As André Borschberg returned from his first attempt to conquer the Moroccan desert, Bertrand Piccard jumped on a flight to the capital city of the United States. In fact, Bertrand, with his two siblings Thierry and Marie-Laure, have been invited to collect the Hubbard Medal from the National Geographic Society bestowed on their father Jacques Piccard –explorer and oceanographer- posthumously.

The event will take place in Washington D.C on Thursday 14^th of June and will also be an occasion to celebrate the 125th year since the founding of the event’s host, the National Geographic Society. The Medal will be presented by James Cameron, film Director (Titanic, Avater, and others), and Don Walsh, explorer, oceanographer and Jacques Piccard’s companion during the exploration of the world’s deepest point, Mariana Trench.   

More than a record, the dive was a milestone for the protection of the environment: by proving the existence of life where nobody expected it, this discovery pushed the governments to ban the dumping of toxic waste into the deepest trenches.

Just like August Piccard with the invention of the pressurized chamber and first trip to the stratosphere (1931) and Jacques Piccard with the first exploration of the depths of the ocean (1960), Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg have proven the importance to act upon one’s ideas even when they might sound unfeasible.

Aware of the very clear message from Solar Impulse in favour of technologies that can reduce our dependency on fossil energy, she had asked Bertrand to speak alongside her.

For him this was an opportunity to bring up the story about an exchange with his meteorologists during his round-the-world balloon trip and which describes so well the question of sustainability and the long-term vision. Very pleased with himself at having found an altitude where the winds were pushing him twice as fast as the team's calculations had suggested, his advisors replied ironically: "Do you prefer to fly very quickly in the wrong direction or more slowly in the right one?". "This is the question that governments should be asking now given the speed at which humanity is moving towards massive public debt, the depletion of natural resources and the pollution of our environment."

As Bertrand pointed out: "Today's pioneers should not limit themselves to being explorers who walk on the moon or who do trips round the world; they should be heads of state resolved to meet the even more ambitious challenge of improving the quality of life on this planet.

The report ends with a list of practical recommendations for governments and international institutions, such as the need to remove the many subsidies still given to fossil energy and to include the environmental costs in the prices of all products. "Lastly an official stance that a legal framework is essential to change certain types of behaviour", say Bertrand and André happy to have included this subject in their Energy Charter last year.