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Many of his speeches are valuable, innocuous, and a bit predictable. They have to be. But today is different.
For a brief moment, Prince William abandons his royal role and abandons the instinctive caution that often influences his pronouncements, to show that his passion for preserving the planet corresponds to his pragmatism.
His intervention with the establishment of an ambitious international award and with Nobel-style funds to recognize the ideas and technologies that can safeguard all of our futures, not only marks his emergence as a major player on the global environmental stage.
It also shows that you have grasped the immense influence it wields.
And in an instant it serves to dramatically highlight the gulf between his ideas and approach and those of Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with their children George, Charlotte and Louis in Kensington Palace Gardens after attending an open-air screening of Sir David Attenborough’s upcoming feature film.
From California, the Sussexes (pictured) risked compromising the impartiality of the Royal Family with their bizarre claims that the media had exaggerated the magnitude of the health crisis.
While Harry and Meghan have antagonized many with their waking agenda, intimidating manners, and hypocrisy, William has quietly pursued their ideals with modesty and an easy smile. The same has happened with your response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
From California, the Sussexes risked compromising the impartiality of the Royal Family with their bizarre claims that the scale of the health crisis had been exaggerated by the media – the media they despise, of course. Compare that to the actions of William, Kate, and their children.
Week after week during the shutdown, they led the nation’s response to the selfless courage of the NHS and other key workers as they joined applause for caregivers from outside their Norfolk home.
And by allowing the attention to fall on both George, Charlotte, and Louis, they did so with grace and generosity.
Prince William has stepped out of his royal role and abandons the instinctive caution that often influences his pronouncements, to show that his passion for preserving the planet corresponds to his pragmatism.
Triumph
The photographs of George and his sister helping deliver meals and other supplies to elderly neighbors at the Sandringham estate were not only enchanting, but a public relations triumph.
In video calls and on Zoom, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have also demonstrated an instinct for guessing the mood of the nation with timely contributions.
Your role in being at the forefront of this time of profound testing in the country’s history will be remembered with gratitude.
But it is the launch of his Earthshot Prize to ‘galvanize’ the best minds to find the best solutions to address the world’s great environmental challenges, which William hopes will be seen as a career defining project.
If he succeeds, and there is no conceivable reason why he shouldn’t, he will rank alongside his father’s Prince’s Trust organization and his grandfather’s Duke of Edinburgh Awards Program, Prince Philip.
In fact, William follows a unique royal tradition. His great-grandfather, King George VI, who not only secured the monarchy after the abdication catastrophe, memorably introduced the George Cross for civil gallantry.
The photographs of George and his sister (pictured) helping deliver meals and other supplies to elderly neighbors at the Sandringham estate were not only charming, but a public relations triumph
While his father, King George V, did so much to protect parks and green spaces across the country for generations with his National Association of Playgrounds.
This is a coming of age for Prince William and reflects maturity, growing confidence, and an ability to show leadership on an issue where his brother’s attempts to articulate a position have been confusing, to say the least. (Remember how those Harry lectures on climate change and global warming coincided with him using private jets?)
Her role model is undoubtedly Prince Philip, whose love for the natural world was nurtured during his six-month tour of the Commonwealth on the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1956, controversial at the time due to his absence from the side of the Queen.
This led him to effectively lobby governments as director of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Astute
For William, the seeds were sown on a visit to Namibia, Tanzania and Kenya two years ago, where he met conservation workers and those from local communities.
He then refined his ideas with others, including his father, the Prince of Wales. But the key figure he invited aboard the new project was broadcaster Sir David Attenborough. It was a cunning move.
Attenborough’s intergenerational support is guaranteed to ensure that the Earthshot Prize, which is inspired by the Apollo Moon (dubbed Moonshot) landings, is not seen as a real elusive target, but rather as something that really matters.
The parallels with space were carefully chosen. William’s view is that the same initiative and ingenuity that were the hallmarks of the Apollo missions can be harnessed to clean the planet’s air, revive its oceans, and fix the climate.
Noble sentiments, of course, but William has backed these aspirations with a truly impressive £ 50 million prize fund, drawn from philanthropists and some of the richest figures in the world.
Over ten years it will generate five annual prizes worth £ 1 million for each winner. It shows that he is not a mere dreamer, but a realist, and also practical.
In a good wind, what he has released today should provide a legacy to one day stand alongside the Prince’s Trust, now 44 years old and still helping young people to work.
This is also William acknowledging the convening power of the monarchy. It has been impossible to ignore the contribution he has made to national life this year. No wonder courtiers enthusiastically describe him as the prince who really ‘gets it’.
But while he has been a unifying figure, standing up for the good in Britain, his brother has increasingly been viewed as out of reach and seemingly always ready to criticize a country on which he has turned his back.
Nothing illustrates that more than Harry lashing out at what he called Britain’s “structural racism”. It sparked an extraordinary reaction, but not exactly the one he and Meghan had been waiting for.
Trevor Phillips, the esteemed former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, compared Harry, whom he accused of using empty jargon, to a “polytechnic professor from the eighties.”
And while William showed a very human side by allowing his sons to majestically outshine him in his captivating talk with David Attenborough about spiders and monkeys, Harry was causing another storm, this time over the American election.
Heritage
A video clip in which he and Meghan urged voters to reject hate speech was widely interpreted as an endorsement of Democratic hopeful Joe Biden. This was a real blow to the notion of royalty being nonpartisan and apolitical.
The story of the two princes, once so close in thought, word, and action, only to fall, and now represent such different approaches to their roles, has been brilliantly captured in historian Robert Lacey’s book, published in the Mail this week. .
In their youth they were both impulsive at times, wanting to kick against the system.
But while Harry now seems determined to reject his inheritance and want to forget that he was once a prince, William, thanks in part to Kate and the stability of family life, has chosen to embrace duty and use his royal role as a force. for the good. .
It was once said that when it came to the Queen and Princess Margaret, we had the “right” sister for the monarch.
Many are now modifying that terse observation to argue that when it comes to William and Harry, we have the “right” brother as heir to the throne line.
