Harry and William Are Trying to Save the World in Very Different Ways

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's role at a progressive investment company is their latest show of support for ethical consumerism as a solution to the world's problems.

The stance puts the couple on a different footing to Prince William, who is seeking to generate technological solutions to climate change, putting his faith in science.

Harry and Meghan have been made impact partners at Ethic, an investment fund with the lofty goal "to make capital markets a powerful force for good," according to its website.

This comes on the back of Harry's eco-tourism venture Travalyst forming a partnership with Google to promote greener flights.

The tech giant is seeking to give consumers more information on low-carbon options, allowing ethical customers to create a financial incentive to become more sustainable.

The common denominator between the two is the belief that with enough information, the morality and spending habits of ordinary people, or in Ethic's case the rich, can guide the world to a better future within the system that exists.

Prince William's main project at the moment is the Earthshot Prize. Every year (until 2030), five winners are announced, with each taking home a £1 million ($1.36 million) reward.

The awards will go to innovative solutions to the global environmental crisis—placing his faith in technology and science to save the world.

In a foreword to a book accompanying the award, William in September said he hoped the prize would inject optimism into the debate on climate change.

He wrote: "The facts look terrifying, and I could see that this risked making people feel like they might as well give up. The global debate felt too complex, too negative, too overwhelming.

"It seemed to me, and this is backed up by my team's research, that there was a real risk that people would switch off; that they would feel so despondent, so fearful and so powerless, there was a risk that any real hope of progress would come to a halt."

However, there is a third royal who has been banging the drum for saving the planet since before either brother was born.

Prince Charles faced ridicule earlier in his career for speaking in support of saving the environment, which he has done since 1970 when he spoke out against plastic pollution.

The next in line to the throne suggested perhaps the boldest approach yet and risked straying into controversial territory for a royal—as he addressed world governments at the COP15 biodiversity summit.

The Prince of Wales risked allegations he breached the royal convention for impartiality on political policy by suggesting carbon pricing, through which governments would require emitters to pay for the carbon they produce.

He said: "I would like to applaud the recent commitments by many world leaders to end the investment in coal-fired power stations.

"As a critical step and as we rapidly scale up renewables and hydrogen, it is essential that in the meantime we deploy the latest carbon capture, use and storage technology in order to help us buy precious time by capturing harmful emissions until a full transition is possible."

He added: "To accelerate our efforts further, properly pricing carbon would immediately catalyze the green economy while super-charging climate and biodiversity outcomes.

"At the same time, supporting governments in their work to re-orientate diverse economic subsidies, financial incentives and regulations from those that do harm to those that do good would have a transformative effect on our market systems."

Once upon a time, Prince Charles might well have been castigated in the U.K. press for pushing policy on world governments from his position as an unelected future king.

However, the next-in-line to the throne, aged 72, does not attract those kinds of headlines anymore.

Instead, his intervention yesterday had to wrestle for coverage in U.K. newspapers with Harry and Meghan's appointment to what The Daily Mail called a "hippy bank" and with the news Queen Elizabeth II had been spotted using a walking stick for comfort for the first time.

In the end, it was his 95-year-old mother who made the front pages of the Daily Express, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.