'Hypocrite' Prince Harry jets home from Aspen despite lectures on climate change

Prince Harry received flak for taking a private jet back home to California from his polo match in Aspen, Colorado just months after he lectured people about climate change.

The Duke of Sussex has been labelled a "hypocrite" for choosing to take the two-hour flight back to his mansion in Montecito via the £45million Gulfstream jet. He boarded the 20-seater plane, which is believed to belong to one of his friends, U.S. businessman Marc Ganzi.

Royal author Tom Quinn said this move "appears to be enormously hypocritical" given the 36-year-old royal's talk about climate change. He told The Sun that it is a "huge blind spot" for the duke who "seems to see himself as someone who guides the rest of the world and that his own behaviour isn't relevant."

The online community also bashed Prince Harry with one Twitter user calling him a "total hypocrite" and another claiming he relied on "privilege."

"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," the user wrote.

In May, Prince Harry told Oprah Winfrey that mental health and climate change are two of society's "most pressing issues." He acknowledged that people "are doing as best they can to try and fix these issues." He also talked about its damaging effects to the generations to come.

"With kids growing up in today's world, pretty depressing, right, depending on where you live, your home country is either on fire, it's either underwater, houses or forests are being flattened," he said in his interview in his Apple TV+ documentary.

Prince Harry has reportedly made four trips via private jet in 11 days despite his stance against the effect of CO2 emissions on the climate. A single jet alone can emit two tonnes of CO2 in an hour. His flight to Aspen was for a charity polo match for his co-founded Sentebale charity. Ironically, he also took a private jet to a climate change summit in Sicily. It is said that in 2019 alone he took six private jet flights.