Prince Charles Costs the Earth
by Bonnie Alter, London on 12. 7.06
The Prince of Wales has launched a new green project: Costing the Earth - Accounting for Sustainability. He is hoping to convince big businesses to assess the environmental impact of their products through new accounting measures. The Prince told the audience, which included everyone from Tony Blair to Al Gore ( on video), that the nation was running up the "biggest global credit card debt in history". He added: "We are consuming the resources of our planet at such a rate that we are, in effect, living off credit and living on borrowed time”. The Project will develop a range of accounting principles to help organizations measure sustainability, include it as part of their decision-making processes and so report their performance more consistently. The prince will lead the way by labeling his range of organic food products, Duchy Originals, with details of greenhouse gases emitted in their production and distribution. On a personal level, he is determined to reduce his carbon footprint further. He has said that he will commute to London from his country house by scheduled trains and will no longer use private jets and helicopters. He will be using Jaguar cars adapted to run on biodeisel fuel and has asked staff in London to travel by bicycle wherever possible :: Prince of Wales via :: Evening Standard
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Kudos to HRH! It points out an important fact. Saving the earth is going to be BORING. It's all going to be accounting, incremental change, and personal responsiblity. People will have to cut back on spontaneous trips to the mall (spurred by boredom), or those cheap 3 day vacations in the Bahamas. Conditioning ourselves to this is going to be very hard and will require mental preparation.
It's an odd thing, even though royals have no political role, they can function as spiritual leaders, much like rock stars in the US. Very boring rock stars in Aquascutum.
I think the Prince is an exemplary person. I have always been an antimonarchist, but HRH has more common sense than our President Bush. Many things should be private, but jet planes aren't among them. I live in an area where many arrogant wealthy people congregate and they all use private jets. No one can pollute and ravage like a plutocrat.
No matter what anybody says about him, he has vision. I think it is a fantastic idea.
We don't have to cut back on anything... we need to change our technologies... isn't the whole point of "technofix"? Of Treehugger? To find technological alternatives, to do more and more with less and less, like LEDs, like Tesla cars, like new super materials? Please let's not harp back to the Limits of Growth which destroyed the environmental movement in the eyes of industry... Instead let's go out and discover better and better ways, to build cheaper, faster, stronger... My dream as a kid was building UFOs... I'm stuck chronicling the rise of the new automobile, with super motors and super batteries, but I have not jetisoned my Jetsons ambitions... I think we're being bamboozled... I think there's a lot more discovery out there than industry's telling us... I've seen all the patents issued in the last 20 years... and it's a mystery to me what we are not yet flying through the air on sunshine, like bees!
i think i like this story