the false promise — Given population increases, minimalization thru conservation is a runaway treadmill. Remedial efforts to minimize carbon-based emissions do not work; our use grows faster than our regulation. Clean-up strategies clutter the category of too-little too-late. Simply, airlines don't clean up after themselves. It's not part of their business model. In any case, efforts to disappear CO2, in a proprietary manner, require ever more CO2 production: the energy involved is greater than the energy re-captured. P.s., those touted nanobots are a chimera. Solutions are not invisible.
the defeatist option — Accepting and accommodating to climate change will be deadly. We will not be quick enough. Transforming the CO2 problem into publicity diamonds, as so many are wont to do, bends the focus away from real solutions. The fact is, we must pressure the hounds to chase their own tails, while we quietly experiment, to achieve new technologies, which optimize our future rather than diminish it. We can't let other partners in CO2 crime, the aircraft and engine makers, who lack the agile interest to lead the way, disappear us, ahead of themselves.
an overlooked option — There is a simple immediate stop-gap with real potential, that was proposed more than 60 years ago, but still is ignored: one primitive single-celled alga, a collector of both the sun's energy and carbon dioxide, absorbs 20 times the CO2 of an average land plant cell. Indeed, chlorella pyrenoidosa will absorb all the CO2 it is offered. Grown in water six inches deep, over 35,000 square miles, the harvest, can be eaten, buried, built with, or, assuming maximum yield, converted into one billion barrels of oil — but then of course we're right back where we started.
finding the right focus — The old standards still apply. We need leaps of imagination, political will, courage, hard work and sacrifice. We need scientists, inventors, and leaders equal to the challenge. The airline industry is one of the worst polluters and continues to escape the consequences. It needs to accept the hard reality and chase innovation, as if its life depended on it. This prize is meant to encourage this. Instead of racing after space travel and more polluting routes, airlines need to refocus and change their ways entirely. Asking someone else to clean up after them will not work. Change is the only choice.
Sing us a swan song of the south pole, lead us into the desert on fire, shroud Earth like its sister Venus, or fund your own future, erase the smog smile, shred the crueler rules of money, end this contest for polluters; we'll reward you with our prize....(Robinson Joyce)
mp3 of the prize release:
mass-transit space-travel prize
© 2007 twentyfivemillion.com, all rights reserved.