Just when you thought Prince Harry’s post-royal career couldn’t get any more absurd, he manages to make it so. His latest venture is a service which supposedly tells you how many carbon emissions will be emitted as a result of an airline passenger’s journey by various airlines and routes – helping travellers choose the most ‘sustainable’ option. He launched it this week on a Maori television channel in which he appears with a couple of ‘ratings agents’ which pretend to assess his environmental impact as a tourist in New Zealand.
Why use Maoris to push it? Harry is presumably hoping that the viewer will draw some kind of association between a traditional Maori lifestyle, with low environmental impact, and his airline ratings service. Indeed, in an accompanying podcast, he asserts that: ‘the Maori culture inherently understands sustainable practices and taking better care of our life-giving land, which are critical lessons we can all learn.’
All Harry really succeeds in doing is to draw attention to his own Yeti-like carbon footprint
If any corporation attempted to draw a parallel between its products and traditional Maori culture it would, quite deservedly so, be attacked for ‘greenwashing’.
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