- Elon Musk laid out the details of the $100 million XPrize Carbon Removal project on Thursday.
- Elon Musk sat barefoot, donning a mullet, with XPRIZE chairman Peter Diamandis in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
- Musk added that, "a bunch of people will probably die," at the start of Mars exploration.
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During a Thursday livestream announcing the $100 million XPrize Carbon Removal competition, Elon Musk sat barefoot, donning a mullet, with XPrize chairman Peter Diamandis in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The competition is asking people to develop large-scale CO2 removal projects to help stow away and extract CO2 and rebalance the Earth's dangerously high carbon emission trends.
To win, "teams must demonstrate CO2 removal at the 1,000 tonne per year scale, model costs at the million ton per year (megatonne) scale, and present a plan to sustainably reach gigatons per year scale in future," according to the the competition site.
The Elon Musk Foundation, Musk's relatively new philanthropy arm, is sponsoring the venture, and the $100 million prize money will be the largest sum of money handed out by the organization so far. Since criticism of his meek philanthropic efforts as the second richest man in the world, Musk has injected money into a bunch of organizations and causes.
During the chat, Musk also talked about space travel to Mars, a planet he aims to transport humans to through SpaceX, and colonize.
"Is this some escape hatch for rich people?" Musk said.
"No, it is not," he said, laughing. Musk did caution that "a bunch of people will probably die" at the start of Mars ventures, but likened it to any prior danger associated with exploration.