As you know, planet Earth has some problems. We need to stop global warming and pollution. At WoW!, we love to bring you news about people coming up with solutions. This week, we’ve been talking to someone who has more than one solution for climate change. In fact, he’s got a thousand!
You may remember when we brought news on April 13 that he had found 1,000 solutions. What does that mean? Well, Bertrand Piccard and his team hunted down all those solutions – tools, inventions, ways of doing things. They got experts to check that they all work. And now they’ve put them online so that people can start using them to help the planet.
So, who is Bertrand Piccard? First, he’s a doctor, from Switzerland. But he’s also the first person to fly around the world in a balloon. He did that 22 years ago. Five years ago, he became the first person to complete a trip around the globe in a plane with no fuel. It was called Solar Impulse and was powered just by sunlight.
We asked Bertrand about growing up in a family of scientists, explorers and adventurers, about what inspired him as a boy to try to do things no one had done before, and about the big idea behind his 1,000 solutions…
Listen to the interview with Bertrand here
We asked Bertrand to name his favourite of the 1,000 solutions. He came up with a simple system of pipes in your shower. They take the hot soapy water that runs down into the drain and use it to warm up the clean cold water that’s coming up to the shower. It means you need less hot water. And less heating means less global warming. Now that’s clean brilliant!
Did you know that Bertrand’s grand-dad was a friend of Tintin, the boy reporter?
Well, not quite. But Auguste Piccard, Bertrand’s dad’s dad, was a famous scientist. He was the first person to go into the stratosphere – 16 km up! In a balloon! He had long neck and wild hair. When the man who drew the Tintin books saw Auguste Piccard, he decided to make him a regular character. That’s how Tintin’s friend, crazy Professor Calculus, was born!