I was considered rather dotty, to say the least, for even suggesting these things’
50 YEARS ON
THE PRINCE OF WALES
CONTINUES TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE H
The Prince of Wales (above) delivers a speech at Royal Botan Gardens, Kew, almost 50 years to the day after he made his fir major speech about the environment, at the Countryside in 19 conference (inset top). Charles has had a lifelong interest in th environment and the natural world (below, with his sister Princes Anne and naturalist David Attenborough in 1958, and right, wit Sir David last year)
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A DIRECT MESSAGE Continuing the theme, Charles visited Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in south-west London last week to attend its Plant Health and Biosecurity Conference, where he spoke about the crisis facing Britain’s plants and trees due to an increasing number of diseases and pests. To his message home, he has contributed to the centenary issue of Kew Magazine. “Both the people and plants f the Royal Botanic Gardens ave never been as important as hey are today,” he writes. “We re facing a multifaceted crisis, riven by global warming and limate change, unsustainable se of natural resources and a tastrophic loss of biodiversity. n tackling this global ergency, we need both the st botanical science and a full nge of plant resources… “The mass movement of ople and products around the obe, compounded by our anging climate, has created a nt health crisis with pests and eases ravaging both natural d man-made landscapes… The of so much that is precious in r farmland, woods, parks, dens and conservation areas is gic, but so too is the loss of ductivity and of the biodiversity
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES
e has long championed environmental and sustainable causes, but the Prince of Wales spoke last week of how he was branded “rather dotty” when he started raising concerns about the environment 50 years ago. Prince Charles made his first major speech about the environment on 19 February 1970, at the Countryside in 1970 conference. In it he expressed concerns that are still relevant today, including a rising population, plastic waste, oil, chemical and air pollution and the “fiendish” cost of many conservation enterprises. To mark the anniversary, the Prince has given an interview to the Sustainable Markets website about his continuing worries. Recalling his first speech, he said: “I was considered rather dotty, to say the least, for even suggesting these things, rather like when I set up a reedbed sewage treatment system at Highgrove all those years ago – that was considered completely mad. “I remember also the first bottle bank we had. I encouraged them to get one installed in Buckingham Palace… Everything I was trying to suggest was completely potty, apparently.” He said that environmental damage had reached a critical point. “We really do have to pull our fingers out now because the theory is we have got this decade left. Well, we need to do it in a much shorter time than that to have any chance really, because all the scientists and all the observation and evidence says that we are causing a much more rapid rise in temperature and a much more rapid destruction of the Arctic and now the Antarctic than was originally thought.”
