Friday, February 16, 2007

"The Virgin Earth Challenge" -- Yeesh!

this is from the excellent blog "Mostly Water", http://mostlywater.org/node/17720

The owner of Virgin Airlines and Virgin Galactic (a space tourism project) is going to save the planet from climate change with the Virgin Earth Challenge. Branson's offering a $25 million prize to the person who can come up with a "commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth’s climate."

So, science will save the day once again?

5 comments:

D. Lollard said...

What, I'm the only other contributor here anymore?!

I saw the Virgin Earth Challenge the other day. I'm glad someone's encouraging people to do something. But of course it won't be enough.

I just learned about nitrogen and how the N fertilizers sprayed on fields come from natural gas. Which is in increasingly short supply. A good reason to encourage N-fixing plants to grow everywhere.

A friend last night was saying we should just take seeds and walk up and down the alleys sowing them. Johnny Alleyseed. He was talking about Masanobu Fukuoka (The One-Straw Revolution, haven't read it but he's pretty cool), coating seeds with clay to keep birds from eating 'em.

I can almost see all kinds of climbing vines on the few fences that are left after everyone realizes how crazy they were to drive to work every day when they could garden instead.

I've been thinking, since we can't know for sure if we'll get desert, ice, or flood, we should plant various stuff adapted to these various different conditions, and hopefully SOMETHING will survive!

Unknown said...

i changed the blog's format over, and i guess the other people didn't opt in to write. corrie was the only other one who ever has, and since we're not fast friends anymore, i'm not surprised.

my friend ryan has a "patch" that covers his whole jacket, and it says something like "if your heart is free, than the ground you stand on is liberated territory. defend it". in my mind, casting those seed balls is definitely one of the most underappreciated important tactics in our miraculous bag of tricks. you know, the one that we'll need to pull through the lean times ahead

D. Lollard said...

I've seen that slogan, in CrimethInc. lit, I love it.

William said...

Capitalism + Science = Maybe? Kinda? Sorta?

Unknown said...

if dude Branson is knowledgable, savvy, and sincerely and deeply cares, than that $25 million could do a lot of good. so yeah, not kinda or sorta, Will, but maybe.