Three cheers for King Charles lll

The coronation of King Charles delivers a new age of environmental enlightenment. As our Head of State, the natural environment has never had such powerful representation.

For over 50 years His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales, had been an outspoken campaigner for the environment including this, his November 2015 opening speech to the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Madrid:

"I urge you to consider the needs of the youngest generation, because none of us has the right to assume that “for our today they should give up their tomorrow.”

On an increasingly crowded planet, humanity faces many threats – but none is greater than climate change. It magnifies every hazard and tension of our existence. It threatens our ability to feed ourselves; to remain healthy and safe from extreme weather; to manage the natural resources that support our economies, and to avert the humanitarian disaster of mass migration and increasing conflict.

In damaging our climate we become the architects of our own destruction. While the planet can survive the scorching of the earth and the rising of the waters, the human race cannot. The absurd thing is that we know exactly what needs to be done; we know we cannot adapt sufficiently to go on as we are, nor can we build ourselves a new atmosphere. To avoid catastrophe we must restrict climate change to less than two degrees, which requires a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions”.

If monarchy has any purpose, such leadership could be it.

Three cheers for King Charles.