£1M Inaugural 'Earthshot' Prize Recognizes Creative Solutions to Climate Problems (msn.com) 35
"Five innovators on Sunday won 1 million pounds each at the inaugural awards ceremony for Prince Williams's Earthshot Prize," reports the Washington Post, calling the award "a kind of Oscars for green projects that the British royal hopes will highlight creative solutions to the world's most pressing environmental challenges."
William founded the environmental prize — self-styled as the "most prestigious global environment prize in history" — after becoming disappointed with world leaders' lackluster efforts to combat climate change, he has said in his book on the initiative...
The winners included a green hydrogen technology that can be used as a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels; an India-based outfit that makes low-cost smokeless machines that convert agricultural waste into fuels and fertilizers; and a team from the Bahamas that grows coral farms on land that can be replanted in oceans. The Republic of Costa Rica also won for reversing deforestation by paying its citizens to protect its forests, and the city of Milan won for its system of food hubs that collect and redistribute surplus supplies to the city's needy.
The winners were selected from a pool of more than 750 candidates chosen by a panel of more than 200 experts... Every year, for the next decade, winners of the Earthshot award will be selected in five categories: protect and restore nature, clean our air, revive our oceans, build a waste-free world and fix our climate.
The Post reports that the ceremony included a performance by the band Coldplay which was said to be powered "by 60 people manically pedaling on bicycles next to the stage."
Coldplay later reportedly plans to use batteries from BMW's electric cars to help power its 2022 world tour, "storing energy from a variety of sources, like solar panels, power bikes inside the venue itself, a kinetic floor, and recycled cooking oil from local restaurants."
The winners included a green hydrogen technology that can be used as a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels; an India-based outfit that makes low-cost smokeless machines that convert agricultural waste into fuels and fertilizers; and a team from the Bahamas that grows coral farms on land that can be replanted in oceans. The Republic of Costa Rica also won for reversing deforestation by paying its citizens to protect its forests, and the city of Milan won for its system of food hubs that collect and redistribute surplus supplies to the city's needy.
The winners were selected from a pool of more than 750 candidates chosen by a panel of more than 200 experts... Every year, for the next decade, winners of the Earthshot award will be selected in five categories: protect and restore nature, clean our air, revive our oceans, build a waste-free world and fix our climate.
The Post reports that the ceremony included a performance by the band Coldplay which was said to be powered "by 60 people manically pedaling on bicycles next to the stage."
Coldplay later reportedly plans to use batteries from BMW's electric cars to help power its 2022 world tour, "storing energy from a variety of sources, like solar panels, power bikes inside the venue itself, a kinetic floor, and recycled cooking oil from local restaurants."
Ticks all the boxes! (Score:1)
Slackjawed Royals mouthing platitudes about climate change - check!
Celebs dressing up in tasteless flashy outfits that cost more than most people earn in a month - check!
Coldplay - check! (sorry, couldn't resist)
If I were head of marketing for ISIS, making a "why we hate the west" video - I would just use footage from this event.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Slackjawed Royals mouthing platitudes about climate change - check!
Celebs dressing up in tasteless flashy outfits that cost more than most people earn in a month - check!
Coldplay - check! (sorry, couldn't resist)
If I were head of marketing for ISIS, making a "why we hate the west" video - I would just use footage from this event.
Sounds more like you hate the place you live. Do you shit in your living room too?
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Believe it or not, I live in the UK, but not in a glitzy red carpet awards ceremony. It is possible to differentiate the two.
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Believe it or not, I live in the UK, but not in a glitzy red carpet awards ceremony. It is possible to differentiate the two.
Yeah, well, I can understand why you hate it then. Quite often it can seem like a shithole, but try going out for a walk in the Yorkshire Dales or Cairngorms or along the Jurassic coast or probably somewhere just 10 miles from your home. The people can seem like awful racist xenophobic shits if you just listen to them on the news or see the Daily Mail/Express all the time, however have you tried going out to where people are volunteering to support our failing, continually "austerity" cut, health service o
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I agree with everything you say (I'm in London, far from the natural wilderness, but nevertheless...:-). I love the UK, and I am all for the principle of encouraging and enabling decent, world-improving projects. What I cannot stand are the parasites that seem to attach themselves to such good causes. In my view, they are doing it for cynical, self promoting reasons, and the argument that "at the end of the day it is for a good cause" does not excuse them. After all, for all their painfully obvious wealth,
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I agree with everything you say (I'm in London, far from the natural wilderness, but nevertheless...:-). I love the UK, and I am all for the principle of encouraging and enabling decent, world-improving projects.
Benefits the UK [youtu.be] in more ways than one.
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Negativity is only good if it's limited and targeted.
FFS were talking about Coldplay. Targeted, yes, but limited? Shit no. That shit deserves being wiped out.
Could be worse. It could be Nickelback.
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Royals are probably not a good idea, but wouldn't it be better to support them when they try to do something useful and criticise them when they're just sitting there and sponging?
They are ALWAYS sponging. Sometimes they also do something else, but it always amounts to theater. Why support that shit?
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Yawn (Score:1)
I can only imagine the conversation in this organisation going something like this:
William: this climate emergency is existential. We're talking mass starvation, resource wars, global refugee crisis - the end of civilisation as we know it. We need ideas! Big ideas that can happen now.
Advisors: What about nuclear? Should we fund developing next gen reactors?
William: no, nobody likes nuclear. We can't do that.
Advisors: Should we look into geo-engineering technologies, as a backup in case what you say comes to
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... we could tax everybody into poverty and claim it's for the environment while blocking real solutions!
6uild 6ack 6etter
"crative" = "fantasies" (Score:4, Interesting)
This seems to be about some people being able to kid themselves a bit longer as to how deep the crap we are all in really is. In other words, this "effort" makes the problem worse by potentially delaying actual solutions.
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I don't see anyone, anywhere, talking about a real solution. Everything being done now is almost meaningless - treating symptoms, not the disease.
The actual solution is reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth. Just a few percent less sunlight, and all of this global warming goes away. Why isn't anyone working on this? Why isn't EVERYONE working on this?
Even if it takes 50 years to figure out how to do it, and another 50 to implement it, it would be a real, permanent, solution - which n
Cue comments from... (Score:3)
People from the USA who are still fighting their "revolution", people from the UK who think that taking all the money from royals would give even a penny to the needy, people who haven't forgiven the Queen for being the figurehead that stopped the UK breaking down somewhen between the 1960s & 1990s, people concerned that royalty might encourage us to rejoin the EU and people who don't understand what a "constitutional" monarchy is.
The fact that it has Prince William as a figurehead, doesn't really matter. If it gets extra publicity for an idea that we really need, fair enough. If it helps Prince William find something to do it might stop the man getting bored. Bored rich people is a bad idea. It may even turn out to be a better idea than his little brothers Invictus games.
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People from the USA who are still fighting their "revolution",
We're way over that now, we saved UK twice, in WW1 and WW2. They couldn't do it themselves.
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Your (great) grandparents may have been forced to do this but some of your fellow citizens still see us as the enemy because two and a half centuries ago, people from here opposed a tax scam by some of your rich merchants and landowners.
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Nah, we don't see you as an enemy. We see you as a vassal state. Huge difference.
creating electricity while pedaling on bicycles ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: creating electricity while pedaling on bicycle (Score:1)
The bicycle generators are tokenism. A little gesture. Like: what if we collected the piss from the guests at this year's award ceremony, purified it and made it into wine for next year's ceremony!?
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Seriously, like any other award ceremony in any other field, the whole thing is little more than a gesture and publicity stunt that might - if we're lucky - raise public awareness
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Google states a recreational cyclist can sustain something like 100 watts for an hour. While burning around something like 3200 joules.
Not sure how that compares to fossil fuels.
My gut says that at 100 watts, the
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Has nothing to do with actual sustainability. It has everything to do with the feelings of those involved. They feel good after participating. People who watched it feel good. It's all about the feels. Feels before reals! Yes, there is a certain kind of human that feels his feelings very deeply and these feelings are super important. Our feelings? We can go to hell. It's a one-way street.
I'm not joking, these people take their feelings very seriously indeed, and they will get angry and violent if
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No reforestation prize for Georgia? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Congratulations on being a minor speedbump in the carbon cycle. Or are you talking about something other than the non-native Loblolly Pine monocultures that turn into the nation's shortest lifespan house deck, paper packaging, and pallets (oops, pallets can't be made out of softwood).
Slash management techniques that get as technically complex as "burn a pile" to release that carbon back into the atmosphere?
Plant as much as you want. Until you long term lock up that carbon--keep planting! Just don't gree
This NOT about solutions to climate change (Score:2)
What is IS about, is 5 ways to reduce carbon emissions. So ONE method that may possibly mitigate global warming as a side-effect, maybe sustainably.
But cooling the planet, not much.
Let the eye-rolling begin (Score:1)
I have no problem with the first three winners listed in the article. They actually created something tangible and useful. The other two are just more socialist bullsh*t.
Always good to know (Score:2)
It's always good to know that there is still hope for idiots, as long as there are enough rich idiots to give prizes to other idiots for being idiots. Hurrah!
If this could work (Score:2)
The porn industry would have solved the climate issue a long time ago. They have a lot more experience combining money with shots as a measure of success.