Earthshot Prize: Prince William announces five winners

The once and future king – all right, the future king at least, awarded the winners of his prize a cool million each.

“I believe that the Earthshot solutions you have seen this evening prove we can overcome our planet’s greatest challenges,” Prince William said during the ceremony.

In fact, several of the Earthshot solutions prove the exact opposite. The one that really, really made me spit feathers was this:

Mukuru Clean Stoves, Kenya: Kenya’s Mukuru Clean Stoves is a female-founded business with mostly female staff. They produce stoves that are fired by processed biomass made from charcoal, wood and sugarcane instead of solid fuels, which can lead to air pollution and accidents that claim four million lives each year, the Earthshot Prize said.

The stoves – about the size of a pressure cooker – run on “processed biomass” instead of “solid fuels.” Rarely has a distinction bridged such a narrow gap. What, the combination of wood, charcoal and sugarcane is not solid?

Yes, a very big yes, to getting rid of indoor air pollution. If I look up from where I am typing this, I can see my own stove. It’s an electric cooker with a halogen hob. I switch it on at the wall and the hotplates get, uh, very hot, quite fast. There is no smoke, unless I go to do something and forget that I’m also frying tofu.

I don’t want a smelly stove that burns “processed biomass.” I don’t want Africans to have smelly stoves that burn “processed biomass” either. I want them to have what I have. An electricity grid. A kitchen. Cheap and reliable (kof, splutter, ok got me there) electricity. At the very worst our African friends should be cooking on a propane stove. But no. Not according to the future king. Our (that’s the royal plural talking) ambition for Africa is permanent poverty.

This spectacle – of the great and good flying to Boston to celebrate the Heir’s Fruitloop Prize – only reinforces the fact that the Heir and his mates are out of touch. It is self-congratulatory nonsense. None of these people would so much as touch one of these stoves with the tip of their shoe so as to edge it out of the way.

Now, I do not mean to dismiss the worth of any of the prize winners, including the stove manufacturers. No doubt the new stove is an improvement on the existing manner of cooking food for many Kenyans. But if the new cooker is not good enough for rich western countries, if it is not good enough for the Heir to the Realm… it should not be considered good enough for African people, either. Any Westerners cheering this stove project should rip out their Smeg cooker and give it to charity, buy one of these stoves, and live for a year cooking with this “processed biomass.”

To Africans: demand that your leaders give you what we in the West have. That means a reliable electricity grid providing cheap electricity. If the only way that can come about is by coal-powered generators, than that is what it must be. Do not allow our future king to shrink the ambitions you have for your people.

And if Westerners say: “But Teh Climate!”

You should reply: “What about it?”