$5 Million Prize for Global Crisis Solution Ideas

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$5 Million Prize for Global Crisis Solution Ideas

Swedish risk specialist and philanthropist is offering a $5 million prize for the best idea to create a new international decision-making system capable of tackling the world's intractable issues.

sClA6uY.jpg Those issues range from extreme poverty to the spread of nuclear weapons and growing environmental damage.

As the world grapples with potentially catastrophic global problems, including climate change, it needs to find solutions by overcoming short-term thinking.

“We’re trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s tools,” said László Szombatfalvy, who launched the Global Challenges Foundation in 2012. “We believe a new shape of collaboration is needed to address the most critical challenges in our globalised world.”

The New Shape Prize - which will be awarded next November, after entries close in May - aims to spur fresh thinking about innovative means to solve problems that cross borders and are hard to tackle when most political terms of office are short and many businesses and markets remain focused on near-term gains.

“The public and even the private sector are underestimating the risks because we are too short-sighted in our decision-making.”

Mats Andersson, a former CEO of Sweden’s largest pension fund and now head of Szombatfalvy’s foundation also points to continued government spending on fossil fuel subsidies, for instance, while many leaders resist efforts to put in place a carbon price and trading system that would drive richer countries to pay for their climate-changing emissions while giving poorer ones funds to develop cleanly.

Such a shift could help drive action against global warming. Instead, “we're sending the bill to our kids and grandkids, and I think that's deeply immoral”, said Andersson, who has worked on de-carbonising pension funds.

A U.N.-brokered deal to tackle climate change, agreed by more than 190 countries in Paris last year, aims to limit global temperature rise to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius, by getting countries to deliver voluntary emissions reductions and financial contributions that could be ratcheted up over time.

But their pledges for the accord still leave the world on a path to at least 2.9 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial times – enough to swamp many low-lying island states, kill most coral reefs, drive food shortages and far more extreme weather, and potentially trigger melting of the biggest ice sheets, scientists say.

When it comes to solving global problems, “we have the United Nations, but the United Nations was founded in 1946, with the challenges we had at that time. We’re now some years down the road. We need to remodel and find new ways,” Andersson said.

The prize is not aimed at finding whole solutions to global threats such as climate change, wars and poverty, but rather “a model or mechanism that could provide the solutions”.

Too late for climate change? 

Rob Bailey, who directs energy, environment and resources research at London-based think tank Chatham House, said it is likely too late to craft an innovative new framework to limit climate change. 

“Even if the politics for grand plans was possible, which we know is not the case at the moment, there isn’t enough time for grand plans anyway,” he said. Within two years, existing power plants will lock the world into more than 2 degrees of global warming if used over their full lifetime, he added.

But fresh approaches could help police and make more effective the Paris climate agreement’s voluntary goals, and verify what is being done by businesses, cities and other major players to curb climate-changing emissions, he said.

They could also offer new ways of dealing with the global problems climate change is set to worsen, from food shortages to migration, he said.

“What kind of global and international institutions will we need to have for a stable and resilient international order?” Bailey asked. “It raises questions for our food system, our humanitarian system, for international laws on refugees and asylum, (and) for social protection mechanisms.”

“These are the things we can be thinking about grand designs for, before things get really hairy from 2030 onward,” he said.

Entries for the New Shape Prize close on May 24, 2017, and the winning idea will be chosen by a panel of academic experts and a high-level international jury.

The Global Challenges Foundation will then back efforts to put that idea into practice, Andersson said. 

Source: REUTERS

 

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2 Comments

  1. It's wonderful that László Szombatfalvy financial interest and attracts interesting ideas for reducing the ecological burden on our planet. Because we live as if after us have nothing. Threaten with nuclear weapons, over the river, ruining the fish and draining the sea ( the Aral sea) in the pursuit of energy ready to do everything, even hurt yourself. The main source of pollution is a car - therefore moving cars on air ( TATA) electric propulsion ( TESLA) to reduce greatly the pollution of the atmosphere. On the planet are cut down every hour an area the size of a football field. It's like that to cut yourself a piece of the lung constantly. It is necessary that the cutting occurred ONLY AFTER PLANTING the THREE TREES . AND TO ACCEPT IT AS A LAW FOR ALL COUNTRIES IN THE UN. Receiving electrical energy to peregistrirovat on energy-efficient technologies of renewable energy ( our development of a new type of wind energy can produce up to 150 MW/hour and has a 32% efficiency) and reduce 10 times the consumption of electric energy in desalination (desalination cost will be not more than 0.04 U.S. dollars per 1 m3) and wastewater treatment, while also reducing and burning of the fuel. Here's an example : on the planet on 1 inhabitant 200 liters of wastewater per day. 7 billion people - 50% of them secured the services of ( 3.5 billion) Then 3 500 000 000 x 0.2 m3 = 700 000 000 m3 per day. Costs of electric energy for wastewater treatment - 3 kW = 2 100 000 000 units per day is spent on wastewater treatment. We can reduce these costs by 65% . That's the solution. They can be taken at the UN level and financial help to the countries with not developed economy. Here are my suggestions for 5 million, they can and will pull, but as something to improve life on the planet and leave our children is not the gas chamber and the gutter will help.

    tumentsev@inbox.ru

  2. So lets do something about those electricity producing power plants. Going up their chimneys is a lot of wasted heat energy affecting our Global Warming. This waste heat energy can be recovered with the technology of Condensing Flue Gas Heat Recovery. This energy if there is room could be used to heat or cool large ranges of commercial greenhouses in which food crops could be grown. This will create a lot of full time jobs, and the world will never have too much food.

    During the daylight hours the cooled CO2 can be pumped into the greenhouses providing these food bearing plants with CO2 enrichment (fertilizer) At night the Carbon Capture Utilization System will be transforming over 90% of this CO2 into useful - saleable products, again creating more full time jobs.

    In this combusted exhaust is a Lot of water. If just 20% of this water is recovered the power plant can be self sustaining but if it recovers more, it can be a water supplier to the local community.

    And there is more that can be done with combusted coal exhaust to create even more full time jobs and products.

    Mr. Anderson might this fit for your New Shape Prize Contest?

    Sid Abma                                                                                                                                                                                       (805) 462-1250                                                                                                                                         Sid@SidelSystems.com                                                                                                                                                                        www.SidelGlobal.com                                                                                                                                                                  www.SidelSystems.com