Prince William has joined forces with Sir David Attenborough to launch a new environmental award Thursday, the Earthshot Prize, which has grand ambitions to "incentivize change and help to repair our planet over the next 10 years." The prize takes its inspiration from the "moon shot" challenge that President John F. Kennedy set for the US in 1961 to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, per the AP. William said the same resources used to tackle the coronavirus pandemic should be devoted to saving the natural world. "According to the experts, it really is the point of no return," he told Sky News. "We have 10 years to fundamentally fix our planet." The plan envisions five prizes of $1.3 million awarded each year for the next 10 years, providing at least 50 solutions to the world's greatest environmental problems by 2030.
The first five Earthshots center on protecting and restoring nature, ensuring clean air, reviving oceans, building a waste-free world, and fixing the climate. "It's a matter of great urgency now," Attenborough says, per the AP, noting the North Pole's ice caps are already melting. William—who told Sky News that 7-year-old Prince George was left saddened by Attenborough's documentary Extinction: The Facts—stressed the importance of the technologies that could come out of the prize. Nominations open on Nov. 1, with an annual global awards ceremony held in a different city each year, starting with London in the fall of 2021. William will be part of the panel that makes the decisions. The prize fund will be provided by the project's global alliance founding partners, including the philanthropic bodies of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, and Michael Bloomberg.
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