Gore, Branson: $25M will go to the best greenhouse gas sucker

Former vice president Al Gore, who scored a home run with his Oscar-nominated movie An Inconvenient Truth is apparently hanging on to the global warming issue like a pit bull that's not prepared to let go. Gore and Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson announced today that they would reward $25 million to the developer of the most innovative solution to the globe's greenhouse gas problem. According to CBSNews:

....Gore said: "What we are facing is a planetary emergency. So some things you would never consider otherwise, it makes sense to consider."

Branson announced the "Earth Challenge" prize Friday morning at a news conference in London with Gore....

.."The Earth cannot wait 60 years. We need everybody capable of discovering an answer to put their minds to it today," Branson said at the news conference. "The Earth cannot wait 60 years."

...Judges of the competition, which applies the basic business theory of creating a huge incentive to get a problem solved, are looking for a method to remove at least one billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year.

So let's say they find something that gets the job done. Should there be prizes for the second and third place solutions too?  Without a deep prize list, you may not get all of the best minds responding to the contest. I'm thinking back to the days when I used to race bikes and you always went to the races that paid the 10 or 15 top places instead of the ones that just paid the winner.  Contestants need to know it's not an all or nothing effort. Not only that, can't multiple solutions work in unison? Perhaps Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and others to whom $25M is pocket change can add some juice to the prizelist.

Elsewhere in Al Gore news, veterans of his 2000 presidental campaign are mulling whether to urge Gore to make a 2008 run.