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Innovation

Prince William prepares to announce the next great innovators who will save our planet

The Earthshot Prize

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, the idea of sending a person to the moon was unfathomable. The moon is over 238,000 miles from Earth! How would anyone ever reach it safely, and more importantly, return to solid ground when the mission was complete?

But people are amazing, industrious creatures, and President John F. Kennedy was determined to make that giant leap. He referred to it as a ‘Moonshot;’ a play on words—a variation of "long shot," describing a monumental effort and a lofty goal—uniting millions of people around an organized mission to put man on the moon. Moonshot catalyzed the development of technology as we know it.

Today, our challenge is more urgent. Humanity faces dire environmental problems requiring bold, groundbreaking solutions like, yesterday. In 2020, His Royal Highness Prince William, inspired by John F. Kennedy’s leadership in inspiring new innovation, launched The Earthshot Prize. He aims to find and grow the solutions that will repair our planet this decade; to regenerate the place we all call home. (Thanks, Prince William!)

The Earthshot Prize is the world’s most prestigious environmental award, involving a 10-month selection process, a panel of global experts, and a £1 million award for each winner to expand and launch their ideas.

“The Earth is at a tipping point and we face a stark choice: either we continue as we are and irreparably damage our planet, or we remember our unique power as human beings and our continual ability to lead, innovate and problem-solve. People can achieve great things. The next ten years present us with one of our greatest tests—a decade of action to repair the Earth,” said Prince William.

Fleather, a finalist in Build A Waste-free World

The prize is centered around 5 ‘Earthshots’ which are both simple and ambitious.

Protect and Restore Nature: By 2030, we choose to ensure that, for the first time in human history, the natural world is growing—not shrinking.

Clean Our Air: By 2030, we choose to ensure that everyone in the world breathes clean, healthy air—at World Health Organization standard or better.

Revive Our Oceans: By 2030, we choose to repair and preserve our oceans for future generations.

Build a Waste-free World: By 2030, we choose to build a world where nothing goes to waste, where the leftovers of one process become the raw materials of the next—just like they do in nature.

Fix Our Climate: By 2030, we choose to fix the world’s climate by cutting out carbon. We wish to build a carbon-neutral economy that lets every culture, community, and country thrive.

Out of the more than 1,000 nominations submitted, 3 finalists have been selected from each of the five categories, and the winners of the award (a total of 5, one from each category) is set to be announced at a ceremony in Boston, MA. The solutions and innovations represented by the 15 Finalists for 2022 will help to put the world firmly on a trajectory towards a stable climate.

The Great Bubble Barrier

One finalist in the Revive Our Oceans category is an invention titled “The Great Bubble Barrier,” created by a team of ocean enthusiasts based in The Netherlands. Francis Zoet, Anne Marieke Eveleens, and Philip Ehrhorn have developed an ingenious way to stop harmful plastic from reaching our oceans. Prevention is vital; every year, more than 8 million tons of plastic ends up in the world’s oceans, traveling in from rivers and canals. Once it enters the ocean, it is nearly impossible to capture and remove.

The Great Bubble Barrier has developed an effective solution designed to intercept plastic waste before it reaches the sea: the Bubble Barrier. The technology is simple: air is pumped through a perforated tube placed diagonally on the riverbed to create a “curtain” of bubbles, which directs plastic up to the surface and into a waste collection system, all without obstructing wildlife or boats. The concept has been used in the past by the oil industry to contain spills, and has now been developed to help local authorities remove debris from our rivers.

To date, the Bubble Barrier has been proven to catch on average 86% of plastic waste. Several Bubble Barriers have been installed in The Netherlands, including in the Westerdok, one of Amsterdam’s famous canals. Each month, Bubble Barrier Amsterdam stops an average of 8,000 pieces of plastic waste from leaving the canal and entering the North Sea. Two new Bubble Barriers will soon be implemented in Germany and Portugal. The team now hopes to scale the technology to reach polluted rivers worldwide.

Another compelling finalist is in the Fix Our Climate category, an Oman-based company known as 44.01. The founder and Carbon General, Talal Hasan, discovered a way to eliminate carbon by turning it into rock, removing it from the atmosphere safely, efficiently, and permanently.

Talal Hasan, founder of 44.01.

“The answers to the problems our planet faces can often be found in the natural world,” said Hasan. “At 44.01, we found a natural process that removes carbon and we’ve accelerated it. We believe this process is replicable globally and can play a key role in helping our planet to heal. Thank you to The Earthshot Prize, for recognising our work.”

In addition to their eligibility for the £1 million prize, all finalists will receive tailored support and resources from the Earthshot Prize Global Alliance members, which is an unprecedented network of private sector businesses from around the world who are committed to healing our planet. The list is lengthy and varied, spanning from Greenpeace to Walmart.

“I am so excited to celebrate these 15 Finalists and see the 5 Winners of The Earthshot Prize announced in Boston – the hometown of President John F. Kennedy, who shared The Earthshot Prize’s belief that seemingly impossible goals are within reach if we only harness the limitless power of innovation, human ingenuity, and urgent optimism,” said Prince William.

The Earthshot Prize awards ceremony will take place on Friday, December 2 at the MGM Music Hall in Boston. It will air around the world on BBC in the UK, PBS in the United States and Multichoice across Africa. The show will also be available globally on YouTube. It will premiere on Sunday, December 4.

For more information about The Earthshot Prize 2022 Finalists, please visit www.earthshotprize.org.

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Instead of running for President, billionaire Michael Bloomberg commits to shutting down coal plants and moving U.S. to clean energy ASAP.

Michael Bloomberg has been all over the news lately due to his potential presidential candidacy, however that’s far from his primary focus. Instead, he’s decided to put his attentions toward improving clean energy over the next 11 years.

He intends to accomplish this through a project he refers to as ‘the ‘Beyond Carbon’ initiative - a grassroots effort to move as fast as possible away from oil and gas and towards total clean energy. The initiative admirably aims to close all coal-fired power plants by 2030.

"While there would be no higher honor than serving as president, my highest obligation as a citizen is to help the country the best way I can, right now. That's what I'll do, including the launch of a new effort called Beyond Carbon," the entrepreneur, philanthropist, and three term mayor tweeted.

The statement he published (which can be viewed on bloomberg.com) addresses the suggestions he run for president, the realism he sees in the struggle to get the Democratic nomination, and most importantly the understated, bipartisan importance of upping the anti in America’s fight to curtail climate change.

And he’s already taken several steps to combat that long before the 2020 presidential candidacy was a twinkle in anyone’s eye.

Since 2011, the billionaire turned climate Advocate has worked with Sierra Club to close many of the coal-fired plants and replace them with cleaner energy. His results speak for themselves.

“By organizing and mobilizing communities affected by the harmful pollution of coal-fired power plants, we have helped close more than half the nation’s plants — 285 out of 530 — and replaced them with cleaner and cheaper energy. That was the single biggest reason the U.S. has been able to reduce its carbon footprint by 11 percent — and cut deaths from coal power plants from 13,000 to 3,000,” wrote Bloomberg.

The progress Bloomberg’s seen so far plays an undeniable role in his decision to distance himself from talking and focus on action.

“Should I devote the next two years to talking about my ideas and record, knowing that I might never win the Democratic nomination? Or should I spend the next two years doubling down on the work that I am already leading and funding, and that I know can produce real and beneficial results for the country, right now?”

Scientists, and the Environmental Protection Agency say that we likely have only 50 to 75 years before the effects of climate change get much more intolerable. Bloomberg is one of many who believes we have to make big moves to change that projection NOW.

“Mother Nature does not wait on our political calendar, and neither can we,” he warned.

Is Bloomberg still considering a 2020, presidential run? Possibly. But what he's expressed thus far makes it clear that everything comes second to climate and environmental concerns.

We need more people in positions of power like him to prioritize saving our planet. Without bipartisan efforts, it will be difficult to make major movement happen. Hopefully many more, regardless of how they lean, will realize this issue far outweighs any political power play and follow suit.

Heroes

Xiuhtezcatl is the climate-conscious teenage hip-hop artist whose name you need to know.

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Unilever and the United Nations

Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez was 6 years old when he gave his first moving speech.

Let me guess: You're expecting an adorable lecture on "Spongebob Squarepants" or something, right?

Nope. When the young Xiuhtezcatl (pronounced kind of like "shu-TEZ-cuht" in my embarrassing English phonetic approximation of the Nahuatl language) addressed that crowd of 200 people in Boulder, Colorado, cartoons weren't on his mind.

"I got up on stage ... and delivered a message about how we gotta educate kids differently and parents have to raise us differently to understand that it's important to take care of the planet," he tells Upworthy.


6-year-old Xiuhtezcatl speaking truth to power. GIF via tamaragaya/YouTube.

That's right: While most kids his age were still trying to figure out whether Santa Claus is real, Xiuhtezcatl was out saving the world.

That was 2007, and the then-6-year-old had just seen "The 11th Hour," a documentary about global warming produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. "It was intense, it was like a total wake-up call. I was like 'Mom, I gotta talk to people, I gotta speak,'" he said.

Xiuhtezcatl didn't stop there. He could have settled with his 15 minutes of fame — but he built an army instead.

As a young teen, Xiuhtezcatl began to organize his friends into local action committees to get pesticides out of parks as well as enact bans and other regulations on plastic bags, coal-ash drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and other unsustainable practices that had taken over the Boulder community he calls home.

"I had a lot of friends that I knew who were interested in this kind of stuff, that didn't really have a platform to engage," he explains. "And that's what you'll find all over the world."

With the help of his activist parents, Xiuhtezcatl created a nonprofit organization called the Earth Guardians, a self-described tribe of young activists, artists, musicians, and leaders.

"It started off as a simple little thing in our community, you know, just us kids," he explained. "And then all of a sudden social media got a hold of us and now we have 400 crews on 6 continents and it's a global movement."

Since then, Xiuhtezcatl has hung out with Pharrell Williams and been featured in Rolling Stone. He's also addressed the entire United Nations about climate action(we spoke to him back then, too) and, oh yeah, sued the U.S. government over the same.

Not slowing down, this guy. In fact, when I spoke to him during the 2015 Conference of the Parties in Paris, he had to cut our conversation short to go perform a concert for the United Nations at the Grand Palais.

Oh yeah — did I mention that he's also a bomb-ass hip-hop artist?


When I asked him about his music career and the beats he's dropped with his younger brother Itzcuauhtli, Xiuhtezcatl and his friend started to stomp the floor in unison, claps slowly building on the offbeats as they chanted, "We got knowledge / and power / and justifiable rage / we know history / and this is me / writing a new page."

Xiuhtezcatl is no stranger to the power of protest songs.

He witnessed their effectiveness firsthand when he and Itzcuauhtli were performing at the Arise Music Festival in Boulder:

"This guy came up to me afterward and he was talking about how he has 400 acres of land, huge property. He was going to lease it all to the oil and gas industry, on his land. And he says, 'After I saw your performance, I realized that, you know, my role in this movement is to build a hub and a place for solutions, not sell it out to the industry for corporate dollars.' So he converted it into a total sustainable hemp farm to help build and create local solutions."

Xiuhtezcatl is as media savvy as you might expect from someone dubbed the "Anti-Bieber." But when he tells this story, he starts to shake his head, as if he's still in disbelief of his own impact. "It was really exciting to see how us educating people on the stage changes people's minds about a huge decision," he said, in a rare moment where he sounds less like a wizened climate warrior and more like, well, a 15-year-old kid grappling with the true scope of the world.

"That's 400acres of land," he said. "I mean, how many fracking wells can go on there? How many thousands of barrels of oil and natural gas was not pumped because of that decision? It was cool."

Xiuhtezcatl has already accomplished some amazing things — and we can't wait to see what his future has in store.

Let's make sure there's still an Earth for him and his crew to keep on guarding.

Here are some closing thoughts from Xiuhtezcatl himself, straight from this year's Earth to Paris event in December:

Heroes

5 things happening now that should give you hope about climate change.

Finally, the world is stepping up its game against global warming.

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League of Conservation Voters

Admit it — talking about climate change can be super depressing.

Sea levels could rise to terrifying levels, droughts are getting worse, storms are getting more severe, and ... this one's tough ... even beer is being ruined.

But don't let all the doom and gloom rain on your parade. Because although, yes, we certainly need to continue acting on climate change (like, yesterday), the world has taken many encouraging, consequential steps forward as of late. And you have every right to feel good about that.

Here are five reasons to feel hopeful in the fight to keep global temperatures down.

1. Carbon emissions are expected to stall — or even fall — this year.

Yeah, you read correctly — decline.

Photo via iStock.

New data presented at the UN climate talks in Paris earlier this month suggests global carbon emissions will have dropped 0.6% in 2015.

Even though that figure might sound measly (no one's saying we don't have our work cut out for us), this is pretty big. It marks the very first time carbon emissions have dropped during a year of global economic growth.

What have we been doing differently lately? Well, the world is using more renewable energy, the data found, and China — one of global warming's worst offenders — is slowly kicking its dirty coal habit to the curb, which helped a lot.

2. More and more people around the world are taking climate change seriously.

Photo via iStock.

Just last month, Pew Research Center found that in all 40 countries where it polled respondents, majorities agreed that climate change is a "serious problem."

What's more, a median of 78% of global respondents were in favor of their country agreeing to limit greenhouse gas emissions to halt rising temperatures.

It's OK to celebrate these numbers because, naturally, the more people believe in the science behind climate change, the harder they'll fight to do something about it.

And that leads me to #3:

3. The biggest carbon-emitting culprits just united in Paris to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

The UN hosted the largest-ever gathering of heads of state this month in France at COP21— a summit focused on setting ambitious global goals to drastically reduce our collective carbon footprint.

Photo via iStock.

Yes, plenty of international climate conferences have happened before, and many have failed on reaching their prospective benchmarks. But this time looks especially promising, seeing as 195 nations around the world committed to dramatically reducing their carbon footprints.

"The Paris agreement establishes the enduring framework the world needs to solve the climate crisis," President Obama said of the agreement. "It creates the mechanism, the architecture, for us to continually tackle this problem in an effective way."

But it's not just politicians (finally) trying to pull their weight against global warming...

4. Big names with deep pockets are stepping up to share the burden of a warming planet.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a UN Messenger of Peace on the climate, was also in France for COP21, encouraging about 1,000 mayors and leaders from around the world to go big on renewable energy.


“Model cities like Vancouver, Sydney, Stockholm and Las Vegas have already committed to using 100% renewable energy in the coming decades," he said in a speech. “So to all the mayors and governors in this room today, I implore you to join with your peers to commit to moving to no less than 100% renewable energy as soon as possible. Do not wait another day.”

And billionaire philanthropist and cool dude Bill Gates? He announced a massive carbon-fighting initiative that will use both billions of dollars from private investors (like Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg) as well as clean energy commitments from several countries to help prevent catastrophically high global temperatures.


"It is great to see so many government leaders and investors making these commitments and showing how the public and private sectors can come together to work on big problems," Gates wrote on his blog.

"I am optimistic that we can invent the tools we need to generate clean, affordable, reliable energy that will help the poorest improve their lives and also stop climate change."

5. The worst of climate change is still avoidable! And the urgency we've seen to act is a positive sign.

Yes, rising temperatures will continue to affect our planet in big, costly ways. But, if ambitious goals are met, we will have a green future ahead of us.

"I believe this moment can be a turning point for the world," Obama said, praising the new climate agreement as "the best chance we have to save the one planet that we've got."

See? There's no need to feel demoralized. However, there still is a need to act. Demand the U.S. step up its clean energy game by signing this petition by the League of Conservation Voters.

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