Fix global warming, get filthy rich
When counting on humanity’s self preservation instincts isn’t enough, you can always depend on greed -and, sometimes, enlightened self-interest- to save the day…
British billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, with former vice president Al Gore at his side, on Friday offered a $25 million prize for anyone who can come up with a way to blunt global climate change by removing at least a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the Earth’s atmosphere.
Truth be told, Branson is one of the few gazillionaires out there who seems to give a damn about his generation’s footprint on the planet, and sets pragmatic / visionary goals that he can help achieve with the help of his immense fortune. He’d already already put a bounty on climate change last September, by pledging his transportation profits towards fighting the good fight. Branson is banking on biofuels to help boost green transportation skywards and out to space.
While biofuel powered skyliners and spaceships are probably more more than a decade in the future, Branson is proposing some practical measures to help tackle the hard deadline given by the IPCC last month towards curbing CO2 emissions globally:
"One of those ideas is to set up starting grids at the airports so that instead of sitting on planes with CO2 spewing out of those planes for anything up to 60-90 minutes … while you’re waiting to get on the runway to take off, you’re towed by a small tug to the starting grid and then the pilot would turn on the engines 10 minutes before take off and then take off.[..] Arriving aircraft could also be towed to the stand by a tug meaning they could turn their engines off five minutes after touching down.
Virgin Atlantic believes the "starting grid" system would reduce fuel consumption before planes take off by between 50%-90%. People living close to airports would also benefit from lower noise levels and cleaner air [..]
Sir Richard also called for a single European air traffic control system which could "optimise" the use of airspace. At the moment there are 35 different air traffic control organisations operating in Europe, compared with just one in the US. The International Air Transport Association has predicted that 12% of global aviation CO2 emissions could be saved if air traffic control systems were more efficient.
