Branson offers €19m climate prize

VIRGIN boss Richard Branson yesterday offered a $25 million (€19.2m) prize to scientists to find a way to help save the planet from climate change.

Flanked by former US vice-president Al Gore and other distinguished environmentalists, Mr Branson called for scientists to come up with a way to extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Describing the challenge as the largest prize ever offered, Mr Branson compared it to the competition for a person to devise a method of measuring longitude accurately. It was 60 years before Yorkshire clockmaker John Harrison came up with an accurate method and received his prize from King George III.

Mr Branson said: “The earth cannot wait 60 years. We need everybody capable of discovering an answer to put their minds to it today.”

He said he had been influenced by James Lovelock, the inventor of Gaia Theory, which suggests that the world may already have crossed a “tipping point”.

“My wife Joan is a down-to-earth, practical Glaswegian,” he said.

“When I told her that Lovelock believed we may already be doomed, she said: ‘There are a lot of brilliant minds out there. One of them would be able to come up with a solution.’

“Today we have a threat. Still we have to convince many people that the threat is urgent and real and there is no superhero.”