December 3, 2020 - 7:00am
In an interview for the WaterBear network, the Prince Harry said that “being in nature is the most healing part of life. I truly believe that’s one reason why it’s there.” That’s the closest thing I’ve heard to a religious statement from any of the young royals — though which religion I’m not entirely sure. Just about all of them, I guess.
Not the worship of Mammon, though. For a certain shade of Right-wing opinion, the only green thing to be revered is money. Which is why anyone expressing concern for the environment is to be ridiculed.
For instance, just look at the way that Harry’s interview was written up in yesterday’s Telegraph: “The Duke of Sussex suggested that the coronavirus pandemic was a rebuke from mother nature as he urged everyone to “be a raindrop” and repair the Earth.”
The first part of that sentence makes him sound like a fire-and-brimstone eco-prophet, and the second like a spaced-out hippy. Read further down the article and you get the direct quotes, which sound rather less deranged.
The raindrop stuff is just a metaphorical description of the power of collective action — everyone doing their little bit. As for the supposed “rebuke from mother nature”, this is what the prince actually said:
Note the words — “it’s almost as if” — i.e. this is another metaphor. Furthermore, it’s making a serious and valid point. In all likelihood, human interference did cause this pandemic. Whether the insane trade in wildlife was to blame or a laboratory experiment gone wrong, the fact is that our carelessness has consequences. Then there’s our global transport networks — if we insist on being able to travel whenever and wherever we want, then we’ve got to assume that novel pathogens will be as mobile as we are. So, yes, we really do need to take a moment and think about what we’ve done — and what we may yet do as a result of factory farming, genetic modification and all the other ways in which we’re cooking up the next disaster.
I can’t say I’m thrilled about Harry and Meghan’s forays into wokery, but global systemic risk is an issue on which they, and many others, should be speaking out. Of course, they could lead by example — embracing simpler, less jet-set lifestyles — but, however they make the point, I hope it’s heard loud-and-clear.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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Subscribe‘Of course, they could lead by example ” embracing simpler, less jet-set lifestyles ” but, however they make the point, I hope it’s heard loud-and-clear’.
How wrong can you get. Their hypocisy is a major part of why people reject the climate wokery which they spout. So if it does get through ‘loud and clear’ it will be despite their best efforts, not because of them.
For a certain shade of Right-wing opinion, the only green thing to be revered is money. Which is why anyone expressing concern for the environment is to be ridiculed.
The dishonesty of those statements practically jumps off the screen. Is no one on the left – like quite wealthy Harry and his bride, for example – desirous of money? And people get ridiculed when they say ridiculous things, not for random thoughts about the environment. I don’t see Harry giving back the money he’s never earned, do you? And as the article points out, he hardly walks his own talk. Just like everyone else who presumes to care so much for Gaia.
There is no greater example of human hubris than attempts at being a version of the Dr. Seuss character the Lorax, who presumed to “speak for the trees.” The idea that mankind can regulate the climate into compliance by policy deserves ridicule. It’s one thing to combat pollution or preserve natural spaces, but it’s quite another to suggest a wholesale regression to 1850s standards out of misguided ignorance.
“..being in nature is the most healing part of life. I truly believe that’s one reason why it’s there.” That’s the closest thing I’ve heard to a religious statement from any of the young royals ” though which religion I’m not entirely sure…”
I can help you out there, it is the religion of Woke.
He’s a nutter who drivels nonsense. Are we entertained…No! Can we bothered…No!
An unexceptionally platitudinous article about an exceptionally fortunate individual with very little substance and one who is totally disconnected from real life. Does Prince Harry contribute to lowering the carbon footprint by crossing the oceans in a dinghy? I think not!
Also, all the peccatogenic talk about how COVID-19 is a punishment meted out by Mother Nature is tiresome. Diseases have always been with us. There was no globalization in the modern sense in the 14th century, and no industry as we know it. That didn’t prevent the Black Death from obliterating much of Europe.
Come on.
What this pandemic has highlighted more than anything else is how little most people know, or care, about history.
“… We take so much from her and we rarely give a lot back.”
What a sweet thing to say about his gran.
Or even his Great Gran
You can love nature and care about the environment without being a woke “raindrop” .. As harsh as it sounds, but viruses are part of nature and there to kill the weak. Nature is cruel with its earthquakes, hurricanes, fires and floods, which where happening long before some scientists decided that humanity was responsible for them. As Professor Curry once said, if climate was an elephant, CO2 is one hair on the tail of it.
Agree also they should address their life style, reduce their carbon footprint.
I would not call Harry right wing but his Netflix deal and reliance on money from the royal family (apparently his dad financed their mansion) indicates a very real interest in the green of money. Now if he and his wife chose to live a very simple life, no grand LA mansion, no flitting about the globe on airplanes, hoping no one discovers it, then they might be an example to all of us. But they haven’t made that choice. They get ridiculed precisely because everything they do indicates a very clear disdain for the consequences to the natural world. They’re as flashy and showy as they can be, yet they want to instruct others that nature is very mad at us. Does nature approve of their living in a mansion 20 times the size and expense they need as a family of three? Surely it’s not inexpensive to run utilities for such a behemoth. What if we all did that?
So according to a rich royal Leftist, Mother Nature is punishing us because we do not embrace the Leftist mind-set he deems appropriate. The shades of Right-wing are more than countered by the end justifies the means zealot ideologues of the Left who will lie, cheat, steal, and kill any who do not subscribe their Leftist mandate. The best part of your article is that it is short. Your article is slanted Leftist BS.
‘Somebody said to me…’
Yeah, sure. The weakness of the defence of this poor chump is telling.
Nature doesn’t hit back at us. Diseases and contagion have always existed and always will. Let’s stop trying to find a guilty party.
I thought god punished us with diseases and contagion
According to Harry, it’s nature.
‘Somebody said to me…’ seems a rather dismissive way to talk of one’s own wife.
Conflating the existence of such viruses with the anthropogenic modern era is suggesting there were no such viruses in the Garden of Eden, right? Blame Eve….or Evan.
Just don’t expect to find me in the confessional asking for forgiveness and thinking somehow that if we all do our part to go green (define that as you will), we can hope for a world free of the common cold, nasty as it can be.
Dear .TEN
Dr Mike Yeadon: ‘Stong evidence’ of Covid herd immunity in the UK
you tube /watch?v=aRLnM8DsLLM
Dr Mike Yeadon, a former chief scientific adviser with Pfizer, has claimed there is “strong evidence” that the UK has developed some herd immunity against coronavirus.
Speaking with talkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer, the lockdown sceptic said it was shown by the “lack” of Covid deaths happening in London.
“It was about 200-250 a day seven months ago. I checked three days ago, it was nine – so about 90-95% lower”.
Dr Yeadon also voiced concerns over the mass roll out of the newly approved Pfizer and BioNTech jab, because it was “too early” to know its the long term safety or effectiveness.
However, he did say that he was “pro-vaccine” and “not an anti-vaxxer”.
160 deaths were attributed to Covid in London in the last 7 days. That’s an average of about 23 per day. Seeing that deaths lag behind both positive infections and hospitalisations, this may be the peak passing now.
The April peak probably contained an effective ‘cull’ of the most vulnerable, so this is the death rate of more robust individuals.
To put it in proportion against other things we are concerned about, the current Covid death rate is 70 times greater than road traffic deaths, and homicides of all types in London recorded in 2019. It is 100-150 times greater than the rate of knife crime fatalities.
If this is something we shouldn’t be too worried about, I suggest there’s something wrong with our priorities.
They left the country so can’t they just leave us alone now?
Good luck in their lives, now (insert expletive here) off
Indeed! We demand a break from him and his increasingly stupid utterances, clearly made at figurative gun point. Just watching him speak is seeing Stockholm syndrome in action.
A shame: he used to be a perfectly decent fella…
“The raindrop stuff is just a metaphorical description of the power of collective action ” everyone doing their little bit.”
Well, Harry’s carbon footprint must be at least 20 times that of your average Joe, so how exactly is he ‘doing his little bit’? The only ‘little bit’ most people can see is rampant hypocrisy, only it’s not a ‘little bit’, it’s a flaming great mountain of it.
He’s only right if what is reported in the media about Covid is based on reliable, unbiased evidence/facts and the honest truth.
Mr. Franklin, you’re right, the Prince’s comment was less daft than your closing warning regarding “what we’ve done ” and what we may yet do as a result of factory farming, genetic modification and all the other ways in which we’re cooking up the next disaster.” Seems like gene level biotech is the thing that will end restrictions by relieving the stress on the government health care system.
It wasn’t “our” carelessness. It was China’s.
He has made his choices. His views are irrelevant now in any substantive sense.
Give Harry a break?? If this is some kind of perverted humour, it is in very bad taste. The most absurd and intellectually insulting article ever to appear on this site. Harry has had more ‘breaks’ in life than 99.9% of the nation, which he and his narcissistic wife continue to libel and attempt to manipulate. Just tell them to go away and remember, he, under her influence, has broken every vow, obligation and duty to Queen and country in the available history of the Royal Family. Hundreds of his comrades in arms are homeless, suffering long term illness or injuries, and currently abandoned by the NHS due to Covid. Neither H nor ‘Me Me Me’, deserve one iota of sympathy from any British citizen. .
“The Duke of Sussex suggested that the coronavirus pandemic was a rebuke from mother nature as he urged everyone to “be a raindrop” and repair the Earth.”
How do raindrops repair the earth? If anything they cause harm through flooding? Great, let’s have more rain. About as much use to poor people as the rest of their statements though.
People who seriously use the phrase “mother nature” and anthropomorphise the environment are generally idiots and Prince Harry is an exemplar of that
Corona Virus is only a natural occurrence, wet markets are specially prone to such appearances which can be avoided by competent regimes, unfortunately for us it could also be called Marxist China Virus and that was the main problem, the brains were there but they were put in prison and made to “confess”.
We should never lose site of what really happened or we will foster more problems like this by mixing up reality and wokeness in poems, just anything will come out of that figurative process detached from reality
No evidence the virus originated in the wet market. It was more likely a lab.
Can you point us to some learned proof of this? I have not heard one expert rule out a man made creation when asked.
Same guy right?
https://www.townandcountrym…
So in summary: Prince Harry said a harmless thing. That thing was reported as a different thing to further the continued outrage of the right. Cool.
Typical media regardless of where they they are on the political spectrum.
Fair point, I guess that’s what comes from a media focused clicks and outrage. I only referred to the right here because of the publication.