvin Jones heeft op zijn blog ClimateChangeAction een aardige posting over Richard Branson geplaatst. De “Virgin-king” heeft een beloning uitgeloofd van 25 miljoen dollar voor het meest ingenieuze idee om het CO-2 probleem op te lossen.
In zijn artikel beschrijft Calvin het verschuiven van de media-aandacht van “nihil” (tot voor kort) naar “huge” (nu met live earth). Er zijn meer burger-initiatieven om het klimaat probleem aan te pakken.
More recently, Richard Branson, known as a self-publicist announced a $25 million, prize to anyone who can remove large qauntities of carbon from the atmosphere afordably. Now many people can do this, Klaus Lackener of Columbia University is one of the most vocal proponents of a mineral technology for doing this, many others have there own ideas such as using hemp as a building material or a fuel in CCS plants, but if we assume that these aren’t good enough then what he is after is a way to take co2 out the atmospher as cheaply as we put it in. Environmentaliists jumped on this eutopian quest for a techno-fix as insane: therby completely missing the point! He has used his publicity skills to get cheap (most likely free) media coverage. This story was
covered globally, will cause much discusion and will all end in no one beng awarded the cash but many realising that energy efficiency and renewables are already cheap or proffitable! Ahh, yes, many will implicityl take on the precept of Branson’s idea, namely that carbon is better out the air than in. Come on people, get with it! That is how a creative business mind works, when was the last time you had such a subtle way to communicate a message to so many people?
Lastly. Live Earth is Go! Superb. Thanks Al Gore, and to all you cynics out there I don’t know whose planet you have been on but if you don’t think that Al Gore has taken this message to the masses like a master then you must be pretty jaded. Live Earth, and Al Gore, will be slated: Great. Again, I predict that Al and the event will take the slack but that criticism will be on what he is doing, how the event is being runt etc, not on the why.