[JDGM]

It took me a little while to even get what this is. I understand the public votes on "the biggest problem" and then whoever "solves it" (or, I assume, makes significant progress on it) receives £1 million.

The best case is a carefully constructed short list for voting and the whole thing being essentially an orchestrated PR stunt with a winner (probably a known strong candidate even at this announcement stage). The worst case is this quietly fading out until no-one remembers it and there aren't even many real records of it ever having been a thing.

Or perhaps I've got "best" and "worst" the wrong way around there.

[panacea]

We already know what the biggest problem is. Finding a non-polluting energy source.

...and a million pounds isn't going to solve it.

[loceng]

I somewhat disagree. It will disrupt a single complex that's been perpetuated, and yes, it will create and allow for a lot of innovation - however producing product and developing resources into buildings, and other systems, cause tons of pollution and non-renewable destruction of our lands. It will actually be bad IMHO in certain circumstances if non-polluting energy comes too soon to us.

[JDGM]

If I follow correctly, you believe that non-polluting energy would loosen constraints on production and the acceleration of growth this would cause would have a net negative environmental effect because the increase in non-energy-creation-related pollution would more than counter balance the savings from non-polluting energy. Is that an accurate summary?

[loceng]

Assuming rules / laws / regulations weren't put in place to counter this, yes. We all know how fast government is to act ... which is why there should be concern.

[panacea]

Bollocks to that. You would prefer we remain hamstrung with expensive finite dire polluting energy sources so we can keep the vast majority of humanity stuck in poverty? A pox on your thought processes.

[xradionut]

The biggest problem is people, not technical. Too many of them, and they are too irrational, or uneducated or held captive economically by the current events. Unfortunate this problem is unsolvable in conventional moral and ethical terms, but a working solution would be worth trillions to the remaining rent collecting population.

[gizmo686]

Nuclear?

[alan_cx]

Yep, its another vapor-policy.