King Charles’s new Prime Video documentary about saving the planet will fall on deaf ears
A new feature documentary from King Charles III hopes to stir up discussion about impending environmental collapse. But the timing for Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision could not be worse.
The only conversation concerning the Royal Family at the moment centres on the Epstein scandal, while Amazon is the home of the critically panned Melania Trump movie (which itself has connections to the same scandal, thanks to its director Brett Ratner).
Prime Video has teamed up with His Majesty, The King’s Trust and Kate Winslet on voiceover duty to compile this almost one-and-a-half-hour film detailing the King’s environmental efforts – personal and global – underlined by a message of “harmony”.
We must return, he says during an exclusive interview, to the “indigenous wisdoms” that once saw us working in sympathy with the natural world. And he’s not wrong. He is now, and has always been, a passionate speaker on the environment.
His Majesty King Charles III
There couldn’t be a worse time for the King to release a new film (Photo: Passion Planet)
But it begs the question: who will listen to him? 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.
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.
Twenty-five thousand tonnes of waste sits on land partially owned by the Duchy of Lancaster (an estate owned by the Crown), rotting and attracting vermin to the dismay of local residents. Thanks to a 750-year-old law, the Duchy is exempt from responsibility for the clean-up, but to proselytise about the importance of looking after our environment while the dump exists is hypocritical to say the least. (A Duchy spokesperson has said it is “fully committed” to working with Wigan council and the Environment Agency to address this issue”.)
