Charles urges leaders to do more than 'just talk' on climate
Prince Charles is urging world leaders to do more than “just talk” when they gather in Scotland’s biggest city, Glasgow, from the end of this month for a U.N. climate summit
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For Prince Charles the heir to the British throne, it can be anything from ditching dairy for one day a week to filling up a 51-year-old Aston Martin with some surplus English white wine.
Charles told BBC radio in a wide-ranging interview that was broadcast on Monday that world leaders need to do more than “just talk” when they gather in Scotland's biggest city, Glasgow, from the end of this month for a U.N. climate summit, known as COP26.
The summit, which is scheduled for Oct. 31-Nov. 12, is being billed by many environmentalists as the world's last chance to turn the battle against climate change around.
Charles said leaders should take note of the despair many young people feel about their futures, adding that he understood the “frustration” of climate campaign groups such as Extinction Rebellion who have been staging protests and blocking roads.
“The difficulty is, how do you direct that frustration in a way that is more constructive rather than destructive,” he said.
Charles, who has been talking about climate and environmental issues for around 50 years and well before it became fashionable, said it had taken “far too long” for the world to take the climate crisis seriously.
Charles is due to attend a series of events at COP26, alongside the other big names in the royal family including his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, as well as his eldest son Prince William and William's wife, Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge.
In the interview, which took place in Prince George’s Wood, an arboretum Charles has created in the gardens of his house on the Balmoral estate in Aberdeenshire, he also discussed his own efforts to reduce his carbon footprint.
“I haven’t eaten meat and fish on two days a week and I don’t eat dairy products on one day a week,” he said. “If more did that, you would reduce a lot of the pressure.”
He also said he had converted his car, an Aston Martin he has owned for five decades, to run on what he described as “surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process.”
Everyone can do their bit.