February 12, 2007, 4:18 pm

Via Volokh:

Richard Branson is offering a $25 million prize for the development of a technology capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

I Win!

OK, I get that he is actually looking for some solar-powered device that plates out carbon from the air on a cathode, or whatever. Or maybe a big nuclear-powered Air Products plant pumping liquid CO2 down an old oil well.

By the way, I wonder if it will occur to anyone that if you really want to offset carbon, you probably need to clear cut old growth forests, bury the logs, and plant new trees. I would guess that a newly growing forest absorbs a lot more CO2 than old-growth redwoods (anyone know?) And no, I am not really suggesting it. I got in enough email hot water a year ago when I suggested that if global warming was really to become a problem, we could reverse it pretty quickly with about 30 man-made Krakatoa's, made from the creative use of some of those H-bombs still lying around. Maybe we could even use them to dig a new canal across Nicaragua, killing two birds with one stone.

Anyway, I like Branson's idea. This kind of price approach has yielded some interesting results in other fields.