Fingerpointing is harming climate efforts, says Duke

A WAVE of global pessimism and fingerpointing has made people want to give up on saving the planet, the Duke of Cambridge has warned, as he called for a “can-do spirit”.

The Duke, writing the foreword to a new book about his Earthshot Prize, said the global debate about the environment was “too negative” and had left the public frightened and despondent.

In a personal manifesto, he urged readers to see beyond the “terrifying” facts of climate change and not give up.

He will today announce the first 15 nominees of his inaugural Earthshot Prize, created to find positive ways to solve environmental problems and awarding £50million over the course of a decade to those who can help.

Writing about his own Damascene moment in 2018, he told how he witnessed “optimism and determination” on the ground among the conservationists of Namibia, only to return to the UK to find “despair and anger” about the climate -change agenda. In the lead-up to that year’s UN Climate Change conference in Poland, he said he was “hit by a wave of global pessimism”.

“The headlines were dominated by a sense that world leaders were not moving fast enough,” he said.

“There was widespread finger-pointing and political and geographical division. To those of us following at home, it wasn’t an inspiring sight.”

Saying he understood the mood, he acknowledged the “immense” challenges facing the planet with scientists warning that the world is entering the most “consequential decade in history”.

He added: “The facts look terrifying, and I could see that this risked making people feel like they might as well give up. The global debate felt too complex, too negative, too overwhelming.

“It seemed to me, and this is backed up by my team’s research, that there was a real risk that people would switch off; that they would feel so despondent, so fearful and so powerless, there was a risk that any real hope of progress would come to a halt.”

Saying that urgency combined with pessimism had created despondency, the Duke said that he, too, had felt it, along with his father and grandfather, the Prince of Wales and Duke of Edinburgh, whom he called “pioneers in the environmental movement”.

“Following in their footsteps, I have seen people all over the world face what seem like insurmountable challenges yet come together with collective ambition, and a can-do spirit, to find solutions to them,” the Duke said.

His own contribution to the problem, which formulated as he felt “horrified by the cliff edge the scientists were predicting, yet determined not to give up”, was the Earthshot Prize. He said: “I wanted to make sure that whatever I did would have the impact that is needed.”

The prize is likely to be seen as the Duke’s lifetime project, like his father’s Prince’s Trust or grandfather’s Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme.

Jason Knauf, of the Royal Foundation, said that, in devising the prize, the Duke had set himself the challenge of how to make the “maximum positive personal contribution” in the next decade, to mean “I can look my children in the eye and say that I did my bit”.