Pretty much the day Prince Harry announced his engagement to Meghan Markle, the Embiggening Campaign for the Duchess of Cambridge began. It’s still remarkable to me to look back to how quickly it was organized: Work-Shy Waity seamlessly and gracelessly became the Future Queen Who Never Put A Foot Wrong. She had big things in the pipeline, we were told ad nauseum, and Kate had spent the past decade working endlessly on her big project, Early Years, or something about Broken Britain. There were meetings and parties and buttons. It was all very important. Nothing much came of that. But in 2020, post-Sussexit, Prince William is the one with the Embiggening Campaign. Kate no longer has competition, so she’s lost interest in being performatively keen. So it’s William’s turn.
So what’s Future Future King William’s big legacy project? The Earthshot Prize. William announced Earthshot on one of the last days of 2019. He barely mentioned it in the nine months since then. But his staff dusted off Earthshot and they clearly see this as the perfect issue for William. Something vague involving lots of secret meetings and lots of work for which William can take credit. Nine months after he announced Earthshot, he’s now formally re-launching it or something:
We have just 10 years to repair the planet. By 2030, let’s choose to:
🐢 Protect and restore nature
💨 Clean our air
🌊 Revive our oceans
♻️ Build a waste-free world
🌍 Fix our climateIntroducing the @EarthshotPrize 🏆 https://t.co/Ar41HpMIJp
— The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (@KensingtonRoyal) October 8, 2020
So there you go. In case you wanted more embiggening, please enjoy all of these insider-y quotes which Kensington Palace provided to many journalists.
How long William has been “working” on Earthshot: When Prince William traveled through Africa on a working visit in the fall of 2018, it was his time in Namibia, Kenya, and Tanzania tackling conservation issues and illegal wildlife trade that inspired him to explore permanent solutions to global environmental challenges. Ideas swirled in his mind for two months until he had a bigger conversation with Sir David Attenborough in London. There, the famed activist and Duke of Cambridge discussed an idea to create a prize that will not only incentivize the global effort to protect and restore the environment, but also help repair the planet by 2030.
Earthshot is the new Nobel Prize: “That was when they started talking about what would become his most ambitious project to date,” a Kensington Palace source tells BAZAAR.com. “Something that would gain the prestige of the Nobel Prize. He didn’t want to duplicate the efforts of others, but after [researching the landscape] they couldn’t find something that met the same criteria … where winners from every sector—be it a scientific team or a 12-year-old in a classroom in Kenya—are possible.”
It’s prestigious! Now, after two years of intense planning and behind-the-scenes work, Prince William is ready to share new details of what he is calling the most “prestigious global environmental prize in history.” The Earthshot Prize has today announced it will spend the next 10 years annually awarding five, one million-pound ($1.2 million) prizes to individuals, organizations, charities, scientists, activists, and those around the world who are working to provide solutions to the world’s biggest environmental problems.
Earthshot will make you famous: Starting in the fall of 2021, a high-profile awards ceremony will take place in a different country every year until 2030, where five winners for prizes will be awarded each time. London is the first location (in line with whatever COVID-19 guidelines may exist at the time), where awards for five new solutions in five special categories will be presented: protect and restore nature, clean our air, revive our oceans, build a waste-free world, and fix our climate. Not only will each winner receive prize money to support their environmental and conservation projects, they will also receive a global platform and become part of The Earthshot legacy. “Our aim is to create the same kind of buzz for these winners and finalists that Olympic athletes receive,” a spokeswoman told reporters, including BAZAAR, during a media briefing. “Create an excitement about who they are and make them famous.”
William is doing a TV series? Along the way, other Earthshot-related activities will take place, including a global communications campaign (in seven different languages) and a landmark television series to tie in with the decade of the initiative. The duke himself expects to remain involved and committed throughout the entire decade, with plans even in place for potential cameos from other members of the royal family. “Watch this space,” says a palace source on whether the queen will be lending her support.
His confidence has grown: A Kensington Palace aide adds of Prince William, “His confidence has grown along the way [of working on The Earthshot Prize] and he is excited to be working with a team that can support him as he knows that him alone is not enough. He has a global leadership role to play and now is the time to play it.”
This is obviously a lot bigger than Kate’s sad little Early Years busy-work, which makes me wonder how much William really did and how much was organized with William just breezing in occasionally to say “yeah, good work everyone.” And the whole idea that Earthshot is suddenly going to become this huge deal – comparable to the Nobel Prize – and that it will immediately make people super-famous because William has organized it… well, they’re all going to be in for a big shock. But it will be interesting to see. It’s not the traditional Cambridge keenness and busy-work. I do wonder though… why the announcement of Earthshot last December, and why did it take nine months to really form a plan? Why that gap?
Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red and Backgrid.
if the goal is to help the environment – why are you flying people to an event?!? we know zoom works and it saves actual CO2. I don’t mean to critique something that can help – I want whatever can help to work – but they need to make this flexible and adapt so it isn’t just about “celebrity” or “making people famous” – the work should be in line with the goal of environmental progress.
Maybe somebody should suggest that idea as an entry for the second challenge “clean our air”.
He personally has a very bad carbon footprint so that tracks with his own record. It’s a warranted critique to remark about the carbon waste of a prize giving ceremony which is aimed at saving the planet. We have also remarked about the carbon waste of the Google Summit and travelling to Davos by private jet to talk about climate change.
The whole “it is your own responsiility” trope was invented by the corbon heavy Industry to save them. Together with the story, that enviromental protection means less luxury and lower standards of living.
Pleas dont´t fall for this. We have the technology for a carbon neutral world where you can travel and fly, circular economy systems, based on regenerative Energy are possible. we only need to make the change, and the established industrial players are lobbying against it.
E.g. here in Germany the fossil car industrie financing the lobbying against wind energy for “environmental reasons” to stop electric cars powered by regenerativ energy.
Yup, we can tell people to buy environmentally friendly things and to stop flying and whatnot, but it will NEVER be enough to actually fight climate change. Big corporations are by far the biggest contributors to worldwide CO2 emissions and as long as we don’t get them all to reduce their emissions DRASTICALLY or even cut them completely, none of us can do much against climate change, no matter how little we consume.
I agree that maybe flying in people to talk about climate change of all things is a bad look, but you have a very important point too.
I am a fellow German and you’re right, the car industry is so huge here, it’s almost ridiculous how much they get to say.
In concept this sounds like an excellent program. Whether it’s executed properly is another thing. And it sounds as though William is just the figurehead but other people and organizations are actually doing all of the work. I will reserve judgement until I see tangible results.
That was my take as well. He’s basically just handing out an award for other peoples’ work. What groundbreaking, unique thing am I missing here??
What exactly is the point of this? Why give people prizes instead of you know, actually supporting the work that people do? Imagine the embarrassment when some prize winner decides to buy a Maserati (even with their own money), or we find out later the “prize winner” was really a scam artist? They are setting themselves up for disastrous PR–also, they will be spending lots of money on an international awards ceremony so everyone can fly to an international destination to receive a prize?? What’s the carbon footprint on something like that? What’s the upside with this prize, anyway? How does it benefit the environment? Greta Thunberg turned down a prize saying that we need to support the work of environmentalism, not just give prizes (and who in their right mind would give a million dollars to a 12 year old? That just sets up the 12 year old to be exploited by the grownups around them).
This sounds like a typical William initiative–years out of date, not thought through. And he will invariably be compared to whatever environmental project the Sussexes undertake. This will be fun to watch.
The point is he can attach his name to a groundbreaking revolutionary idea from others. That’s it.
It sounds to me like a “forces for change” or “BHM Trailblazers” except these guys get £200k a year to help them.
I wonder if the RF will help their winners meet their goals, or will just give them money and be gone with it
I’m not sure that the Earthshot organizers understand the difference between a prize and a grant. The big prizes are usually lifetime achievement awards in recognition of previous work, while grants are intended to fund future research. It sounds like the Earthshot money is meant to support the winners’ ongoing projects, which would make it a grant. The big difference is in the amount of oversight and accountability for how the money is spent, which seem to be lacking here.
It’s like he wants this to be a combo of the MacArthur grants and the Nobel Prize. I bet you anything Kate shows up in a tiara for the first awards ceremony like the Swedish royals do.
William just wants his own Invictus that travels around the world and gives him good press.
Basically yeah, he wants the applause and PR that comes with a big, flashy show. Because as an idea to drive change, this is terrible. If he actually wanted to make a difference for the earth and climate, he could just… raise money for environmental organizations.
Apparently, according to Will, there is currently no incentive to protect the earth and try to reverse climate change. The fact that he thinks that budding/currently active environmentalist and scientists need to be incentivized to work on projects, and that the biggest incentive that would really make people care is a big flashy awards show that hundreds of people have to travel internationally for, where you get to meet William and play dress up, is very William. “Well I know I wouldn’t want to work on any solutions unless I got invited to a big party with royals and got to be internationally feted and wined and dined and wear my tiara during a live awards show,” is very William.
Is the prize money a good amount? It seems like you get $200,000 a year to either fund your continuing work or set up your new work. Is that enough?
I’m also wondering if they’re really going to have enough entries in each of the five different categories especially in the first year, to really make this as “prestigious” as they claim. What if they only get one or two entries for some of these things? William isn’t really known for following through on or properly promoting his projects with all of the pertinent information one would need to participate. We get a lot of “coming next year, this big thing, look for details later,” and then not a lot of details come out. Even this launch was like “watch this space for more information.”
LOL @ “He didn’t want to duplicate the efforts of others” like, literally knocking his brother’s IG (that Harry has already acknowledged is was an idea he “stole” from the US) but in the next sentence saying but actually Willileaks’ project is a knock of of someone else’s efforts, LOL.
It’s a nice thought but to actually accomplish the things on the list will require cooperation from countries and governments. People can and have developed initiatives but if they aren’t seriously pursued by legislation they don’t go far. That’s probably why he apparently failed to get the Gates Foundation to be involved. If you watch some of the things Gates puts out, he points out that we already have the answers to a lot of the problems, they just need widespread initiation.
The press is not going to point out that William failed to get the Gates on board.
The Nobel prize for environment is the Goldman Environmental Prize award. Not sure what PWT is going with stating that Earthshot is the most prestigious. Laughable!
Looks like they’re just copying Goldman.
You can’t simply declare that a prize is prestigious. You cannot compare it to the Nobel simply because you want to put your prize on equal footing. The big difference here is that a 12 year old can win it. Lol.
and then we all get to watch the poor 12 year old get trampled by grasping greedy relatives who want to get their hands on the money. What a terrible thing to do to a child–give them a lot of money that they will have no idea how to allocate/spend, and they’re totally at the mercy of their parents. I hope they don’t give these prizes to anyone other than adults. A kid’s life could be detroyed by something like this. Look at Hollywood for examples. Very few child stars come out unscarred in terms of their family relationships
But is there a survey? Because if I don’t get five meaningless questions, can we call this work?
BTW have they stopped using private planes and helicopters yet? Because it is the rich and their mass consumerism that is causing Global Warming.
Okay this /sounds/ like a good idea and it might end up being very successful but they should stop comparing it to the nobel prize. That’s been around for decades whereas this has just launched. Let it stand on it’s own merits and see what people think of it.
Exactly! This could be a very good prize (although I think the whole point of it for William and Kate is the annual awards show, where they’ll be applauded and praised for the works of others), but starting out calling it the most prestigious prize out there isn’t the best way to start. Let’s see how it goes.
Imagine putting 50 million towards an actual initiative like outfitting lower income homes with solar panels or …. anything other than a prize.
They have land and money, they could do something like Jimmy Carter did to supply power to his hometown with solar panels. Carter also had some installed at the White House that were removed by Reagan then put back under George W Bush. Obama installed more solar panels during his presidency. I don’t know how they have fared under Trump. Since they were already in perhaps he left them alone.
So is this earthshot prize in direct response to Harry’s Travalyst as Kate’s big solo project announcement aka five big questions was in response to Meghan’s successful cookbook launch? I’m asking for a friend.
I think it would have been a better idea to give the money to people who are already doing a lot of work in this field. Also, the problem is not that there aren’t solutions to the climate crisis is that there isn’t Government will to implement these solutions. For real change to take place he’s going to have to get political and we know we can’t have that, oh no. If I’m William, I’d be pissed that the royal roya is invoking Harry’s name in promoting this new initiative. The purpose was for the spotlight to be on him but the press mentioning Harry on takes the focus away from him. But I guess this is the only angle the tabloids (who are usually anti-climate change and always rail against Greta Thunberg) could find to promote it without being seen as absolutely hypocritical in promoting William’s Earthshot. The launch doesn’t seem to be global and it’s being done at the same time the Nobel Prizes are being given out. It’s seems like the wrong time for such a launch which aims to be global.
This. I am involved in air quality and there are already great ideas to curb London’s air quality problems. Putting that money toward those initiatives would improve lives greatly. Will needs to stop chasing Harry and the “next great thing” and get down to work. He needs to listen to people instead of telling them what he wants to do.
This IS a good initiative. I mean, the world completely failed to live up to any of the objectives of the Japan conference. But PWT is not the man to run it. He’s quite simply mediocre. And unless he’s prepared to practise what he preaches, he’s a hypocrite.
There’s also another angle. What this foundation is proposing is intensely political. Take renewing the oceans, for example. That means no super trawlers, quotas and quadruple the amount of protected marine environments. And that would only help to restore over fished species. You’ve also got the problem of plastic waste, which pretty much every country with a coast engages in (and pay companies to do so). Considering the absolute hooha around fishing rights post-Brexit, PWT could quite easily find himself in a huge row with the British Government and the EU. I wonder what the tabloids would say to that?
this is the problem – the climate crisis is NOT new information, and at this point, we know what needs to be done and it needs to be done by governments.
Awarding prizes for people to come up with smaller individual things is not going to solve the big problems. There are literally millions of smaller individual things already. They don’t work on their own, we need the big actions.
if only – instead of making it about competition between the two, he and harry had collaborated so that both this and travelyst were successful and linked and showed how they are working together?
DF already publish an article about how PW are so much better “environmentalist” than his brother, and that Sussexes were burning a lot of fuel on their trip to Africa, etc. We know DF is William’s mouthpiece, so I doubt there would be collaboration between brothers.
He participated in sabotaging his brother’s work, he’s not a good person. Of course the DM and RRs are not going to go after how hypocritical he is. Preaching that the environment needs to be saved but takes a private helicopter to get everywhere. All the things they accuse Meghan of doing – about making everything about herself was basically projecting William’s qualities on her – this project itself is more about promoting William – calling it the most prestigious prize equivalent to the noble prize and how he’s going to be taking a global leadership role in saving the planet.
Shakira and Cate Blanchett and Queen Rania are members of judging panel (??). Why not Greta Thunberg or even Jane Fonda? Somebody who has a reputation or connections to the environmental issues. Why not Prince Charles? The whole thing looks like a joke, at least for people who are involved with the topic.
TED Talks are in that too – they are trying to to propagandize both the Prize and PWT. https://twitter.com/TEDCountdown/status/1314181006858092544?s=20
The case itself (environment not PW) is important so maybe every tiny bit helps. Still, it feels so false.
I’m amazed that no one at KP asked the same questions. When you are all about the optics and have been propped up all your life, you often miss such basic details.
No engagement on that tweet just like all the others mentioning Earth’s hot. It’s a flop. Nobody cares. And I love Shakira and Cate Blanchett but come on, folks. A celebrity judged prize and they want us to think it’s more prestigious than the Nobel?😂
Greta is hated by the British press and she is on record saying that the world doesn’t need environment prizes she prefers action.
Most of the judges are probably involved with the partner organizations or the foundations donating the money. You would think they would have at least a couple of serious researchers on board. Maybe a professor from Oxford or something?
“The duke himself expects to remain involved…”. This sentence gives William the perfect “out” when he gets bored with environmental causes. It’s stunning that he can’t commit to this “prize” that is so prestigious, ha!!
RIGHT!?!?! Imagine Harry saying “he expects to remain involve” with Invictus.
If the point of this is to embiggen him, it’s already a flop. Not only is no one outside of the rota roaches and BM talking about this, but the little bit of talk is all revolving around Harry. 😂😂 I don’t think anyone’s going to take this seriously. Not a single prize has been awarded yet and here he us calling it “more prestigious than the Nobel”. How? Because “royal”? Are you kidding me?
Shakira and Cate Blanchett and other celebrities deciding who gets the prize for climate change research is just ridiculous. It is not a movie panel but would involve things like science and technology, something which a celebrity panel has no frickin clue about. A serious endeavour would have involved top minds in the areas of science to consider the feasibility of the ideas being proposed. This sounds like a joke.
Celebrity panel, plus big awards show type setting, plus the invitation for everyone, including 12 year olds to participate sounds very “America’s Got Talent” to me.
“Why the announcement of Earthshot last December, and why did it take nine months to really form a plan?”
I would assume it’s because COP 26 (the UN’s climate change conference) was supposed to be hosted by the UK next month so the intention was presumably to announce the first recipient alongside that. Given that’s now been postponed for 12 months, I would also guess that’s why the winner will now be announced at roughly the same time next year.
It was said from the beginning that the prize would run for 10 years, from 2021 to 2030. It will be under the RF for the first year and then become its own entity, independent from the Foundation. All this information was available from the beginning.
Fair enough then! Just some speculation on my part, good to know though (and maybe ease up a bit on that last sentence…).
Netflix bad – unless William is involved
Celebrities bad – unless partnering with William’s prize
Why 5 prizes every 2 years for 10 years? Feels like spreading resources unusually thin.
Okay, let’s start with the positives.
Getting all those organizations together is impressive. If done properly, this could create something really good.
Questions:
Is it 50 million per year in prize money as in 10 million per winner or 50 million for all ten years as in 1 million per winner?
Is the winner required to spend the money on implementing their idea or can they pocket it? Because if it’s the latter, then …?
Where is the money coming from? For the prizes and to run this whole thing?
Why won’t they give up this idea of travelling? It’s hypocritical and tacky.
Why celebrity judges? Cate Blanchett, Shakira and even Queen Rania? There a weird frivolousness to some of this.
William may stay involved?
Is this just a feelgood photo op to be used a backdrop for the Cambridge family?
The flashiness of the money seems to the point, not helping the environment. This could go very bad very quickly.
There is more information at Earthshot.org. It is just 1 million per winner. I don’t see any rules about how the money is used once awarded. If you look under “about” it tells the foundations putting up the money. I figure the celebs are involved with some of the partner organizations as patrons. They supposedly have a team of experts helping them make the decision. I agree the flashiness seems to be the emphasis.
Kalana, Queen Rania is running/operating a refugee camp two million strong. To my way of thinking, she probably has some insights on the environment and how people are affecting it, and being affected by it. To me she is more understandable on that panel than Kate Blanchett is.
Why didn’t he tie eartshot with his documentary that came out, instead of attaching it to Sir David’s? In the article it says it took two years to put together, presumably during the time he was filming the documentary. It would have been a more cohesive message and could have added more publicity to the prize. And how the hell can you compare it to the Nobel and call it the most biggliest environmental prize ever when it hasn’t even been rewarded yet? And are prize winners supposed to use the money to make solutions for climate change, we can they spend it all willy nilly? There are so many questions?Also, how did he get all of this money for earthshot, seeing as the Royal Foundation can barely stay funded?
Harry attended the Warrior Games in May 2013.
Inspired by that, he decided to create the Invictus Games. First Invictus Games was held in London in September 2014.
He was able to get a team together, help organize the event, do loads of publicity, and launch this international event with thousands of moving parts. In just over a year.
But William takes two years to think about thinking about ‘launching’ a project involving a group of people deciding to hand out an award.
Town and Country has an article about this and the photo they used is about 10 years old as William has hair!! Died laughing
This is Bill’s Invictus / Prince’s Trust / Duke of Edinburgh Award/ Royal Albert Hall….
This about him having a Prestige project just like every other prominent male member of his family.
Why must all the media surrounding the royals be so sycophantic? Every thing W&K do is shamelessly presented as if its only in the service of their personal legacy building, rather than actually helping the causes they seem to care about. It’s a total turn off.
So many thoughts. It’s Sir David Attenborough’s idea that Wills grabbed. Good to know. Where does all that money come from for the prizes? Does Will have signed commitments for funding in place? Why the emphasis on making the winners famous? Won’t the rigors and time it takes to maintain said fame take up the winners’ valuable planet-saving research and application time? It says Will has gotten more confident working on Earthshot. Didn’t they mean to say he has gotten more convinced that he needs this project to compete with Harry? I’m so confused about the ten years to save the planet emphasis. Do the Earthshot winners in year five still have a decade to save the planet or only five years? So if you are the winner in year 10, is the time up already, and since you can’t save the planet, will you be allowed to enjoy your cash prize on a Christmas to New Year’s rental in Mustique instead? Why are there so many different voices on that informational clip? Why are there more embiggening words in the publicity, such as buzz, famous, prestigious, high-profile, ambitious than scientific/environmental words? Are they awarding ideas–something drawn on a napkin? Or is this for an experiment that has shown promise for a specific problem?
There’s a 2030 UN agenda. It’s not a random date the prizes have selected.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld
If that’s what he wants to do, good for him. Hopefully it actually benefits someone other than himself. He obviously needs to make a mark somewhere. What stood out is how they are using superlatives. Most prestigious prize, a green Nobel, will make recipients famous, etc.etc. Also, they announced it while actual Nobel prizes are being rewarded, including a British recipient (Scotland) for Literature. Some people are asking where the money is coming from and if it’s another billionaire vanity project. I haven’t really been looking at press of this but two UK headlines I saw both mentioned Harry’s name and overshadowing. That seemed completely unnecessary and cheapens the announcement and its objectives.
Correction…literature prize awarded to American poet Louise Gluck. Don’t know why thought she was British. Anyway, maybe something like this will give William focus and purpose, so he’ll stop trying to undermine and trash others, who are just trying to live their lives and mind their business.
Louise Gluck is a tremendous poet. Great choice!
KP’s American PR hack must’ve written the announcement, I can’t imagine a Brit using all those superlatives…..except in an ironic fashion.
I’m a massive Shakira fan who is surprised she is doing this. Her extensive philanthropy work has been focused on children’s education.
Her involvement makes me take this somewhat seriously. She takes her charity work very, very seriously and she is smart about what she lends her name to
To parse the language I think saying that Willileaks wants to ”remain involved and committed’ is interesting.
Involved = get up on stage and be applauded
Committed = saying ‘I am committed’ when he wants some good press.
As for the rest of it I wish them well if this will genuinely impact the environment for the better, there are SO MANY fantastic ideas already being delivered out there. Sure be ambitious but as some other commenters have already said the press/PR around this is so sycophantic it undermines the impact.
This is HIGHLY political. I guess it’s okay for him.
Most of all it’s okay because it won’t actually effect change. To effect change at the level he says he wants, in the time he says he wants, you’d have to change a lot of laws to force giant corporations not to be evil. I mean . . . A million pounds to private individuals making individual progress here and there isn’t going to be anything like effective on the scale he says he wants.
No major climate initiatives can be implemented without political involvement. I suppose the definition of political in the UK is “Meghan Markle is part of it.”
I’m confused… Apparently TED Talks launch “Countdown” that is TED’s global climate justice initiative, on 10 Oct. 2020. Is Will’s Earthshot is part of this global initiative? Or there’s no connection? If so why they are promoting Earthshot? BTW, there’re a lot of celebrities who are to talk at said launch event (Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, etc). If Will is among them talking about his “Earthshot” – it looks like all his dreams come true. Maybe I’m too cynical?
I still don’t really get what this earthshot is about – who decides the winner? Is it annual? A one time thing? What supports (financial, political, logistical) would be given to those with successful ideas to help them scale up?
It’s hard to take it seriously, especially given that William and his team seem to have forgotten about this idea for nearly a year.
Hillary retweeted something about it and now suddenly all the ones who bashed Sara Latham love Hillary. Palmolive is especially oily.
Barack Obama retweeted it too. Wondering how that’s sitting with KP’s MAGA fans as well as involvement of Cate Blanchett, Shakira etc for the monarchists who look down on ‘Hollywood’.
It’s interesting that Boris Johnson also retweeted it but KP hasn’t even liked or retweeted his tweet. I’m guessing KP didn’t ask any Trump administration guys to support this initiative despite need to appear neutral (doubt they would have anyway). goes to my point yesterday that William seems to want to lean into ‘woke’ issues and want the ‘liberal/left’ support whilst allegedly being strongly right wing.
I don’t care what it takes to get these people on board. If William ends up being the unlikely catalyst so be it.
My local radio station interviewed a climate change expert about the Earthshot award today and to paraphrase – this is a waste of time and resources and not the way to make an actual impact.
I’m trying to find a link.
It’ll be just like the TUSK coalition & disaster relief fund. He’ll go to around 3 annual events then do the odd retweeting and be done with it. I dont know what they promised jack ma, shakira and Cate Blanchett to do this but I bet they are only doing it for one time. It’ll be too big a gamble to attach themselves to this man who is nearly 40 but has no accomplishments.
That said , I care about our planet so I hope the staff there achieve something to help the planet
This is not new concept, as somebody pointed out on Twitter. There are organization that existed since the 70’s with the same concept. William only promises to give a hefty bonus prize–$65M in 10 yrs?
https://twitter.com/benglevy1969/status/1314356723449163776?s=20
Nothing new for William here. He’s still the same guy who wants to copy what others have done best. We get it, he wants glory & adulation, too. Why do you think he has to sign off a Foreword on a Cookbook like Meghan does? Out of the blue, he’s now into cooking? But I’m sure he saw the impact of Meghan’s project, and he wants that same success that he couldn’t get in any of his projects. Or he wants to be like his little bro who established Endeavour Fund, an award to veterans who strived for recovery after injury.
But surely he can’t mirror the same thing for veterans, because it’s too obvious little bro already covered that. So somebody has put into his head about this Environmental prize award, it’s glitzy, acceptable, and global…He wants that global thing!
But if you look at his history, when was the last time he went into a forest or natural reserve to show us that he really care about environmental protection? The last time I heard about his direct involvement with the natural world is when his dad compelled them to pick up trash & litters along the rivers in their private estate while on a stroll. I’m pretty sure he has plenty of servants who’s doing it for him now.
Every time he talks about conservation or environmental issues, I see “HYPOCRISY” written in his forehead. This is the guy who doesn’t show the world he could get his hands dirty on the ground with the natural environment. But we all have a theory that he’s really good at some “dirty tricks” behind the scenes when it comes to his little bro/ SIL.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but William being so vocal on climate change could be a very good thing. While all the criticisms of the actual initiative apply I went and took a peek at how it’s being received on DM and their Twitter post. I expected to see a rage-filled melt-down that William was going “woke.” Surprisingly there were many positive comments and those that were critical weren’t as bad as I thought they would be. Few compared them to H&M and vowed to withdraw their support of Kensington Palace in general. If they even tolerate William being this vocal about climate change that’s a feat in itself.
The hypocrisy of his personal carbon footprint or the shallowness of his involvement won’t bother me one whit if by some miracle his face and public support manage to get his contingent in the UK and even America to stop making climate change political and accept it’s a problem. In their hatred of H&M, a fair amount of right-wing nuts in the US have become weirdly enamoured of Kennsington Palace so he does have more interest than Charles ever did.
It may be wishful thinking, but I hope he sticks with it if only to make a dent in public opinion amongst the Brexit-MAGA crowd.
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