Hmm.
A Californian who writes for the Guardian doesn't like Earthshot because he thinks the backers aren't spending enough.
He wrote a series of 3 articles to say so, around the time of Earthshot 2024 (two before, one just after the award ceremony).
In his first article (03/10/24) he says 'As a reporter, I’d normally call a few backers and ask, but there’s just too little money involved to make it worthwhile.'
He continues to complain about how small the prize pool is, saying the backers should 'do the decent thing' and '[add] a couple zeroes to the total'.
He does acknowledge that 'some of its backers are among the most serious and high-spending climate donors of their class. Gates and Bloomberg, for instance, have put more money into climate over the years than just about any other living billionaires' yet despite declaring himself 'mystified as to everyone’s motivations' he lacks the professional curiosity to ask why they are doing something different this time, and what they expect the outcome to be.
There was no discussion of award nominees (realising this is coming up to Earthshot 2024).
His second article (10/10/24) https://archive.ph/28Orb is a direct comparison of Earthshot with 5 other large environmental prizes. The comparison is a straightforward 'dollars per funder' one. He points out that Earthshot provides less money per backer to the winners than any of the other named prizes.
Again, there is no suggestion of curiosity about why this might be the case. There is also no mention of the award nominees or previous winners. There is some discussion of previous nominees/winners of the Goldman Prize and Climate Breakthrough.
For his third article (14/11/24), he's decided to ask 'roughly two dozen current and former environmental grantmakers, philanthropic practice experts and environmental advocates' not involved with Earthshot what they thought about it. He also had by now decided it might be a good idea to contact Earthshot staff (after 2 negative articles!) - for some reason they weren't answering his emails.
The general theme of the discussion is the same as the other two. There are some useful comments around the role of prizes/competitions in raising public awareness and highlighting ideas - but also a mention of prize fatigue. Earthshot's role in supporting innovation is recognised. There are several comments about it not being funded at a level that people would expect - and a final sentence suggestion that if a billionaire was doing this they should look at what else they could do instead.
The one interesting comment for me was by the expert who looked at the list of Earthshot winners and pointed out that “They’re not the sort of ones that, like, when you go to climate funder meetings, everybody’s talking about...If these are awesome things, the recognition this gives could be a huge boost.” So maybe they are doing something different?
Once again, none of the Earthshot winners is mentioned.
I don't have a business background, so can't critique the financial aspect. I do know that if I presented an argument like this in my work I would be taken apart by colleagues. It may be these are only opinion pieces, and he can write what he likes as long as he follows the guidelines of the publication (Inside Philanthropy). I'm just left with a lot of questions.