May 7, 2023
We can
argue about the character of Charles’s philosophy of nature and whether it is
conservative or not. I don’t really care about the origins of his concern for
the dangers we face from the climate emergency. I’m just glad he takes this
stance, unlike so many of his peers among the Judas American and British
billionaire class who have actively attempted to wreck our planet in order to
eke out their thirty coins of silver.
In his 2010
book, Harmony, Charles called for a “sustainability revolution.”
In Harmony,
Charles wrote that “there is now a strong consensus that, in order to avoid the
worst consequences of what we have put in train, it will be necessary for us to
limit global average temperature increase to no more than two degrees Celsius
[3.6F].” More than that, he writes, has the potential for very steep sea level
rises and tropical heat throughout the planet, making human civilization
difficult to maintain. His understanding of the science and of past geological
epochs in which we saw similar concentrations of CO2 seem to me to be sound.
He said
that he visited the Met (Meteorological) Office Hadley Centre for climate
research at Exeter and the scientists warned him that if we go on with business
as usual, we will likely hit 4 degrees C. (7.2F) average temperature rise over
the pre-industrial norm by the end of this century. They told him that we could
even hit a 6 degree C. increase (10.8F). Charles pointed out that a six-degree
C. increase in the average temperature of the surface of the earth is believed
to have brought about the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, 250
million years ago.
Charles
spoke at the UN Conference on Climate Change at Copenhagen in December, 2009,
and had a front-row seat at the spectacle of the climate change deniers’
campaign of disinformation, at which he was deeply dismayed.
He takes an
intense interest in technological fixes to the greenhouse gas emissions
problem, showing that he is not a glib technophobe. He wrote in 2010, “From
wind energy to concentrating solar power and from photovoltaic electricity to
wave power, there is a vast range of design solutions out there that could help
us cut greenhouse emissions very quickly.” That was prescient, since wind and
solar were more expensive and less competitive then than they are now. In 2023
in the US, wind-powered electricity can be had for 4 cents a kilowatt hour,
less than fossil gas or coal, and solar has fallen in price to only between 6.5
and 8 cents a kilowatt hour, which also makes it highly competitive. Charles
has also been a vocal critic of the coal industry and has spoken of the need to
transition away from that most polluting of energy sources.
As king,
Charles III may have to be more circumspect in his advocacy on climate change
than he was as crown prince. The newly crowned king of England, despite being a
booster of green energy and a foe of the climate emergency is not in a position
to set government policy on these issues. Unfortunately, that is the
prerogative of the prime minister, Rishi Sunak. Nor can Charles any longer, as
king, decide on his own to jet off to a climate summit, since the prime
minister wouldn’t want him speaking against British government policy.
Still,
Charles III’s environmentalist views are likely to be broadly influential with
the British and Commonwealth publics, and perhaps in the United States, as
well. He underlined the climate emergency in a major speech to the 2.5 billion
people who live in the Commonwealth countries just this past March.
His
philanthropies lie at the nexus of a vast global network of charities and
nonprofits among whom he is also listened to with respect. As king, he will
have the opportunity to attempt to persuade in private powerful leaders in
politics and business. It is a far cry from the 1970s when he was often
dismissed as a touchy-feely prince moonbeam.
There are
lots of dimensions of the British royal family, both good and bad, that one
could discuss. I think another of our crises is the growth of wealth inequality
globally, and on that question I don’t expect much help from Buckingham Palace.
Here, I’m just asking whether, under Charles’s leadership, the monarchy can
help make a difference on the central issue facing humanity in the twenty-first
century, that of the climate emergency. It won’t do us any good finally to
achieve a more just and equal distribution of wealth in a society if it just
goes underwater soon thereafter.
Charles, in
his typical mystical fashion, called green energy technologies “working with
the grain of Nature in meeting our energy needs.” We may conclude that he sees
burning fossil fuels as working against nature, since they introduce so much
damaging heat into the atmosphere, disrupting the ecology. He also advocates
constructing sustainable buildings, based on cooling techniques seen in termite
structures.
My title
references the medieval Arthurian tale of one of Sir Gawain, one of the knights
of the round table. In the story a stranger comes to Camelot, the Green Knight,
who offers to take the blow of any adversary if he could return it the
following year. Sir Gawain beheads him. He is able to pick up his head and
leave, however, by some sorcery. A year later Sir Gawain keeps his part of the
bargain, but stops off at a nearby castle where he spends three nights. The
lady of the castle attempts to seduce him three times, but he fends her off
each time. After the last failed attempt, she gives him a green sash that she
says will make him invulnerable, and he accepts it out of fear of the harm the
enchanted Green Knight might wreak on him. He conceals the lady’s gift from the
lord of the castle. When he meets the Green Knight at the nearby Green Chapel,
he discovers that he is the very lord who had been hosting him at the castle.
The lord, pleased with Gawain’s chastity and honor, declines to behead him, but
nicks his neck with his sword for having concealed the gift of the green sash.
If we
wanted to make this a parable for the climate emergency, the Green Knight is
clearly Mother Nature herself, whom we can harm but not kill, but who will then
have a rendezvous with us to return the harm at a later date. Only by being
honorable, that is, by fighting the temptations of fossil fuel use and profits,
can we hope to escape that retaliatory beheading.
Charles’s
critics point out that the royal family has an enormous carbon footprint,
despite his green philosophizing. But we should be wary of these arguments, which
often come from the fetid marshes of Big Carbon think tanks. The whole idea of
an individual “carbon footprint” was an invention of the oil companies, as a
means of shifting the blame for greenhouse gases onto the individual consumer.
The big companies did that in the 1960s regarding pollution, using clever ads
to suggest that individuals could stop it just by not littering. The big
pollution is done by chemical factories and is not at all like an individual
tossing a candy wrapper in the street.
Individuals,
even rich and powerful ones like the British royal family, don’t have control
of the systems that produce carbon pollution. Only governments are wealthy and
organized enough to change those systems. That is why the most powerful lever
environmentalists have is the ballot box. The Biden administration’s Inflation
Reduction Act is leveraging trillions of dollars of investments in
sustainability, before which any individual philanthropist’s or entrepreneur’s
contribution pales in comparison.
Indeed, Charles
has pointed out that individual countries aren’t even in a position to move to
sustainability by themselves– that we need a multinational coalition of
governments who are jointly spending trillions.
The royal
family will over the next few years rent out offshore sea beds to wind farm
companies. Even its critics admit that “The Crown Estate, which manages the
Queen’s property portfolio, has sold sites in six areas off England and Wales
to energy companies. When the farms are built, they will supply green energy to
seven million homes by 2030 while saving 19 percent of the UK’s household
carbon emissions. Former Energy Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said at the time
of the announcement. The energy delivered will help power seven million
homes.'”
There are
19.6 million households in the UK, and wind farms on Crown Estate properties
will fuel 35% of them sustainably, with wind power. That’s significant, and is
walking the walk.
Charles has
also adopted solar panels and other green energy sources for his own office and
domestic establishments. “Around half of his office and domestic energy use
comes from renewable sources such as woodchip boilers, air-source heat pumps,
solar panels and ‘green’ electricity.”
The
important thing is that Charles III is committed to a sustainable world that
restores respect, even reverence, for nature to pride of place in planning,
design and engineering. Humanity is in big trouble, and the question we have to
ask of each of the powerful people on the planet is whether they are on our
side in dealing with the climate emergency and the pollution crisis.
Charles III
is on our side on this key issue, and that is something to celebrate.
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