If global warming and the summer’s thermometer-popping temperatures are to be blamed for anything, then it must surely be the total frying of Prince Harry’s brain.
How else can you explain his suggestion, made in this month’s high fashion mag Vogue, guest-edited by his wife Meghan, that the royal couple will probably just have two children to help save the planet?
And here was me thinking, wrongly, that it was only the vacuous city-stoppers Extinction Rebellion who are guilty of staying out in the sun for too long.
Not so, it seems Prince Harry, even with a battalion of royal protection officers and a nanny with a parasol in hand, has been allowed out without his head being lathered in Factor 50. He really needs to get in the shade and quickly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a royal basher and I like Harry. Out of all the royals, he’s always been the one who has come across as less royal, less stuffy and more in tune with the ordinary bloke, a royal rebel who, up to this point, has been pretty good value.
Now I’m not so sure. His ridiculous eco virtue-signalling was ill-informed and insensitive coming in a week we learned that more than 600,000 UK children have seen their families’ finances slashed under the Tories’ benefits cap. And when the nation, now that Boris Johnson is in charge, is more divided and polarised than ever as the PM drives towards a no-deal Brexit. All this while the pound sinks and the country continues to reel from a decade of austerity measures.
What was Harry thinking? For most ordinary people, carbon emissions, plastic pollution and global warming is the least of their worries.
Struggling to maintain a roof over their heads, keeping a job, heating their home, clothing their children and putting food on their table are higher on their list of concerns.
Privileged and cosseted Harry, on the other white-gloved hand, will never struggle. He will never have to worry about these realities. Nor will any of his offspring, no matter how many he welcomes to the royal nursery.
Whether it’s one, two, 10 or more, his children will never want and, given the natural resources the royals gobble up, they really won’t be saving the planet if they stop at two.
Trying to stop their relatives from needless journeys in their royal trains, planes and automobiles would protect our planet an awful lot more.
No, Harry’s remarks weren’t about how many children he and Meghan will but about suggesting to the little people how many they should have. Sorry, but I will not entertain his virtue signalling over population control and worries over climate change. Not when he is driven around in armoured fleets of 4x4s, and has enough air miles to go to the moon and back.
The hypocrisy of it all is staggering and that’s before we learned he had jetted off to Sicily to join other global celebrities for Google Camp, a gathering of treble-A listers, like singer Katy Perry, hand-wringing about saving the planet after arriving in 114 private jets and a flotilla of super diesel-spewing yachts. The conference was on climate change? Of course, it was.
So, Harry, please spare us the impassioned pleas over global warming, carbon emissions, pollution and population growth.
You really have to walk it like you talk it and, with your every step documented, it is not hard to suggest you don’t have the credentials or the credibility to be an eco warrior or climate-change champion, no matter what you think or how bored you may be at home with the baby.
So Harry, stick to the day job, you’re good at it and help save the planet by all means. Just don’t talk about it.
Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica.
Subscribe