Princess Eugenie says her son is going to be a climate activist from aged two
Princess Eugenie has revealed how becoming a mother has changed her – including fuelling her passion to tackle climate change.
The Duke of York’s daughter said in an exclusive interview that she no longer uses plastic – and is educating her son August, on how he can help protect the environment.
Eugenie, 32, shared that becoming a mother has made her more concerned for communities vulnerable to climate change.
In a discussion with Reuters IMPACT and Arctic Humanity at Risk Basecamp – a non-profit organisation that highlights how climate change is impacting the Arctic – that every decision she is making now will have an impact on August.
Speaking with Reuters editor-at-large Axel Threlfall and Arctic Humanity founder Gail Whiteman, Eugenie said: ‘My son’s going to be an activist from two years old, which is in a couple of days. So, he, everything is for them.
‘I talked to Peter Thomson, the UN Special Envoy for Oceans and all he says to me is that I do this for my grandchildren. And that’s the same.
‘Every decision we now make has to be for whether August, what he’s going to be able to look at and do and how he’s going to live his life.
‘But I think also as a mother, you all of a sudden, totally you change, your hormones change, everything changes.
‘Like now I’m scared of flying and things like that and I would never be before.’
She added: ‘At home we have no plastic, we try to as much as possible have no plastic and I’m trying to teach him that. But it’s a battle.’
But the princess also spoke of her hope for the future of the environment, saying: ‘I like to be ‘glass half full’.’
She said: ‘I’d rather be that way, but sometimes the facts and the figures and sometimes having the dinners do give you that sort of sense of frustration and doom and gloom.’
She also warned of the impact of a changing environment on vulnerable communities, adding: ‘Modern slavery and human trafficking is a really big issue across the globe.
‘There are 49 million people estimated in slavery today and we know that when the climate is vulnerable, the most vulnerable people are affected by it.
‘And we’re going to see that more and more, you know, each time there’s a crisis happening, that people are going to be vulnerable and taken into difficult situations.
‘So climate goes hand in hand with it really.’
Eugenie has been vocal about the fight against plastic pollution and tried to make her wedding to Jack Brooksbank in 2018 as plastic-free as possible, including offering guests water in recyclable aluminium cans.
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