Ellie Goulding is currently promoting her latest album, Higher Than Heaven. Some people love Ellie’s voice and her music. I can handle her and her music in small doses, but I generally switch stations when she comes on the radio. Something I learned about Goulding years ago is that she’s quite a royalist despite not being very posh. Like, by her own description, she grew up on a “council estate” adjacent to the big estates owned by the aristocrats. Instead of being a republican populist, she’s happy enough to cozy up to the royals – she’s tight with the York princesses and she’s involved in Prince William’s Earthshot too. Which brings me to this recent interview she did with Vanity Fair. She talks about Earthshot, William, Kate, environmentalism and more. Some highlights:

Her relationship with Prince William & Kate: Though she got to know the Prince and Princess of Wales when she performed at the reception for their 2011 wedding, their joint passion for addressing climate change is what has brought them together most recently. In December, Goulding attended the ceremony for the Earthshot Prize. “They are genuinely a kind and sweet couple. They’re really dedicated to the Earthshot Prize, you know? It’s not just something that they feel they have a responsibility to do. I really believe that they’re passionate about it. And it comes from our king, who’s a huge environmentalist and cares about it so much. I think that’s so important.”

She was impressed by last year’s Earthshot winners: “I love that it draws attention to the fact that the innovation and the ideas are already here. They exist! These people could have invented anything, could have invented moneymaking schemes, which most people do. These people are making things to save the planet for all of us. I think it’s so selfless and such an amazing use of their time. They should be recognized for that.”

Why climate action is so important. “It should be the sexiest, most interesting thing that you can read on the internet, that these people are coming up with, like, mind-blowing solutions to our plastic problem or the fact that we’re also heavily dependent on fossil fuels.”

[From Vanity Fair]

I agree with her that single-use plastics are a huge problem. Not to be “that whataboutism person pointing out other people’s environmental hypocrisy,” but you know what else is an environmental issue? People flying all over the place for little to no reason. Which is what happened at the Earthshot event in Boston last December – Prince William didn’t bother inviting the actual prize finalists or winners, but he asked celebrities like Ellie Goulding and David Beckham to fly into Boston to attend the event in person. Reportedly, Beckham even flew in via private jet.

“They are genuinely a kind and sweet couple. They’re really dedicated to the Earthshot Prize, you know? It’s not just something that they feel they have a responsibility to do.” Good lord. William is already massively bored with Earthshot, and he could barely even look at Kate while they were in Boston. Oh well! I guess Ellie isn’t a great judge of character?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.