In an interview with the BBC, Prince Charles — the next in line to the throne of Great Britain — claimed that the coming UN climate summit, set for Glasgow, Scotland, and slated to begin on October 31, could be the “last chance” to save the planet from the scourge of man-made climate change. The Duke of Cornwall made the remark in an interview released Monday.
Speaking from Balmoral Castle, his estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland — one of four carbon-spewing estates that the prince maintains — Charles made the remark when asked about Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s reticence to attend the Scotland-based climate event.
When informed by the interviewer that Morrison has not yet committed to attend the conference that begins later this month, the future monarch of the Land Down Under said he knew that he would be accused of “meddling,” but stressed that Australia’s top official should be at the summit.
“You gently try to suggest there may be other ways of doing things, in my case. Otherwise, you lot [the media] accuse me of interfering and meddling, don’t you?” the Prince of Wales said.
When asked specifically why Morrison needs to attend the summit, the Prince said, “Well, that’s what I’m trying to say all the time, and the point being that this is a last-chance saloon, literally.”
The 72-year-old future king explained, “Because if we don’t really take the decisions that are vital now, it’s going to be almost impossible to catch up.”
It’s hardly the first time the Prince, or the Royal Family, has referred to a “last chance” for the climate.
In 2014, Charles referred to the upcoming Paris summit as a “Magna Carta for the Earth,” and said that the coming conference was a “last chance” for the people of the world to act on climate via “sustainable development targets.”
“In the 800th anniversary year of the Magna Carta, perhaps this year’s agreement of the new sustainable development goals and a new climate agreement in Paris should be seen as a new Magna Carta for the Earth, and humanity’s relationship with it,” Charles said.
The Prince of Wales made a similar pronouncement ahead of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference.
“I don’t know about your own experience, but it seems to me that whilst there is now only a mercifully small, if vociferous, number of people who do not accept the science of climate change and who should know better, there are still a great many who fail to recognise the real urgency of the situation,” Charles told a gathering ahead of that summit.
“In so many ways we already are in the last chance saloon,” Charles said in 2009.
Also in 2009, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown claimed that there were “fewer than 50 days” to act on climate change in advance of that year’s Copenhagen climate summit.
In 1988, Charles’s father, Prince Philip, quipped, “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.”
Charles will be in Glasgow for this year’s climate summit along with his mother the Queen, his son Prince William, and William’s wife, Kate Middleton.
When asked about his own love of cars, Prince Charles acknowledged that he, at least formerly, loved the carbon-spewing machines but also claimed that he had his prized four-wheeled possession — an Aston Martin that he has owned for fifty-one years — converted to a motor that runs on a biofuel made of “surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process.”
Charles also acknowledged that he understands why groups such as Extinction Rebellion have taken to blocking highways throughout Great Britain in their anger over what they consider inaction on climate change. But the prince urged protesters to “direct that frustration in a way that is more constructive rather than destructive.”
Nigel Farage, the creator and former leader of the Brexit Party and one of the main forces of the Brexit movement, had this advice for the Duke of Edinburgh.
“A piece of advice, Charles. Stay out — please — of active politics. Maybe just go quiet for a bit,” Farage said.
It’s just more climate sophistry from a man who comes from a family with one of the biggest carbon footprints in the world. If Charles — or any world leader — were truly serious about halting the scourge of man-made carbon in the atmosphere, they would not be urging attendance at a climate summit where hundreds of carbon-spewing jets would be making unnecessary trips to Scotland when they could be having such meetings in far more “climate friendly” ways.
