Prince Harry has just done something so dim, I'm almost starting to like him
No doubt in my mind about the week's finest newspaper headline. It featured no tabloid-style puns or other verbal japery. It simply summed up the story in 11 exquisitely deadpan words.
They were: 'Prince Harry flies from LA to Shanghai to promote greener travel.'
Magnificent. But, at the same time, a tiny bit troubling. Because you've got to wonder: before dear Harry set off on the journey in question, did he not see such a headline coming? Did he not pause, just for a moment, and think: 'Hang on. I'm about to give a speech about saving the planet. But, in order to reach the venue at which I'll be speaking, I'll be getting into an aeroplane, and flying approximately 6,500 miles. Is there perhaps a small risk that headline-writers will try to make me look like some kind of comical hypocrite?'
Maybe he did ask himself this, and then earnestly considered the alternatives. Consulting an atlas will have revealed that cycling was sadly out of the question. He will have searched railway timetables in vain for a direct service from California to eastern China. And, fit though he is for a man in his 40s, even he might have struggled to swim.
In Harry's defence, he wasn't calling for air travel to be banned, or reserved for the exclusive use of Montecito-dwelling memoirists. His speech was about the need, in his words, to 'put trusted sustainability information into the hands of travellers, empowering them to make more informed choices'. Which I think means stuff like telling them to compare the carbon emissions of available flights, and choose the one with the lowest.
I'm sure he means well. But in the grand scheme of things it sounds pretty futile. I mean, if you truly believed that air travel was destroying the planet, surely you'd just stop doing it. And in no circumstances would you use a private jet, as certain prominent semi-royals have occasionally been reported to do.
At the very least, though, you'd say to yourself: 'Hang on. I don't need to fly 6,500 miles to give this speech. Because apparently there's been a remarkable new technological breakthrough known as the 'video call'. So, to demonstrate my selfless commitment to saving the planet, I'll use it to give my speech from home.'
Harry, however, didn't do this. Which suggests to me that he simply has no idea how daft he looks.
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