Prince-in-name-only Harry Windsor spoke at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City Monday as part of the UN’s honoring the late Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s freedom fighter and president.

Evidently, it was too much for Harry to stay focused on Mandela’s heroic life story, a man who overcame long-time political imprisonment to become the first black leader of the Republic of South Africa. That is plenty for a 15-minute speech.

Rather, he preened about democracy and climate change, about which he knows little and is disqualified from lecturing, considering his own lifestyle.

“From the horrific war in Ukraine to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom,” Harry observed, in a not-subtle reference to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision on abortion, issued last month.

Thus, did he equate the cruel Russian war against Ukraine to the Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade, the 49-year-old ruling that abrogated 46 state laws to instead allow unfettered abortion.

Lost on Harry is that the Supreme Court returned abortion policy to the democratic process in state legislatures, that is, determined by elected officials – the same as it exists in Britain and throughout Europe. That democratic process has resulted in most European nations having restrictions on abortion at earlier stages of pregnancy (from 10 to 14 weeks), than in the U.S. during the Roe abortion era.

Throughout her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II had more dignity in her royal fingernail than her virtue-signaling grandson. Attacking her nation’s closest global ally was unthinkable, considering her own witness to the blood and treasure sacrificed by Americans for democracy and freedom.

Then there was climate change, one of the vanity projects of Harry and his wife, Meghan, which he claimed was “wreaking havoc on the planet” as evidenced by “the water rising all around us.”

“The right thing to do is not up for debate, and neither is the science,” declared the prince. “The only question is whether we will be brave enough and wise enough to do what is necessary.”

Typical of wealthy and pampered climate alarmists, Harry provided neither science nor reality about this ubiquitous climate “havoc.” Rather, he echoed his fellow elites and political hucksters to squash debate — one of the central features of democracy and freedom — obtuse to irony or self-awareness.

Attempting to stop the planet’s climate from ever-changing is a colossal fool’s errand that brings serious drawbacks. They include extensive mining required for electric vehicle battery components; fossil fuels to manufacture and maintain solar panels and wind turbines; the toxic residue from their disposal; and despoiling enormous virgin land mass necessary to approach displacing oil and gas, to name a few. Moreover, large industrial nations, China, India, et.al., are not cooperating in Harry’s crusade and that of the Climate Industrial Complex of celebrities, bureaucrats, and NGOs, which makes the entirety of this agenda fruitless.

Taking Harry’s climate narcissism at face value, are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex themselves “brave and wise enough to do what is necessary” to curtail climate change?

Harry and Meghan could start by relinquishing their 16-room mansion in the Montecito enclave of Santa Barbara, California, and downsize to accommodate their two maximum children, still without needing bunk beds. Last year the couple received an award from the group Population Matters for not having more children to add to the planet’s CO2 emissions. Then why power a mansion large enough to house a Cub Scout pack?

As to air travel, the Duke and Duchess long ago dissed the plea from Friends of the Earth to forgo private planes. No bravery or wisdom from the faux royals there, either.

It is fitting Prince Harry is no longer a working member of the British Royal Family. He has long since become a self-serving embarrassment in his myriad of pursuits. Harry and Megan will press on hungry for attention and relevance, ever impervious, as they retain their vapid titles denoting a pretend monarchical fiefdom eight time zones away from them.

This article originally appeared in The Federalist