Virgin Earth Challenge

The Virgin Earth Challenge:

The Virgin Earth Challenge is a prize of $25m for whoever can demonstrate to the judges' satisfaction 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.

Specifically, they want a solution, to be delivered in five years or so to regularly remove one gigaton of carbon from the atmosphere per year for ten years. But, wait, is it that difficult? Rainforest Action Network suggests a conservative estimate of illegal deforestation up to nine billion trees per year with an estimated $69 billion economic value ($169 billion to the end consuming industrial countries).

Since an average tree removes about 21.7 KG's of carbon per year it would take about 46 billion trees per year to remove one gigaton of carbon from the atmosphere. Stopping illegal deforestation for five years leave about hat number of trees still removing carbon and would nicely cover the required one gigaton per year prize. Of course, the question is how to stop illegal deforestation?

The answer is to correctly price the value of a living a tree and make that accessible to the countries and regions that cut down trees for economic reasons. This would include pricing carbon sequestration along with cleansing of other pollutants, raw oxygen production, and a wealth of other benefits. The complexity of this issue is that a lot of seemingly good ideas, such as cap and trade, turn out to have crucial flaws. For industrial nations, the use of a carbon tax will be necessary. This will help drive them towards lower carbon producing technologies and inputs and thus increase the relative value of living forests over dead trees.