Britain’s Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, called the novel coronavirus, which plunged most of the world into a pandemic and, ultimately, economic downturn, a sign of Mother Nature exerting her considerable power over humanity, potentially over our reluctance to address climate change.
Speaking to a publication called WaterBear, Harry, who now lives in the United States with his wife and young son after separating from the British monarchy in early 2020, said that his wish is for humanity to be the “raindrop that falls from the sky and relieves the parched ground,” addressing ongoing crimes against nature.
He then suggested that COVID-19 should be a wake-up call — a form of “ecological retribution,” according to the New York Post.
“At the end of the day, nature is our life source,” he said. “Somebody said to me at the beginning of the pandemic, it’s almost as though Mother Nature has sent us to our rooms for bad behavior to really take a moment and think about what we’ve done.”
For Prince Harry, who lives a largely secluded life in a mega-mansion near Los Angeles, California, the pandemic is a reminder that humanity and nature are “interconnected.”
“[The pandemic has] certainly reminded me about how interconnected we all are, not just as people but through nature,” he said, per the NY Post. “We take so much from her and we rarely give a lot back.”
COVID-19, he added, reminded him to encourage action on climate change.
“Every single raindrop that falls from the sky relieves the parched ground,” he said. “What if every single one of us was a raindrop, and if every single one of us cared?”
Prince Harry did not address the greater impact of the coronavirus pandemic in his interview, however, giving no comment on the nearly 20 million jobs lost during coronavirus-related lockdowns, nor the global rise in poverty that accompanied the onset of the pandemic. It’s also not clear Prince Harry is well-informed on the origins or impact of the virus itself, though both his father, Britain’s Prince Charles, and his brother, Prince William, reportedly contracted COVID-19.
Prince Harry is, however, an environmental activist who, now that he’s divorced from the royal family, serves as the head of an eco-conscious travel company and gives speeches and interviews largely on the subject of conservation and climate change. That is despite evidence that Prince Harry and his family do not live according to his own environmental edicts; one of the driving factors in Harry and his wife, Meghan’s, split from the royal family was, reportedly, global attention drawn to their travel habits which, at the time, included a number of non-environmentally friendly private flights across Europe to vacation in high-end villas owned by their celebrity friends.
Since splitting from the royals, Prince Harry, Meghan, and their one-year-old son have lived in a series of mega-mansions, finally settling in a $14 million pad in southern California. Although information about the home’s environmental impact is not readily available, it’s likely that Prince Harry and his family emit far more carbon into the atmosphere than the average American family.