Unsustain-Nobility
According to CNN, Prince Charles, who at some point in the future can look forward to inheriting the United Kingdom, has just signed a book and film deal. Yes, the Prince of Wales is Britain’s answer to Al Gore.
“I believe that true sustainability depends fundamentally upon us shifting our perception and widening our focus, so that we understand, again, that we have a sacred duty of stewardship of the natural order of things,” Prince Charles said in a statement.
“If we could rediscover that sense of harmony; that sense of being a part of, rather than apart from nature, we would perhaps be less likely to see the world as some sort of gigantic production system, capable of ever-increasing outputs for our benefit — at no cost.”
Now why would the future monarch of a country of 60 million people have such an inclination towards ideas about ‘the natural order of things’, eh?
The co-author of the book is former Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper, who, since leaving the organization in 2008, has been critical of a number of celebrities who promote environmental issues.
Juniper criticized model Naomi Campbell and actress Sienna Miller for not practicing what they preach on the environment, and in an article he accused mogul Richard Branson of “jumping on the global warming bandwagon.”
“The prince and I share similar views on issues of sustainability and the environment. He is in a unique position to express his concern for unsustainable economics, and is committed to highlighting the crisis of our disconnection from nature,” Juniper told CNN.
Juniper has singled out supermodels and Branson – who at least do something – for their hypocrisy, and yet leaves intact the reputation of the prince. This is odd.
The prince is ‘in a unique position to express his concern for unsustainable economics’ mainly because protocol, in theory, precludes him from making political statements. And yet here he is, about to make political statements. Just because it’s ‘green’, it doesn’t mean it’s not political.
As the beneficiary of one the largest estates in England, he also has a unique position on ’sustainability’, because it increases the value of that estate, the proceeds of which are exempt from corporation and capital gains tax. Lucky, lucky him.
As we have pointed out before, it’s not easy being green… unless you’re filthy stinking rich.
Even more weird is that Juniper should be getting into bed with the future king of England given the number of claims that environmentalism is synonymous with anti-capitalism. It seems that Juniper is more interested in pre-capitalist… feudal… society than anti-capitalist or communist society. Maybe he shares Charles’s keenness for ‘natural orders’.
“Harmony” will warn of the threat big business poses to the environment, HarperCollins said.
If Charles carries on with this preaching to a country experiencing perhaps its most severe recession ever, while sitting on top of a massive stack of cash, he is likely to become an inconvenient monarch. The prince, who reportedly runs his cars on wine… seriously… is going to be making statements equivalent to ‘can’t they eat cake?’. Some might shout, ‘off with his head’. But Charles, the vocal advocate of homeopathy and talking to flowers to encourage their growth… is already off his head.
Tags: Prince Charles, Tony Juniper
Posted in Blog | 10 Comments »
Lets hope charles make a film about his fav architect Leon Krier and his great works maybe they can do his book ARCHITECTURE -albert speer
missing out all the naughty nazi bits like he did in the book!.
The British people have been sustaining His Royal Ancestors for 900 years, with a brief interregnum of 40 years, when his first namesake, Charles I, also had a hankering for the old, lost, natural harmony of absolute monarchy
Ah, in the days of yore, when serfs knew their place and Le Droit de Seigneur was actively pursued.
Prince Charles is not averse to big business of course when its his own Duchy products. Reports recently (June 2008) state that:
“The new chief executive of the Prince of Wales’s agricultural business is in upbeat mood. He has recently announced plans to launch Duchy Originals in America and India as part of a five-year plan to quadruple annual turnover from £50m to £200m.”
Hardly small fry in the world of business. Green is good when its your own pockets you are filling up.
As a subject of one Her Maj’s loyal Dominions [OZ] can I say that we will put up with just about anything that Her Maj wishes to do, but the minute that idiot son of hers [or any of her relo's] gets anywhere near the throne, thats the end of a constitutional monarchy in this loyal dominion.
Unfortunately for you Brits, you bred him, so you’re stuck with him, but the minute that good old Betty croaks it, we are out of the Monarchy.
Until then, best wishes cousins – but you are surely going down the drain if you let that nincompoop anywhere near the throne.
Like you, I have come to the conclusion that Global Alarmism has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with class warfare and the desire of the giant landowners to keep the game as it is…or was.
Snide and largely ad hom. Not up to your usual standards.
Mark, your criticism is fair, and others have pointed it out to us too. Our excuses are: being terribly short on time recently, owing to job changes and exams. We hope to be back on form within a week or so.
However, the point remains that there are some serious problems with Charles’ interventions on the climate issue, and the question about whose interests his brand of environmentalism and anti-capitalism serve also remain.
Charles is a hypocrite just like Al Gore.
And just for the record he is not just “the future king of England” but in fact the whole of the UK.
People have been calling for us to “reconnect” with Nature for decades and decades. So far nobody has been able to demonstrate what such a fully fledged connection would look like. Lots of hippies have “felt the grass between their toes”, but that’s as far as it goes. At some point you have to eat, build shelter, earn a living, and suddenly you’re back to the real world.
People who desire a connection can simply take up meditation and they can get a satori that gives their consciousness a direct connection to the absolute, and at that point they are connected to everything. You need not recycle a single plastic bottle.
Now, the next problem is how do you somehow make the world a better place materially so that we all progress forward and our children can lead better lives? Factories and chemicals and big business are not going to go away, apparently the royal family is not going away either. These are simply structures of our human systems and even bees have to do a day’s work for the colony.
So this is why the greens always TALK about going back to nature but never come up with any real system for doing it, which invariably leaves them with only one option which is to have NO system, to dismantle, to go back, to pull apart, and simply stop whatever systems we have. So “back to nature” ends up as “back to 10,000BC”. That’s like solving the problem of how to get a man on the moon by teaching everyone that the moon does not exist. Many greenies actually believe that there is no such thing as “progress”. So they deconstruct everything back to some sort of undefined original pure state of “balance”. Again, words, but no concrete demonstrable solutions.
I really hope this green sub-culture dies out soon as the damage to rational thinking is just quite a worry.
There should be little surprise at the position of the English Gentry. Richard Pipes noted in “The Russian Revolution 1899-1919″ (p364) that whereas the Russian gentry accounted for only 1.7% of the population they accounted for 22% of the Bolshevik party.