Prince Charles has finally won

This is a nasty little piece. The author, too craven to wield the knife himself, merely curating the insults of others.  The weakling tittering behind the pack of bullies – not one of them, but of them. 
Worse, his own thrusts are limp mildly ambiguous pokes: “He wanted to protect the elephants and conserve the Botswana Bushmen, seeing them in approximately the same way.” 
Animals? Endangered? Both? An eighteen word encomium to his cleverness.

He was right about traditional architecture. He also talks to plants, as any civilised man should.

In July 2009, Charles said we had 96 months left to save the world. Oops – apparently new urgent deadlines now apply. How conveniently he forgets his failed forecasts, as they all do. He is accepted today by politicians and plutocrats because his babbling on the lie that is AGW suits their interests.

Just a small anectode which reminds me of a time when ecology was still a new and strange word. At the time, around 1974-6, I was the marketing manager of a small Swiss firm which was building huge solid-waste shredders. We took one of our machines to Birmingham where one of the first “waste processing and recycling” fair took place ; our positioning in the main hall was excellent…to hear, 10 metres away, the keynote speaker of the exhibition, non other as Prince C. I was braced for a conventional speech drafted by a second rate assistant. Wrong. The address was spot on, perfectly documented and full of humour. And, mainly, the speaker seemed to be deeply convinced of what he said…not very often the case with such discourses.

I have always supported Prince Charles when he was campaigning against wanton environmental destruction even if sometimes the way he presented his views was somewhat eccentric. I am therefore sad to see that he has joined the ranks of the “climate change” mob who are more or less exactly the same people who have become eye-wateringly rich by doing exactly what he has always campaigned against, including interfering with nature.
His victory will indeed be Pyrrhic when the full cost of the unattainable Holy Grail of controlling the climate becomes apparent. He should have stuck to pollution and environmental damage.
By the way, I agree with some other posters here – the tone of the article was gratuitously nasty.

”Near extinction of the human race”. Good God, what a prat.

Whether you agree with Charles or not, somebody who put his life in trying to make the world better without being able to benefit should be respected. Discussing/using ‘science’ to argue against what Charles says is a sign of lack of humanity. That does not mean he is always, right, nobody is ever completely right, but it means that true motivation to respect other people,animals and the earth can only be seen as a human accomplishment. Petty discussions and ridicule are likely sings of lesser humanity….

I dissent from the comments below mine. I think that this is a fine, very well-written article. I wonder if reactions to it differ consistently depending on one’s side of the Atlantic. From where I sit in Boston, Charles seems an intelligent and very well-intentioned man trapped in a comically obsolete and hypocritical role. He is right about many things, including modern architecture, and wrong about many things, including climate change (see Freddie Sayers’ wonderful interview with Bjorn Lonborg, who punctures every premise underlying the climate conference agenda).

“This week, whether addressing the G20 in Rome, or handshaking dignitaries at COP26, the Prince has been accorded the kind of fulsome respect that he lavishes on the plants at Highgrove. A sedulous, loving attention. Why?”

There is an alternative explanation for the eventual inclusion of Prince Charles into mainstream acceptance by the people who make the rules, and it’s simply this: Charles is as batty as ever, but unfortunately now most other people in positions of power are equally daft.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-inconvenient-truths-behind-the-hysteria-over-climate-change/?utm_source=The+Daily+Syndicate&utm_campaign=8a29c3d30b-Daily+Syndicate+10-31-21+%28new%29_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8583953730-8a29c3d30b-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&ct=t%28Daily+Syndicate+10-31-21+%28new%29_COPY_01%29. Charles is as mad as a Box of Frogs

This piece seems completely in tune with current orthodoxy. It is lightweight emotive stuff full of hyperbole that ought to be beneath Unherd to publish. Where is the academic rigour that Unherd is usually good at ?

What a hagiography? Finally won? Did he die?

At last I understand the purpose of COP26.

Methinks in due course the Prince will be found to have been wrong in his expostulations on climatic doom. He means well but he has been wrongly schooled and one is on very unstable intellectual ground when views are of that ilk. I believe him to be fundamentally wrong on CO2 and its supposed influence – the freely available ‘science’ on the internet can soon show the truth but he has a point in tree planting (not that the UK takes any notice as we chop them down and chip them up for burning in power stations – or rather we outsource others to do so).
We are experiencing one of those extraordinary group-held blinkeredly obsessive mantras that will, if allowed, fundamentally change global politics for the worse – far, far worse. The PM needs to be shown the door and others must lead us away from this precipice of self-harm we appear to be indulging in.

Pity it is such a hit job as Charles is actually very dangerous. Unlike other eco zealots and warmist hypocrites impoverishing others with their political fantasies he has a lot of power, soft or otherwise. He anti science crackpot ideologies match Preseident Xi with his coal power expansion in China and Africa. By science i mean the Mertonian Norms as applied to processes of conjecture and refutation. Nothing to do with faking climate or virus models for political ends. The article would be better spent playing the ball – breaches of our consitutional conventions, environmental hypocracy, failure to understand a Monarchy’s need for taste as per Netherlands, Norway etc and its need NOT to enter politics. Playing the man is too easy and in any case how he treated his first wife plus his sleaze bag companions and aides tell you all you need to know about this man. Worst of all he will be one hell of a recruiter for Repulicans in UK, Aus, NZ+ Canada which is sad because his Mum has done a great job and i expect William would be a pro too.

A superb article that’s helped me look at the Prince in a new and more appreaciative light. “No prophet is accepted in his lifetime” – except when apocalypse now.

I like the piece a lot. It’s funny, unmerciful, abstruse, pretty arrogant and, for this Tennessean, bubbling over with cultural references I don’t understand at all. Nevertheless, there are some great lines even though my general conclusion is that I don’t know much about the person the author is talking about, but I can picture his ears.

Charles does not have clue about science and especially the physics related to the climate. He also hasn’t a clue about the scientific method and is unable to see how he is being deceived by climate activists. Hanging about with Leo and Bill is doing him no good.

Prince Charles is no scientist. His degree is in history, and he was lucky to get into Cambridge with two mediocre A levels. You can hear the creaking of strings being pulled.
Edzard Ernst was professor of complementary medicine at Exeter university until he angered Charles by dismissing homeopathy, a practice the prince endorses. Prof. Ernst was forced to retire.

Charles and Diana are one of those pairs where the more you hear about them, the more you dislike both of them.
Diana was a shrieking vacuous clothes horse whose only achievement was to marry a prince. Charles’ only achievement was to be born one. He’s also the most poisonously vacuous hypocrite imaginable. Who else flies to Gstaad to go skiing and has his Aston Martin driven there and back by an underling in case he needs to use it?

That is a very nasty piece that does not deserve any publicity. Shame on you, shame on you writer and publisher

ill Will Lloyd is at it again

The rough rude sea has tried nothing of the kind ( wash the balm off an anointed king ) and will be in no position to until after the coronation .

Will Lloyd is better when he’s attacking politicians who can fight back in the public arena. Very easy to score cheap points just by regurgitating the many attacks on Charles whose constitutional position prevents him from defending his views. OK to publish in Unherd? Of course, any and all views welcome, but this isn’t a particularly good article – not much original material, could do better! C-minus at best.

Fancy putting so much effort into insulting someone. What a waste of a day.

Yes, a very unpleasant piece hedging its bets behind smartarseness and professional cowardice. Why not just say the Prince of Wales is right about x y and z and we’ll done to him

His campaigns for conservation of nature and ugly architecture are admirable. To sneer at that is to highlight your own ignorance. To side with deluded liars like Attenborough, Thunberg and now Boris is unforgivable, oddly at odds with the very people who would see us a republic like France, Italy and Germany, awash with multiple political parties none of which can independently form a decent government; the cusp on which we find ourselves. The summary of the vapid harridanesque Diana? Spot on.

Thank you Will. An excellent piece. A few of us have been banging on about this nearly as long too(but without the publicity.)
Back in 1981, when the SDP was formed, I joined, thinking it would be about new stuff. I had become convinced of the climate change argument by then. (there were also major issues, now largely solved – like ozone-layer, acid-rain, whaling etc). I helped form SDP Greens early on and then Green Liberal Democrats after merger.
Back then, young people were ‘awake’ to these problems, but as the decades rolled by, we actually went backwards. In the 90s, 00s young people were almost silent on these subjects.
We warned that,, with more energy in the atmosphere, we should expect an increase in extreme weather and uncertainty. (a feature of chaotic systems). We warned about heavier rainfall/floods, hurricanes etc. I’m not sure many were warning about wildfires – which has (finally?) tipped the balance in favour of the Green view.
Now at last, 40 years on, we finally have a PM saying some of the things we have been wanting senior politicians to say for decades, but we have now left it so long that it will take a massive effort to avert serious damage.
I have never been a ‘10 years to save the planet‘ person. We will survive all this – but at what cost?
The sad thing is reading some of the responses in this and other forums. A splendid denial-ism which still labels us as cranks.
Don’t worry, we’ve gotten used to it.

I’m close to Prince Charles in age (same month and year) yet i am an Antipodean (Melbourne, Australia) ‘girl’ and one with deep long roots in Scotland and England. I’m also the eldest sibling, been a loyal admirer of the Crown and of course Francis (Tudor) Bacon – the ‘concealed’ Prince of Wales of his time – while his amazing but seriously flawed mother ‘did her thing’ by not openly fighting for her son’s right to follow her. And of course Francis turned out to be the greatest dramatist ever – ie, William Shakespeare or ‘Shakespeare’! What a history, what a great country.
So, as per my usual conviction, i applaud Charles for being basically a very good chap at heart and will be a very good king and master of his household. I’m glad he has Camilla as his consort. The past has to be absorbed and loved and those two have done that. Diana will not be diminished of course.
Charles is staunch. He has seen and known much. This will see him through. I think ‘Shakespeare’ and the late Prince Philip will support him along with many others around the World. I think Her Majesty, The Queen, will be pleased!

For me the most telling element of this article, whether one thinks it is snide or not, is the focus of the penultimate paragraph: all the neo-Establishment names and elite people hanging out with Charles. Why? Because in the not too distant future he will become King of England/the [dis]United Kingdom.

For a real hatchet job on poor Charles, listen to the King-In-Waiting himself on Simon Armitage’s podcast, the ‘Poet Laureate Has Gone To His Shed’.

Love Charles. Always have.

Et tu Mr Lloyd? Is it something about journalism
that makes journalists the ridiculous smartarses they are?

“All it has taken for Charles to be vindicated is the prospect of the near-term extinction of the human race.” Well whose fault is that? Extinction rates have been escalating ever since Unherd was established and this is the first article to acknowledge that reality. Looking at the remit for this paper ‘As you may have guessed from our strange spelling, UnHerd aims to do two things: to push back against the herd mentality with new and bold thinking, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places.‘ I have never yet seen an article that challenges our obsession with economic growth and coercive consumerism. The I=PAT equation and the Jevons paradox together prove that economic growth inflicts unsustainable environmental damage. Unherd have done nothing to bring the twin horns of our existential dilemma into the realm of free speech, namely overconsumption and overpopulation. Time to ‘Pay up or Perish’ as the Prime Minister of Malawi put it at the end of this excellent COP26 interview. Both the writers and the readers of this paper need to wake up to the reality of ecological collapse, if we fail to embrace an urgent, voluntary and ethical Degrowth aspiration we shall all have our lives severely curtailed. Trying to make a profit out of the ‘green transition’ will only shorten our life-spans and that of our children. At this late stage in ecological collapse the more we try to grow the more we are struggling up an accelerating ecological down-escalator. I have immense respect for Charles and I consider the entire celebrity culture in the media as a pathetic circus that has for decades distracted us from the real news that we are daily destroying our eco-systems. Until we can move away from the growth mindset we are simply continuing to decrease our life expectancy daily.

Chin up, now, Will. It’s not so bad as all that. In the sense of those prescient souls who are now gathered in Glasgow, Charles was a man ahead of his time.
Somewhere above, you mentioned “good novels.” Once upon a time, I wrote one, “Smoke” that began in London on the day of Charles’ grandfather’s Coronation.
On May 12, 1937, George VI, Charles’ grandfather, was crowned King of the British Empire. He entered into that august role with a stuttering handicap, over which he gained admirable control–and that, during a time of encroaching war and extreme tribulation.
As history attests that King George could overcome a stutter, I daresay his grandson can outmaneuver–when destiny requires it of him– the sound and fury of a few cheeky journalists.
Especially since he has an international support group who, no doubt, appreciate his empathy for their long-overdue strategies to clean up this planet . . . a planet that has been hyper-carbonated by an overzealous industrial revolution, which originated in the fair shores of Albion.
King Charles–if he ever ascends to such status in the Abbey at Westminster, may well be a man ahead of his time.
Or perhaps . . . history will not be so kind to him. There may come a time when an erstwhile self-appointed pundit will uncover some skullduggery of foolishness that forever entombs Charles’ dubious legacy. On such a fateful day as that, the scrivener would likely twit a tweet on yon quaint and quarrelsome social media . . .
. . . Alas, poor Charles! we knew him well.