CHARLES: MY ECO ANGST
Prince tells BBC man (whose sister is an XR activist) of his ‘sympathy’ for their cause
PRINCE Charles has admitted he sympathises with Extinction Rebellion eco-activists.
The heir to the throne said he disagreed with the group’s ‘destructive’ tactics, but understood its members’ ‘despair’, adding: ‘Young people feel nothing is ever happening, so of course they’re going to get frustrated.’
In a wide-ranging interview ahead of the Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow next month, the Prince of Wales also revealed that he had cut meat, fish and dairy products out of his diet on certain days in the week to help the planet. And he talked of his 51-year-old Aston Martin car, which for years has run on a mixture of recycled white wine and cheese whey.
The interview with the BBC’s climate change editor Justin Rowlatt took place in Prince George Wood, an area planted out by Charles in honour of his first grandchild in his garden at Birkhall.
Rowlatt’s sister, Cordelia, was among 113 Insulate Britain protesters named on last week’s National Highways injunction that will allow courts to jail repeat offenders for blocking roads. The 54-year-old has been arrested twice over the action and previously campaigned with Extinction Rebellion.
Charles, 72, expressed his frustration that the governments sitting down at Cop26 had taken ‘far too long’ to take action against the climate change threat, saying: ‘They just talk.
‘The problem is to get action on the ground, which is what I’ve been
‘I’ve been ridiculed for so long’
trying to do for the last 40 years, by bringing together people from every kind of industry and walk of life, to try and create an awareness of what needs to be done.’
He said he agreed with teenage activist Greta Thunberg, who recently ridiculed global leaders over their promises to address the climate emergency, dismissing them as ‘blah, blah, blah’.
‘Why do you think I’ve done all of this for all these years? Because I mind about, and always have done, the next generation,’ he said.
‘I’ve been doing this to make sure my grandchildren and your grandchildren and everybody else’s have some future.’
Asked whether he ‘sympathised’ with Greta’s anger, Charles said: ‘Yes, of course I do. Because I knew in the end that people would get fed up.
‘All these young people feel nothing is ever happening, so of course they’re going to get frustrated. I totally understand because nobody would listen and they see their future being totally destroyed.’
He said he also understood why groups such as Extinction Rebellion took to the streets, but warned they could be doing more damage than good by blocking roads.
Charles said: ‘Extinction Rebellion came and made a sit-in on my driveway at Highgrove [his Gloucestershire home] while I was on a tour two years ago. The marvellous thing was they left a letter behind saying very nice things... “back in such and such a time, you said such and such and you were right… you were right, you were right”. It was marvellous. That was the right kind of demonstration as far as I am concerned!’
Asked by Rowlatt whether the Government was doing enough to make changes happen, Charles laughed and said: ‘I couldn’t possibly comment!’
The prince said he was ‘deeply worried’ about the way man is ‘over-exploiting and damaging’ nature, leading to an imbalance in the natural world. It is an issue he has felt passionately about since he was a teenager, admitting he was more concerned about ‘hedges being ripped up [and] trees being cut down’ than with typical teenage behaviour.
Charles said it ‘wasn’t much fun’ to be called a ‘meddling idiot’ but added: ‘I am a realist. The interesting thing now is that having been rubbished and ridiculed for so long, they suddenly all want me to help convene them.
‘I haven’t got an axe to grind, I am only keen to get the damn thing sorted.’
Charles said the big corporations were starting to ‘get it’ when it came to climate change, but there was still a long way to go and precious little time in which to do it.
‘This is a last-chance saloon, literally. If we don’t take the decisions that are vital now it’s going to be almost impossible to catch up,’ he added. ‘It will be a disaster, it will be catastrophic. It is already. Nothing in nature can survive these extremes of weather… The whole of nature is
so dependent on this balance and harmony but the more we disrupt it, the more impossible it is.’
Charles is due to attend a series of events at the Cop26 summit alongside the Queen, the Duchess of Cornwall, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Today, the prince will call for the ‘polluter to pay’ in a keynote speech at the personal request of the Chinese president.
Xi Jinping asked Charles to open a UN biodiversity summit in Kunming by video, in recognition of his work to raise awareness of climate change.
Charles has been an open critic of the Chinese government, and refused to attend a state banquet in Xi’s honour in 2015. But he did meet him privately during the visit, and they discussed environmental concerns and other issues.
Despite China being one of the world’s biggest polluters, the prince will ‘tactfully’ highlight how for thousands of years Chinese civilisation has had ‘an intimate understanding of nature’.