King Charles received criticism for promoting green while the royal family is surrounded in various scandals.
Writing for The i Paper, Julia Raeside pointed out how the monarch’s new documentary Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision about climate crisis got lost in royal scandal storm.
She noted that Charles has a hard job convincing people about his environmental message because of his lifestyle and the fact that it raises questions about his own environmental footprint.
“It begs the question: who will listen to him?” the expert penned. “There’s cognitive dissonance between the sensible things being said and the fact they’re being said by possibly one of the people least likely to appeal to the next generation of campaigners.”
She added, “It’s impossible to separate the programme from its context. The cameras are pointing at King Charles because he’s royal, but that status comes with an environmentally unfriendly amount of baggage.
“Aside from the multiple flights he takes, and homes he lives in, there is also the case of the illegal rubbish dump in Wigan,” she noted.
The expert noted how local residents are frustrated as 25,000 tonnes of waste rot on land partly owned by the Duchy of Lancaster.
The report revealed that a centuries-old law exempts the Duchy from clearing it but Raeside penned that promoting environmental care while the dump remains is deeply hypocritical.
“Nevertheless, the King comes across well, expressing his passion for nature and philanthropic projects like Dumfries House in Scotland, a property he saved and put to local use, employing and training the next generation of traditional craftspeople.
"Beyond the ridicule for talking to plants lies a committed environmentalist. ‘He’s got his feet very firmly on the ground and he knows what the ground is made of,’ chips in one friend. But subjects unaware of his good works will just not be watching 90 minutes of royal puff on Prime Video,” she continued.
“He wants to help, it’s clear. But this long-winded plod through his speech archive and environmental projects, intercut with library footage of crop-dusting and factory conveyor belts, isn’t the way to light up the next generation of activists.
“Every programme needs an audience, but I’m struggling to work out who this documentary is aimed at. Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision is now available in territories all over the world, but it’s not clear who the target audience is beyond older people who like very long programmes about the Royal Family.”