An Elon Musk tweet can do everything from moving the stock market to convincing people to invest in a joke cryptocurrency. So when the richest man on Earth tweeted in late January about kicking $100 million to whoever could come up with the best technology to capture carbon from the air, the world took notice. The cryptic tweet was followed by details that the billionaire donated $100 million to XPRIZE for a carbon capture competition that will last four years. It’s a neoliberal meets the techno-optimist wet dream. Here is the world’s richest man teaming up with a group founded by a futurist and with board members including Larry Page and James Cameron, all in the service of creating technology that doesn’t exist anywhere near scale to address a problem our broken political system hasn’t been able to solve. The prize is part […]