Prince attacks climate sceptics

Published on Wednesday 9 February 2011 15:03

THE Prince of Wales warned yesterday against the pursuit of economic growth at the expense of the environment - and condemned climate change sceptics for their "corrosive" impact on public opinion.

Prince Charles used a speech at a European Parliament climate change conference in Brussels to challenge politicians to break the link between growth and the production of high-carbon goods.

And he challenged environmentalists to start selling the benefits of sustainable living, instead of focusing on what people should give up. He said a "business as usual" approach to increasing national wealth was a short-term remedy.

"I cannot see how we can possibly maintain the growth of GDP in the long term if we continue to consume our planet as voraciously as we are doing," he told MEPs and business leaders.

"We have to see that there is a direct relationship between the resilience of nature's ecosystems and the resilience of our national economies. If the fabric of the Earth's life-support system fragments, as it appears it may be starting to do; if those systems become weak or even collapse - essentially, if nature's capital loses its innate resilience - then how long does it take for our economic capital and economic systems to lose their resilience, too?"

The prince highlighted the fate of the world's rainforests as an example of the problem. A third of the world's tropical rainforests have been felled in the past 50 years and six million hectares more disappear annually.

"With them go tens of thousands of species of plant and animal - gone forever, into extinction, together with who knows how many vital cures and medicines."