Is Prince making a Charlie of us?

Mar 15 2009 by Ken Oxley, Sunday Sun

IT can only be a matter of time before Prince Charles is pictured holding aloft a placard declaring that the end of the world is nigh.

Our future king is currently doing his harbinger of doom routine in South America where he’s on an official tour, which probably means he’s travelling everywhere on a private jet at great cost to the environment.

This week he warned business leaders in Brazil that we had “less than 100 months” to save the planet.

That’s a conveniently quotable figure, isn’t it? I’d love to know where he got it from.

As far as I can ascertain, Charles’s grim prediction is not backed by any hard evidence. Certainly, he did not identify his source.

He stated: “The best projections tell us that we have less than 100 months to alter our behaviour before we risk catastrophic climate change.”

Whose “best predictions” might they be? The one person Charles did quote was Chico Mendes, the Brazilian environmentalist who wasn’t averse to scaremongering himself, having once declared “we’re fighting for humanity”.

But Mendes died 21 years ago, so perhaps Charles should get some new material.

We should all be concerned about global warming and I’m not trying to make light of the situation.

But when influential figures make bold claims that they can’t back up it cheapens the debate.

Of course we should be taking steps to reduce our impact on the environment, but what exactly is Charles suggesting will happen if we don’t do enough over the next eight years?

Will the polar ice caps melt, submerging much of the planet during the course of 2018? That’s certainly what the phrase “catastrophic climate change” suggests.