Prince Harry labelled ‘a total hypocrite’ for flying home on a private jet

Prince Harry is copping some heavy criticism after he was pictured flying home on a private jet after a polo match over the weekend. The 36-year-old prince faced backlash online for using the jet just three months after calling climate change one of the “most pressing issues we are facing”.

According to a Sky News Australia report, Harry was seen leaving the polo match in Aspen, Colorado to board his friend’s £45 million (A$85.8 million) Gulfstream jet. The news site reported that “about 2.4 per cent of global CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions come from aviation, and in just one hour, a single private jet can emit two tonnes of CO2”.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey back in May, Harry warned of the threat from climate change.

“Climate change is really playing a huge part in this as well as social media, and we just don’t,” he said at the time.

“I mean, I know lots of people out there are doing as best they can to try and fix these issues, but that whole sort of analogy of walking into the bathroom with a mop when the bath is over-flooding, rather than just turning the tap off.

“Are we supposed to accept that these problems are just going to grow and grow and grow and then we’re going to have to adapt to them and build resilience amongst the next generation and the next generation and the next generation?”

Royal author Tom Quinn has since accused the Duke of Sussex, who stepped down as a working royal last year and moved across the globs to the US with his wife Meghan, of being “enormously hypocritical”.

“This appears to be enormously hypocritical, given all his talk about climate change,” Quinn wrote on Twitter. “Harry seems to see himself as someone who guides the rest of the world and that his own behaviour isn’t relevant. It is a huge blind spot.”

Other social media users have also weighed in on the discussion, with Twitter user @BellaWallerstei writing: “Yesterday Prince Harry took a private jet home from a polo match — after lecturing us all about how climate change is one of the world’s ‘most pressing issues’. A total hypocrite. Elite environmentalism is about telling the little people to know their place.

Twitter user @danwootton added: “You couldn’t make it up! Fake eco warrior Prince Harry takes yet another private jet flight – this time to go to a posh polo match. Just remember this is a bloke hectoring us all about air travel.
Given his actions, he should be roundly ignored.”

It’s not the first time Harry has made international headlines for flying home on a private jet. In 2019, Harry and his wife Meghan copped heavy criticism for taking two private jet trips in one week. Following the backlash, Harry spoke out, explaining: “I came here by commercial. I spend 99 per cent of my life traveling the world by commercial,” he told reporters at the launch, according to multiple reports. “Occasionally, there needs to be an opportunity based on a unique circumstance to ensure my family are safe and it’s genuinely as simple as that.”