UK Prince William urges action to stop climate change

Britain's Prince William on Saturday made an appeal for action against climate change, so we don't "have to sacrifice everything we enjoy," just days after launching a new award to incentivise green innovation.

"Together, we must protect and restore nature. Clean our air. Revive our oceans. Build a waste-free world and fix our climate. And we must strive to do all of this in a decade," he urged.

William made the remarks in his first TED talk, given as part of Countdown, TED's climate initiative.

On Thursday, William joined forces with renowned British broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough to launch a new environmental award, the Earthshot Prize, which has grand ambitions to "incentivise change and help to repair our planet over the next 10 years."

The prize takes its inspiration from the Moonshot challenge that President John F. Kennedy set for the U.S. in 1961 to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

William, who has been immersed in environmental issues all his life, said the same resources used to tackle the coronavirus pandemic should be devoted to saving the natural world.

The plan envisions five prizes of 1 million pounds ($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 prize fund will be provided by the project's global alliance founding partners, a group which includes the philanthropic bodies of billionaires like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, and Michael Bloomberg.