It’s pretty unclear to me what this £50m over 10 years in £1m prizes is likely to achieve but we’ll see.
The five categories are:
- Protect and restore nature
- Clean our air
- Revive our oceans
- Build a waste-free world
- Fix our climate
…and if you have a really good idea on any of those subjects you may get £1m to implement it. Although open to all, including schools, it is slightly difficult for me to see how Year 6 is going to proselytise across the world with their £1m after getting the award. Still, I await to be amazed.
My idea would be to buy advertising space across the world to spread messages to empower personal action. I guess £1m wouldn’t get very far, but maybe we could use it as seed money for more advertising – see this blog from almost exactly a year ago.
Whatever the Earthshot awards are, they aren’t the environmental equivalent of Nobel Prizes and the fact that so many are describing them in that way shows that they don’t understand Nobel Prizes, or they don’t understand the Earthshot awards or quite possibly both.
Nobel Prizes reward and recognise excellence – and you can spend the money that comes with them on fags and beer if you like. But they take a while to arrive. This week’s Physics Nobel recipient, Roger Penrose did the work for which he got this year’s Nobel back in 1965 – that’s quite a lot of cogitation to decide whether his work was good enough. A 55-year wait is probably not feasible for finding the good ideas to make our world whole again.
[registration_form]
Meanwhile he is happy teaching his son how to blast birds out of the sky and to keep the royal grouse moors just as they are with all the resulting wildlife crime. Yeah, great example Will.
Yes, I was a bit sceptical about this for several reasons. Not least when you realise that Gareth Bale earns a good bit more than one of the prizes in two weeks and more than the whole amount in just over a year and a half. All power to him for making the most of his talent in a short career. But it’s about priorities. £50 million is peanuts really. And please don’t reply that every little helps. I heard Sir David on the radio this morning saying that it’s only in the last few years that we have realised how serious the problems are. They will be a good few folk choking on their breakfast (and turning in their graves) over that one.
Yes I agree with your comments Mark, It is certainly not a magic wand as all the five issues listed require international efforts to put right. I think the main value of Earthshot is to raise public awareness of the crises and therefore to change peoples attitudes and actions. As Paul Fisher rightly points out William could well start with banning driven grouse shooting on grouse moors owned by the crown and this Government doing the same for all other moorland. If they did that it would be a very good step forward. Action begins at home.
If William’s family stopped blowing away wild life for fun and did something with those grouse moors could he win one of those prizes? Certanly that would seem to come under the protect and restore nature category, maybe even help with fixing the climate too. Whiff of hypocrisy perhaps or just a blind spot
Hi Mark – my idea, seeing 2 juxtaposed tweets (at least one from you) and this new ‘challenge funding’ – was to set someone (Wild Justice and supporters?) the task of working out how to change the ‘conversation’ or whatever buzzword/ phrase we use – to a better national (and global) understanding of the linkages between the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change – and hence the need for real, linked action (by our governments, civil society and everyone) on both fronts. And the simple but profoundly ‘right’ Aldo Leopold ideas – of ‘keeping all the cogs and wheels’ as the ‘precautionary principle’ in intelligent tinkering (with ecosystems – even if that wasn’t his language). I sat (remotely) in a meeting with NFUS recently where they queried ‘biodiversity benefits’ for people – and said the strongest message from Covid-19 is the importance of supporting (intensive) agriculture to make sure we are ‘self-sufficient’ in food. I was the only conservationist (among many there) to challenge this and say that in times of biodiversity and climate crisis we surely need to be promoting all the benefits of ‘nature’, biodiversity, natural processes, functioning ecosystems etc. as well – or even more than – agricultural production – for all the benefits to people and planet. That and the 000s of wealthy, elite people who can go and shoot things in big groups of people despite Covid because the land managers and farm business completely dominate decision-making in govt. We need some kind of revolution in distribution of power and understanding and attention to the hoi polloi not just the elites. Otherwise, in UK – it will all just continue as is – with BBC, Johnson and everyone paying lip service and spouting guff about wind and how that will solve climate change while conveniently burying biodiversity because they don’t understand and don’t want to know or actually change anything.
and yes let’s start with some royal grouse moors as others have pointed out
Whatever you think of the state of our environment, it was a people’s choice. They fought a peoples’ war, and afterwards they wanted a peoples’ peace, and by and large they got it. They demanded change within their lifetime and you and I are the beneficiaries of their sacrifice and vision.
The human race is always inwardly progressive, it doesn’t have the need or the inclination to relook at the past mistakes and morally revalue itself. If we did then we wouldn’t have so many man-made problems throughout the World. Covid-19 being a prime example.
Some people do have a conscience but is that enough? And do we really deep down care or sacrifice enough on the environment or humanity to change our direction? I doubt it!
Capitalism and Communism are politically closer than people expect they are both inter-entwined throughout the very fabric of human desires and aspirations. We live in a corporate world, whether you like it or not, all of us play the corporate life game of survival, there are huge wealth differences circulating throughout the different veins of people in this country, but that’s equally true of Russia and China.
Validation views on a persons’ wealth is nonsensical, as all of us have a wealth value, what we do with it is the important issue. I fail to see any relevance on banning grouse moors, or private wealth with the greater ecological threat facing this world. £50m as Andy wrote is peanuts, it’s the yearly RSPB member’s income. £1m a year expenditure, well that’s just about enough for a rewilding farm.
The human race can’t change because it is not prepared to give-up what it has achieved; our very continuation is underpinned from our past accomplishments, all of us have inherited that need for betterment from our parents or grandparents. That mindset will then be passed onto the next generation.
I can’t STAND Prince William and all he stands for (and will presumably continue to prop up when he takes the Crown), but I agree with you Mark on the importance of EFFECTIVELY spreading the message about personal and group commitment. I remember an equivalent frustration in the late 90’s when our Government talked endlessly about the energy crisis and never once took on incremental and visible steps to TURN THE BL****Y LIGHTS OFF all over our communities and cities. (They’re STILL blazing away BTW)