Prince William’s Earthshot is now an independent charity, with trustee Jason Knauf

One of the things I absolutely adored about Prince William’s big keen Earthshot mess last year was how terrifically bored he was with it already. Earthshot – or Keenshot, as I like to call it – was announced in late 2019. It was nine months before we heard of it again, and there was a distinct feeling that it simply got dusted off and handed to William as some vague busywork. William, you see, is desperate to compete with his younger brother, so William needed something very big and important, so Kensington Palace told everyone that Keenshot would be more prestigious than the Nobel Prize (it is not).

By the time the Keenshot Awards finally got around to being handed out last fall, William was completely and utterly bored with the whole thing. That busywork was so exhausting! And it didn’t even accomplish what he wanted – Keenshot landed with a dull thud, even sycophantic royal commentators rolled their eyes and the American media market just sort of shrugged. Okay, William got the cover of People Magazine (but People did a second cover that week because they knew Baldemort wouldn’t sell). So now we have a 40-year-old prince who is too lazy to actually do anything with his supposed signature issue and charity. So William just decided to hand it off to other people to run. Other people like… Jason Knauf.

Prince William’s Earthshot Prize is now an independent charity. After two years as part of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Royal Foundation, the Earthshot Prize officially become an independent charity on Friday. Prince William will take on the role of president.

Four new trustees — CEO of Conservation International M. Sanjayan, former CEO of The Royal Foundation Jason Knauf, former assistant private secretary to Prince William Zoe Ware and former private secretary to Prince William Jean Christophe Gray — were all appointed to the Board. They join Chair Christiana Figueres, Vice-Chair David Fein, and Founding Trustee ‘Tokunboh Ishmael.

Figueres said: “This is an enormously exciting step for The Earthshot Prize and we’re thrilled to welcome the new Trustees to our board. This year will see the Prize deliver its most important work to date as we continue to speed and scale the ground breaking work of our 2021 Finalists, whilst searching for this year’s Winners. We are deeply grateful for the years of thought leadership, bold creativity and ambitious design of the team at The Royal Foundation as they created The Earthshot Prize, and look forward to the coming years of continued partnership.”

Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s famed 10-year goal of landing on the moon (known as Moonshot), the Earthshot Prize aims to promote impactful approaches to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

[From People]

The fact that Jason Knauf keeps turning up like a bad penny… yeesh. I thought he moved away when his partner got a new job? I guess Knauf can travel to help out his boy Baldemort. And what does it say about William that he keeps Knauf around? That Knauf is being rewarded with this trustee position even after Knauf broke royal confidentiality to selectively release information TO the Mail when Meghan was suing the media outlet? Knauf was also behind the completely idiotic “bullying” smear campaign, which resembled a long-con Knauf organized as a fail safe.

Now, as for Keenshot becoming independent from the Royal Foundation… that’s pretty curious too, and I don’t actually think it’s entirely about William’s boredom. Yes, he’s chronically lazy and insipid. But Keenshot actually partnered with a number of serious corporations and environmental groups. It could be that this move to become an independent charity is more about those corporations and environmental groups understanding that the Royal Foundation is an utter clownshow, and they want the financial aspects to be above-board (which they probably weren’t for two years).

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Instar.