#earthshot vanity project

[ingek73]

The Earthshot finalists & winners weren’t even invited to attend the ceremony

December 04, 2022

By Kaiser

Just after Netflix premiered the Harry & Meghan teaser trailer, a Kensington Palace source huffed to Valentine Low at the Times: “They are two people who are accepting awards for themselves, talking about themselves, doing programmes about themselves. [William and Kate are] active members of the royal family who have a job to shine a spotlight on other people, give awards to other people. That’s the contrast.” Well, funny story – you know the big, keen Earthshot Awards which were endlessly previewed and served as a huge aggrandizement for Prince William to magnanimously “give a platform” to people doing groundbreaking environmental work? Well, William didn’t even want those Earthshot prize winners in Boston with him. Please, he might have had to touch someone poor. They did a satellite link-up for the Earthshot finalists and winners. Which wouldn’t be so egregious except that William burned through millions of dollars to put on an “awards show” with celebrities in attendance.

The food was plant-based, the flowers grown locally and the carpet, as is now tradition, was green. Guests invited to the second annual Earthshot Awards were whisked to the venue in electric taxis and encouraged to recycle pre-loved outfits.

Five budding winners each won £1 million to scale up their projects.

“A million dollars is significant,” Justin Winters, executive director of climate philanthropy organisation One Earth told the Boston Globe. “For a lot of these nonprofits and companies, it’s a game-changing investment. But I would say in this case, the level of attention and partnerships that are brought to the table — to the finalists and the award winners — are really significant.”

In order to reduce the carbon footprint, all finalists were filmed on home turf, joining the ceremony via a live video feed.

The Princess was among those who presented an award, warning that air pollution “poses a threat that knows no borders.”

Guests were treated to performances by Ellie Goulding, Annie Lennox, and Billie Eilish. After the show, the Prince and Princess went backstage to thank the celebrities who had taken part.

The royals flew home on a British Airways flight overnight to be reunited with their three children.

[From The Telegraph]

Arguably, the best thing one could say about Earthshot is that William is platforming diverse people making diverse solutions to environmental issues, and that Earthshot could become a place to facilitate innovation, growth and collaboration within sustainable and environmental industries. Except that for William, all of the Earthshot winners should literally stay at home, not meet with each other, not fuel collaboration or innovation, and here’s some money and now shut up about it while he chums it up with Rami Malek. They seriously made celebrities fly into Boston for a big awards show… and then didn’t invite the nominees to come to Boston. He made them stay at home. He doesn’t think that looks bad or that it should have been organized differently. He does not believe that prize winners should actually be feted and recognized for their work in person.

[aprilwearsgucci]

William and Kate flew to Boston for their Earthshot prize were they walked the green carpet with celebrities. We find out that the winners want invited because of their carbon footprint. They had to zoom in by video. How to you have a glitzy award show without inviting the winners? Who actually was this award ceremony for? William big Superbowl moment but he didn't invite the players. 😂 This was for William vanity. Playing and simple.

[royaltyspeaking]

I swear you are all insane💀

Saying William and Kate don’t have impact? be for real🤣

So what exactly is their impact then? Please, without Googling or listing vague PR talking points, tell me what kind of impact they have made? Because having been a royal watcher for well over a decade now, I can't list anything they've done that's resulted in real, tangible results. I mean ffs William came up with his Earthshot vanity project because even he knew that he was 40 years old with no legacy. And even then Earthshot is just that-a vanity project.

[charlotte-of-wales]

With all due respect, to the anon who thinks Earthshot is a joke, hypocrite and elitist award, they must be an outsider looking in (which is fair). But let me explain why I disagree with that assessment.

I have a career as sustainable development officer for 15 years, that means I implement sustainable development programs (waste water management, agriculture engineering, environment management, etc) from start to finish. As did my father before me, he has long career as sustainable development officer and has implemented programs in remote parts of our country. He was one of our former President’s advisor when we want to build Aceh (in a sustainable way) from the ground up after the tsunami.

Naturally we follow Earthshot as closely from the beginning, because it’s related to our field of work. We were delighted and very proud when he chose Melati Wijsen, a young woman from our country as one of Earthshot Board. We read and research everytime they announce the finalist, and I have to say, those finalists are the real deal (in environmental world), they will definitely make a tangible impact towards climate change.

And to the criticism that Earthshot is hypocrite and elitist. Or it’s just a vanity project etc, my father and I are field workers, always have been. That’s why we’re pragmatic. In a state of emergency, we never turn down charity for politician or big corporate. When you’re in a ground zero after massive earthquake, you can’t refused help from (let’s say) Jeff Bezos.

What would happen if I say “oh, this food is from Jeff Bezos? He’s always fly private doesn’t he? Pass” and I would argue that with climate change, we’re in a state of emergency, so I’ll take all the help I can get, thanks very much.

The world is not black and white, would it be amazing if politician and big corporations have a heart of gold and maintain their values? Absolutely. But we don’t live in utopia, alas. In the mean time, we all do what we can for climate change, including William.

I appreciate your point of view, but the criticism was never on the finalists and I think we can all agree that the work the finalists are doing is amazing. It's about having celebrities fly around the globe to attend an award that champions environmental causes.

[heir-less]

All the finalists of the ES awards were made to join via video link to reduce carbon footprint. But all the celebs and guests were flown to join in Boston. Tells you where the priorities lie.

Yep, I heard about that. Meanwhile, celebrities and the elite were able to fly in for all of the glory. It shows how William prioritized promoting the Earthshot brand and bringing in $$$ over highlighting the people who are actually doing the work to help solve climate change.

It says a lot about wealthy climate activists in general. Royals love to centre themselves and speak over the people actually putting in the work. Rich people on average have higher carbon emissions than regular people, so their taking credit for raising awareness when they do the most harm is hilarious. whenever something happens like this it just highlights how out of tune everyone is.

It's honestly disappointing and one of the reasons why I'll always think of Earthshot as William's vanity project first and foremost. The man literally did a talk where he projected himself looking down over the earth from the moon while comparing himself to John F. Kennedy and his ambitions to land a man on the moon. Earthshot might claim to be all about highlighting other people, but we all know who the real star was. Honestly, I wouldn't mind all this if Earthshot actually treated its winners with the same energy but it doesn't.

[songtoyou]

Boston was the wrong city to try and flaunt royalty they give zero Fs hahaha

Yeah, they should have selected New York or D.C.

They should have also flown in the finalists/winners to the event. But Earthshot is just a vanity project for William.

[ingek73]

also don’t forget:

It was never about the environment

[royaltyspeaking]

Do you agree with Hannah Furness that Catherine will leave the biggest royal legacy? I really don't see how she will save kids from 0 to 5. My problem with her mission is that it's not concrete. I have the same problem with William's award. It's not doing anything. I happy that the winners got the money but his award is not saving the planet and can't be compared to the moon landing.

The problem with Kate's early years project and Earthshot is that they are both vanity projects created to give Will and Kate something to do. Neither project has or will create much impact. Kate's Early Years project merely regurgitates all commonly known information about the early years. Everyone with half a brain knows how important the first few years of a person's life are to their development. You learn all about it in high school sociology and psychology classes. It doesn't take years of hard hitting research to come to that conclusion which is essentially what Kate thinks. Then when you actually hear Kate speak, she doesn't seem to have a clue about what she's actually saying. Her embarrassing roundtable discussion with Jill Biden showed how out of place Kate was. She couldn't even form a cohesive thought when she was asked about something that she's meant to be an expert in. Her "research" isn't providing any new information.

When it comes to Earthshot, trillions of dollars are being pumped into finding solutions to climate change. Earthshots big prize money is a grand £1M. Last year their prize money was £5M in total spread between 5 winners while they spent more than £7M putting the ceremony together. If you want to really make an impact when it comes to climate change, you're gonna need to invest in more than a million pounds.

[heir-less]

I honestly think Kate’s Christmas concert is better than Will's Earthshot Prize. I think they're both mostly vanity projects meant to make them look like they're doing more than they are.  But at least the Christmas concert isn't trying to be anything more than what it is: a fluffy royal event to make people feel good. It seems like Will wants to be viewed as a serious statesman without actually doing anything serious, and his over the top PR around Earthshot is undermined by the fact that it's planned, and executed like a vanity project created to one up Harry. Watching Will & Kate half-ass their support for serious issues is really getting old. They’d be better off leaning into easy projects and doing more ribbon cuttings and walk-abouts instead of trying follow Meghan and Harry’s model of work.

I agree with you, I think it's fair to say that both are vanity projects, but Earthshot is far more pretentious and tied to the idea that William's leading the charge to save humanity from climate disasters. At least Together at Christmas has some intimacy, delivers what it promises to some extent, and isn't extremely sensationalized to hell and back.

And, yes, their faux-progressiveness is tired because no one actually believes it, not even their own supporters. I think for Kate the money is attaching herself to the welfare of babies and small children. I still think "the children's princess" is a forced and slightly offensive nickname for her, but it entails something super vague and generic. She can coast off the aesthetics of working with children without being super in-depth or intersectional about it, perfect for Kate.

[royaltyspeaking]

Earthshot would make sense if all the finalist were from the hosting country so that they could actually attend and get to network with these rich people. That way we’d also get to see ideas from around the world too. Keeping it local while expanding globally. But I guess for this to happen it’d have to be more than a vanity project.

That's actually a solid idea imo

[royaltyspeaking]

I didn't know earthshot prize is only for 10 years? So what happens after that? How can it be green noble prizes without any longevity?

Because William has a short attention span and ES is a vanity project. The kicker is that while Earthshot probably won't exist in a decade, William has made it known that he intends to tap out after a couple of years and pass it on to somebody else. He won't even ride it out to the end.

[heir-less]

Do you actually know anything about the Earthshot prize??? It’s far from a vanity project and the the things that William has done for the 2021 winners so far is incredible! It’s completely ignorant to say that about everybody involved when they literally all work so hard and lets face it with celebrities there more people will watch

Me saying that it's a vanity project doesn't mean literally everything about it is shit and nothing credible is done. It just means that William uses it to boost his image as his top priority.

[royaltyspeaking]

I think it’s pretty weird that William has nothing to his name. With kate they’ll at least force projects but there’s nothing when it comes to him? And this earth shot thing doesn’t count because there’s no work behind it from his part. He has the biggest ego because he’s done nothing valuable with his life.

The kicker with the Earthshot thing is that when it was announced, they said that William only plans to be part of it for 3 years, after that he'll be stepping back. All of the work is done for him and he can't even be bothered to stick around. Classic William had his exit strategy ready from the start.

Most of his projects are dead in the water. Even Heads Together has disappeared which was the big royal initiative. The only thing that William actually seems interested in is environmental stuff but he gets bored so fast and he doesn't make much of an impact compared to his father and brother (his vanity project of a documentary was a flop).