Prince William plans to take the Earthshot Awards to China next year, oh brother

So many people completely ignored this year’s Earthshot Awards. It was amazing. I love that for Prince William. The stupidest part about the Singapore awards was that William really was faced with one of the biggest dilemmas of his soft, lazy life: bring Kate and get more attention OR be able to launch himself as a sexy single statesman with significantly less attention. If he truly wanted to get the most attention for himself or Earthshot, he should have brought Kate along. But he can’t stand to be around her and he didn’t want his ass groped in Singapore, so here we are. People paid such little attention to Earthshot that we forgot that William was supposed to announce where next year’s Earthshot would be held. Well, the big news: Earthshot is going to China.

The Prince of Wales will take his annual Earthshot prize awards to China in an attempt to engage with the country and fast-forward change to its environmental policies. He will visit the world’s biggest polluter despite severely strained relations between China and the West, a decision that is in marked contrast to his father’s approach.

The King, who will be 75 on Tuesday, has never visited mainland China because of his views on the regime’s treatment of Tibet and its human rights record. By comparison, William is said to believe that you “can’t exclude a big chunk of the planet when thinking about fighting for its future”.

William, 41, discussed his plans for China with the prime minister and president of Singapore last week, during his three-day visit to the country which hosted this year’s Earthshot prize awards ceremony.

A royal source said: “Prince William believes that when it comes to the climate and the environment, Asia is critical. He’s of the view you can’t exclude a big chunk of the planet when thinking about fighting for its future. To fast-forward the change and impact he wants, he knows he has to engage with China and India — two of the world’s biggest economies and biggest emitters of carbon dioxide. This is not him commenting on government policy. This is about his approach to the environment and ability to create real global change. It is him thinking, ‘Where can I deliver impact and change not just here but around the world?’ That is his longer-term view.”

A Kensington Palace spokesman said: “Scale and ambition is something the prince thinks a lot about. He wants to make Earthshot truly global.”

[From The Times]


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/prince-william-earthshot-prize-china-p2qk5z77h

While I know there are many American politicians who use China as one of their go-to boogeymen, I don’t think I realized until just now, with this Times piece, that British politicians are so wary of even going to China or doing any kind of diplomacy. When your country is stuck in an isolationist rut, perhaps “sending a dumb, lazy prince to China” is groundbreaking or important. But… it’s not 1955 anymore. China has opened up in some ways. The rest of the world is in China, and China has reached out to the rest of the world. That being said, given China’s strict social media and media censorship policies, next year’s Earthshot is going to get even less attention.

Meanwhile, Peggington posted these “behind-the-scenes” photos on Instagram where he was preparing for his big Invictus speech. He made sure to pose like Prince Harry at Invictus. It’s just sad that Will and Kate are so insecure, so obvious and so unoriginal.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Instagram.