In her address to the world’s leaders at Cop26, the Queen praised her late husband, Prince Philip, for lighting the flame of environmentalism that lives on in Princes Charles and William.
As long ago as 1969, she said, the former Duke of Edinburgh warned that pollution would make every other problem “pale into insignificance” if it was not dealt with. His work on protecting “our fragile planet” was, Her Majesty said, “a source of great pride to me”.
What, though, would the late Prince really have made of the climate jamboree in Glasgow, had he lived to see it?
His views on global warming differed from those of his eldest son or eldest grandson. For him, the biggest problem facing the planet was overpopulation, rather than climate change. He fretted over man’s endless devouring of resources (so he would have applauded this week’s commitment to reverse deforestation by 2030) and once went so far as to suggest that he might like to be reincarnated as a “particularly deadly virus” to thin out the human species.
Ingrid Seward, author of the 2020 biography Prince Philip Revealed, said: “Philip thought the biggest problem facing mankind was the population expanding far too quickly for the planet to sustain. Of course it is a delicate issue nowadays and one none of the politicians seem to want to take on.
“Philip reckoned engineers and scientists would invent ways to make food, which they are, but with overpopulation we would run out of water. So he was pragmatic and would have supported Cop26, although he would say a lot of waffle was being talked, and not enough action.”
Seward is not alone in her confidence that the Prince would have supported Cop, but whether he would have supported all of its stated objectives is less certain.
On the environment, as with so many other things in his life, Philip made up his own mind based on the evidence he saw before him, and cared not a jot whether his views were problematic for others.
His positions could seem contradictory – such as his tiger shoots in India while he was president of the World Wildlife Fund (as it was then called) – but they always adhered to his own practical and unsentimental moral code. Tigers should be protected, but if he came across one that was lame, why not put it out of its misery? And once it was dead, what was the harm in keeping its pelt?
Inconveniently for his eldest son, he struggled to accept that global warming could be mitigated by renewable energy, and was not afraid to say it.
As recently as April 2018 he wrote to the Australian geologist Professor Ian Plimer to thank him for sending him a copy of his book, Climate Change Delusion, and saying he was “very much enjoying it”, as he had done his previous work, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming , The Missing Science.
Plimer argues that there is no proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide cause global warming, and that renewable energy causes more damage to the climate than coal-fired power stations.
Philip told him: “I find it frustrating, as a lay person, to find answers to technical questions. You see gigantic wind turbines appearing all over the country, but there is very little about the practical value of these monstrosities.
“Your book demolishes the fictions created by wishful thinking. When will common sense and good science prevail, and what happens if it does not do so fairly soon?”
Philip was so convinced by Plimer’s arguments that he asked him to deliver the Prince Philip Annual Lecture at the Royal Society of Arts in 2010, only for Buckingham Palace and the RSA to conspire to rescind the invitation.
In a revealing letter to Prof Plimer, the RSA explained that: “The debate around climate change has recently become highly politically charged…members of the Royal family need to be scrupulous in avoiding any appearance of advocating or supporting a particular political stance.”
The RSA said Philip was “disappointed” as he had been looking forward to hearing the professor speak, but “the now highly controversial debate surrounding this issue would make it inevitable that he was seen to be taking a particular position”.
We can be fairly sure, then, that Philip would have questioned Boris Johnson’s drive to close down coal-fired power stations and replace them with renewable energy.
Just ask Esbjorn Wilmar, who as managing director of Infinergy, one of the companies building wind turbines off Britain’s coast, was left with a flea in his ear after trying to promote his wares to the Prince 10 years ago.
Wilmar unwisely suggested at a reception that wind turbines should be installed on royal property. Philip replied that they were “absolutely useless, completely reliant on subsidies and an absolute disgrace”.
When Wilmar tried to argue the case for wind power, Philip suggested to him that he must “believe in fairy tales”.
The late Christopher Booker, who repeatedly questioned the concept of man-made global warming in his column for the Sunday Telegraph, also received a “sympathetic” letter from the Queen’s husband about a book he had written on the subject in 2009, in which he explained that he had “withdrawn” from the WWF, in Booker’s words, “after it switched from its original focus on saving endangered species to relentless campaigning against global warming”.
So Philip did not regard himself as a “green”, as he told the BBC’s Fiona Bruce in a prickly interview to mark his 90th birthday.
“I think that there’s a difference between being concerned for the conservation of nature and being a bunny-hugger,” he said.
“When I was president of the WWF, I got more letters from people about the way animals were treated in zoos than about any concern for the survival of a species. People can’t get their heads around the idea of a species surviving, you know. They’re more concerned about how you treat a donkey in Sicily or something.”
Booker suggested the Prince was one of the last exponents of “robust, masculine common sense” on environmental issues.
Might Philip have come to change his mind on climate change? The independent environmentalist Professor Chris Baines believes so, having delivered a lecture at the Prince’s request in 2013 to mark the 80th birthday of the botanist David Bellamy.
Bellamy, once a staple of television schedules, had fallen out of favour with TV companies after dismissing climate change as “poppycock”, but retained the friendship and support of The Duke of Edinburgh.
Prof Baines, however, challenged the men’s views on wind farms by suggesting they were part of the answer to saving Britain’s environment, showing that the Prince was open-minded enough to invite views that challenged his own.
Prof Baines said last night: “The world has moved on and I’m sure the Duke of Edinburgh would have moved on.
“There were a lot of people in the early days who were uncertain about climate change but I do think that by now, like lots of those early questioners, he would have been convinced.”
He added: “From everything we know about him I think he would have said Cop26 was a long time coming. People have forgotten how very significant his early interventions were, in the Sixties and Seventies, helping to establish the WWF and the very concept of environmental action.
“I don’t think he ever lost that appetite for the bigger picture, and he brought with him his impatience and short fuse which we could do with more of today.”  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2021/11/03/prince-philip-really-climate-warrior-just-good-old-fashioned/?fbclid=IwAR2Et7wrR0y0Kvz5uqP1uwWyfmIZt7uVJtwc0jQC70Wr3o5FJCYMWwluly8

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