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In one of his most out-spoken interventions in the climate change debate, he said a £15 billion annual programme was required to halt deforestation or the world would have to live with the dire consequences.
“We will end up seeing more drought and starvation on a grand scale. Weather patterns will become even more terrifying and there will be less and less rainfall,” he said. “We are asking for something pretty dreadful unless we really understand the issues now and [the] urgency of them.” The Prince said the rainforests, which provide the “air conditioning system for the entire planet”, releasing water vapour and absorbing carbon, were being lost to poor farmers desperate to make a living.
“What we have got to do is try to ensure that these forests are more valuable alive than dead. At the moment, there is more value in them being dead,” he said. He estimated that the cost would be about £15 billion a year but said that this should be viewed as an insurance policy for the whole world. “That is roughly just under one per cent of all the insurance premiums paid in the world in any one year. It is an insurance premium to ensure the world has some rainfall and reasonable weather patterns. It is a good deal.” He also said consumers had to play their part by choosing products that were environmentally sustainable and called for improvements in labelling.
I wonder if Prince Charles and the Royals will take the lead, and set an example or is that just for the commoner?
Yea, but do we have to take action before noon 18 months from now, or do we have until midnight?
Oh yeah thank you Prince Charles for enlightening us.
I always love how these elitists come up and preach to us “peasants” while they live like kings.
I think his pops said it best “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
How much wasted fuel goes to heat the palace ?
Or the private jet ?
Take a hike prince Charles
I wonder where he came up with 18 months. Last I had heard, scientists couldn’t tell whether we were already past the tipping point and it was already too late.
Of course, we must act as if we are not past the tipping point and hope like hell that we are not because if we have any time and can stop global warming from getting to the levels last seen in the Permian/Triassic extinction 250,000,000 years ago, we owe it to ourselves and every other species on the planet to do so.
However, I have not heard anyone state that we have 18 months, even give or take a bit of leeway, bobbo’s comment notwithstanding.
I’m not going to take advice on prudent courses of action from a guy who had to apologize for infidelity before he could remarry, in a church THAT WAS CREATED SO THE KING COULD REMARRY!
18 months and then BLAM!… it’s all over?
Unfortunately, the problems caused by human habitation on this planet will never be cured by a 1% increase in insurance premiums.
The environmental toilet is already overflowing with western civilization’s shit and now China is frantically flushing to catch up, declaring they will never be out-shitted! Never!
Meanwhile, Prince Charlie blames it all on the poorest Brazilian Farmers. “I say, damn tree cutters. Blimey, if it weren’t for those peasants, we’d all be drinking sparkling water straight from the Rhine.”
Here’s what I predict. I predict that he will attribute *any* natural disaster in 18 months to his prediction and say nothing if there are none within the first six months or so.
Damn, “I must never rearrange a sentence. I must never rearrange a sentence. I must never rearrange a sentence….”
“Unfortunately, the problems caused by human habitation on this planet will never be cured by a 1% increase in insurance premiums.”
[Fixed. – ed.]
I wonder if he presented as a holographic projection like a few months back. – look it up.
#4 – Lou
It would be interesting to know his CO2 footprint.
Assume you are not past the tipping point and act accordingly? That means you would be completely wasting your efforts if in fact you are past the tipping point. A proper cost/benefit analysis should be done, whether before or after the tipping point. Bjorn Lomborg has recommended exactly that, and concluded that the Kyoto Treaty is a bad idea, given that the resources would be better spent on so many other environmental problems.
#8 – Thomas ,
Here’s what I predict. I predict that he will attribute *any* natural disaster in 18 months to his prediction and say nothing if there are none within the first six months or so.
Um … even if people attribute natural disasters to climate change, as no individual disaster can be, but possibly an average can be detected and statistically linked with some degree of confidence, no one of sane mind will attribute a natural disaster to this prediction. At most they will attribute it to the global warming itself.
(Sorry, as a geek, I am often overly anal-retentive in reading literal wording.)
Dvorak/blog is not consistent.
This very blog reported that the royals were in the process of purchasing the large wind turbine to ever made with plans on buying many more.
Rule Britannia
Here is a quote:
“The prototype turbine will be used to tap Britain’s offshore wind in an attempt to meet Britain’s ambitious goal of generating 33 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2020. Currently, only 300 megawatts of wind capacity are operating in British waters.”
#12 – MikeN,
Assume you are not past the tipping point and act accordingly? That means you would be completely wasting your efforts if in fact you are past the tipping point. A proper cost/benefit analysis should be done, whether before or after the tipping point.
Sure … and while you do that we coast calmly over the tipping point without even noticing. Sounds stupid to me.
We often have to act on imperfect information. We do it all the time. Why be different on this one issue?
Do you put your seat belt on or wait to find out if you will really be in a crash? Do you worry about your cholesterol or wait until the doctor can tell you exactly how high will cause a heart attack in your case? Do you further wait until he can tell you exactly the hour of your heart attack?
Do you smoke until the doctor can assure you that it will indeed cause lung cancer in you in particular? Do you eat until you weigh 400 lbs because the doctor has not yet told you when exactly it will kill you?
Do you cross the street without looking because you haven’t been given specific information on the number of cars that drive by in any given minute and are unsure of your odds of being fatally hit anyway?
We’re risking our very survival on the outcome of this.
Step Right Up Folks and Get’cher Carbon Credits at E-Z Al Gore & Prince Chuck’s Carbon Credit Cash Cow Cash n’ Carry Store! Carbon Credits at bargain basement prices (for First-world clients only).
There’s only one solution to saving the earth.
We must all take responsibility for out own pollution.
For example:
1) Everyone must process and re-use their own excrement.
2) Every property owner must manage their own personal disposals in their own backyard. Refuse can be sold as recyclables only if it is properly sorted and clean. Otherwise, if you buy it you keep it.
3) Everything you buy will come with it’s associated byproducts. For example, if you buy new tires for your car, you also have to take home 1.67 gallons of sulphuric acid, 14 lbs of soot, 10.3 oz of various heavy metals, a cylinder of compressed glue fumes, 15 gallons of dirty water (which you can process and reuse -a bonus), 2.3g of mercury and several hundred small amounts carcinogenoic and caustic substances.
Prince Charles has no chance of being wrong. The BBC has reported within a year that global warming will yield more hurricanes, and less hurricanes.
I hope we’re past the tipping point. I’m tired of waiting. I want some warming I can see and feel.
OK,visit this site…
http://icecap.us/
Then ask the prince, Al Gore and the others who want the new rules to apply to us and not them just how much they stand to make from this farce!!
Yes, we need to curb our emmisions and how we use the resources available to us but for once don’t just jump on the bandwagon because some ‘famous’ person cries ‘the sky is falling’.
Question them and their motives. Al Gore is heavily invested in companes that sell carbon credits and I’ll bet the prince is also!
Oh, and ask Al Gore why he won’t debate anyone about global warming and says the science is done and eveyone agrees with him when there are +13,000 scientist who disagree.
Misanthropic Scott and I have gone the rounds on the accuracy of predicting climate change, but I agree with his comments in #15.
Whether we are past the “tipping point” or not isn’t the point. Irregardless, we have to do something. We have to reduce carbon emissions. We have to stop chopping down the rainforest. We have to stop poisoning our environment. We have to get better at taking care of the planet.
This is why I have to agree with Prince Charles. Investing in maintaining the rainforest and all that goes with it seems to be a pretty good idea.
On A Side Note:
I suggest we dump the entire “Climate Change” and “Global Warming” verbiage. These old phrases have too much baggage to be of much use anymore. People are now arguing over the words more than the meaning they are meant to convey.
I suggest we adopt a new term, something which helps to encompass the whole of the environmental issues we have to face today.
My choice: “Planetary Stewardship”.
I’m rooting for Al Gore’s prediction that the world will end in 10 years. More time to party.
In other words, I feel the current debate on Climate Change is like a group of people in a sinking ship.
If you are on a sinking ship, it would seem prudent to bail out the water and patch the holes first.
Then, once the ship is secure, worry and debate the why’s and how’s about how the ship ended up in that sad state.
But we’ve gotten so caught up in the why’s and how’s that I fear the ship will sink, and all we will have left is a little life-raft.
This is the same Royal who wanted to be a ‘tampon’…..
#24, A_Yea, If you are on a sinking ship, it would seem prudent to bail out the water and patch the holes first.
… There was an indescribable mind-numbing sound as the hull of the RMS Titanic was torn open. The iceberg rasped the ship’s side, buckling the hull in several places and popping out rivets below the waterline over a length of 300 ft.
Captain Edward J. Smith arrived on the bridge and ordered a full stop. Five of the ships compartments were flooding with ocean water and he immediately gave the only orders that could save his sinking ship and the people on it. He would worry about who was steering later.
“Everyone grab a bucket and start bailing! If anyone brought a patch kit with them, let’s get that hole patched on the double!”
#13
You started from a false premise. You are assuming that sane people will lend *any* sort of credence to Charles’ predictions regardless of what happens?
That’s the queen there pulling the carriage.
#28. I thought he was holding the reigns.
Yeah, his recommendations don’t seem to have anything to do with global warming.
Preserving the rainforest is good on its own terms. Probably the best environmental benefit would come from growing the international economy, so foreign poor people don’t chop down their forests and kill all their wild animals for food.
Perhaps people should push for more free trade not less, and stop insisting on local food that takes more energy to grow.
#21 – ran6110,
I would think that the reason that Al Gore doesn’t debate science with scientists is because … oh yeah … he’s not a scientist.
Perhaps your scientists would like to debate all of the scientists of the IPCC. Or, if you’re looking for one public figure for them to gang up upon, you might try James Hansen.
Real scientists wouldn’t pick on politicians for their debates, they’d pick on other scientists.
Such debates get quite heated. And they go back and forth quite vehemently … in peer reviewed scientific journals!!
So, the next time some moran claiming to be a scientist but without a published paper to his/her name wants a debate with Al Gore, ask why they’re not picking on Hansen. Then ask to see their peer reviewed publications.
There are a few papers out there disputing climate change because the data is overwhelming in the other direction.