[Sdpg] Prince Charles speech on Low Carbon Prosperity at the European Parliament 2011

Sat Feb 19 08:46:15 PST 2011

Prince Charles speech on Low Carbon Prosperity at the European Parliament 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHCJChbzmts&feature=player_embedded

9th February 2011 Prince Charles discusses the 
problems and solutions to our environment and the 
effects and close connection of industry on our 
environment.

The Summit was attended by over 300 MEPs, 
economists including Lord Stern, together with 
business leaders from The Prince of Wales's EU 
Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, the P8 
Group of leading Pension Funds and the 
Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.

"Now I have to say, this process has not exactly 
been helped by the corrosive effect on public 
opinion of those climate change sceptics who deny 
the vast body of scientific evidence that shows 
beyond any reasonable doubt that global warming 
HAS been exacerbated by human industrialized 
activity.

Their suggestion that hundreds of scientists 
around the world, and those who accept their 
dispassionate evidence - including presumably 
ladies and gentlemen myself, who rather 
ironically am constantly accused of being 
anti-science - are somehow unconsciously biased 
creates the implication that many of us are, 
somehow, secretly conspiring to undermine and 
deliberately destroy the entire market-based 
capitalist system which now dominates the world!

So I would ask how these people are going to face 
their grandchildren and admit to them that they 
actually failed their future; that they ignored 
all the clear warning signs by passing them off 
as merely part of a "cyclical process" that had 
happened many times before and was beyond our 
control, that they had refused to heed the 
desperate cries of those last remaining 
traditional societies throughout the world who 
warned consistently, CONSISTENTLY of catastrophe, 
because they could read the signs of impending 
disintegration in the ever-more violent, extreme 
aberrations in the normally, harmonious patterns 
of Nature.

So I wonder, will such people be held accountable 
at the end of the day for the absolute refusal to 
countenance a precautionary approach, for this 
plays I would suggest a most reckless game of 
roulette with the future inheritance of those who 
come after us? An inheritance ladies and 
gentlemen that will be shaped by what you decide 
to do here in this Parliament."

For more information on the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability:
http://princescharities.org/cambridge...

For a full transcript of the speech:
http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speechesandarticles/a_speech_by_hrh_the_prince_of_wales_to_the_low_carbon_prospe_1007667674.html

A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales to the Low 
Carbon Prosperity Summit at the European 
Parliament, Brussels
9th February 2011
Presidents,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Having only fairly recently been afforded the 
privilege of addressing this Parliament, I was 
somewhat astonished - indeed touched - to be 
invited back again to discuss the crucial subject 
of how we can shift our economies onto a lower 
carbon trajectory. I realise only too well that 
you are engaged ceaselessly with momentous 
issues, not least how to navigate the turbulent 
currents of this difficult and serious economic 
climate. But it is certainly heartening that 
here, in Brussels, so much thought is being given 
to the profound changes we need if Europe is to 
cope with the long-term economic consequences of 
climate change and the depletion of the world's 
natural capital. If I may - and since you have 
been rash enough to ask me in the first place! - 
I would like to take this opportunity to consider 
why there is no more pressing problem and also 
how, perhaps, it might be addressed.

First and foremost, I believe, we need to deepen 
our understanding of the relationships between 
food, energy, water and economic security and the 
policies which are put in place in those areas; 
this is increasingly important given the rising 
demand and competition for land and other 
resources, which is already having an impact on 
prices and is exacerbated, as you will have no 
doubt have noticed, by rapidly changing weather 
patternsŠ

I am a historian, not an economist, but it is 
plain to me that responding to these problems 
with a "business as usual" approach towards our 
pursuit of G.D.P. growth offers only short-term 
relief, not a long-term cure. Why? Because I 
cannot see how we can possibly maintain the 
growth of Growth Domestic Product (GDP) in the 
long-term if we continue to consume our planet as 
voraciously as we are doing. We have to see that 
there is a direct relationship between the 
resilience of Nature's ecosystems and the 
resilience of our national economies. And, let us 
not forget, it is on that resilience that our 
future prosperity actually dependsŠ

I know there is a great deal of debate about the 
meaning of resilience. I cannot help but think it 
means an ability to absorb, repel and adapt to 
external shocks and without it we have very 
little, if any, capacity for mitigation and 
adaptation. 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?

A graphic example of this, ladies and gentlemen, 
is found in the fate of the world's rainforests. 
Having already felled or burned a third of the 
world's tropical rainforests in the last fifty 
years, six million hectares of rainforest 
continue to disappear every year. That of course 
is the equivalent area of nearly twenty-four 
thousand football pitches every day! And 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 
and innovative biomimetic solutions to the 
problem we are facing. And because the trees are 
not there to transfer billions of tonnes of water 
to the atmosphere, so the world's weather 
patterns are disrupted which, in turn, seriously 
undermines the stability of food production. So, 
you see, burning a hectare of rainforest has a 
direct impact upon the livelihoods of many 
communities and, thus, a direct impact on 
economic growth and prosperity at a local level. 
This has been underlined in recent days by the 
discovery that the 'once in a hundred year 
drought' (that by the way has now occurred twice 
in five years!) has killed so many trees in the 
Amazon that the depleted forest may be becoming a 
source of greenhouse gas rather than a store.

Stopping deforestation is not a lifestyle choice, 
it is an absolutely critical part of any low 
carbon growth plan. If we fail to address this 
problem, despite everything else we might do, 
there is no answer to climate change.

Neither is there any way around the fact that we 
have to move away from our conventional economic 
model of growth, based, as it is, on the 
production and consumption of high carbon 
intensity goods. We need to meet the challenge of 
decoupling economic growth from increased 
consumption in such a way that both the wellbeing 
of Nature's ecology and our own economic needs do 
not suffer. It seems to me that we need a 
framework focussed on resilience that enables us 
to recalibrate and balance our approach. If we do 
not think about creating such a framework and 
resolve that central dilemma soon, then I fear we 
are in for a very rough ride indeed. The trouble 
is we do not have the luxury of failure and 
success will be in building low carbon industries 
that provide not only substantial economic 
opportunity, but also a means to ensure Europe's 
competitiveness.

There are, happily, some encouraging signs of 
progress. I have followed closely - and have been 
very encouraged by - the Strategic Energy 
Technology plan which aims to transform the 
entire European energy system - how we source it, 
produce it, transport and trade it. This is a big 
step towards making low carbon technologies 
affordable and competitive and, therefore, a 
market choice. In fact, if I may say so, with 
this particular initiative you have offered a 
very encouraging example to the rest of the world.

I know only too well the difficulties in you must 
have encountered in mustering support for the 
E.U. (European Union) target of reducing 
greenhouse gases by twenty per cent by 2020. But 
climate scientists by their hundreds are warning 
that if we are to avert the worst consequences of 
climate change we have to reduce CO2 emissions by 
at least fifty per cent by 2050. That can only 
mean your 2020 target has to be a minimum 
ambition. I know that many in the E.U. aspire to 
agree a target of reducing greenhouse gasses by 
thirty per cent, and I can only applaud their 
efforts.
Let us not forget that the oil-dependent, 
high-input, industrialized form of agriculture 
which now dominates food production around the 
world ties food prices firmly to the price of 
oil. One study estimates that a person on a 
typical Western diet is, in effect, consuming 4.4 
litres of diesel per day and this factor helped 
push the F.A.O.'s Food Price Index up last 
December to its highest level since it was 
created in 1999. We should also bear in mind that 
we live in a world where one billion people go 
hungry and another billion are nutritionally 
deficient, while yet another billion suffer from 
the health impacts of over-eating and obesity; 
mostly in richer countries where billions of 
dollars worth of food are also wasted and thrown 
away every year. At the same time, in the 
developing world around forty per cent of 
agricultural produce is wasted before it even 
gets to market. Poor land management means that 
yields are frequently at only forty per cent of 
capacityŠ This is surely an insane situation.

And sadly, our highly intensive form of 
agriculture also effects our marine environment 
as nutrient enrichment caused by agricultural 
run-off is becoming a major issue for marine 
health. As you will know better than I, nutrient 
enrichment leads to algal blooms which cause 
significant depletion of dissolved oxygen levels 
in the water and so create "dead zones" that are 
uninhabitable to fish. The U.N.E.P.'s Global 
Environment Outlook report in 2004 cited over 140 
dead zones world-wide - among the largest and 
most famous being the one that occurs annually in 
the Gulf of Mexico due to run-off from the U.S. 
corn belt. In 2002, this particular dead zone was 
estimated to be the size of Massachusetts.

Furthermore, and I have to say, not very 
encouragingly, a recent report from Denmark 
suggested a possible scenario, where a 
combination of higher temperatures and increased 
levels of carbon-dioxide leads to a rise in these 
persistent dead zones from just under two per 
cent of oceans (today) to in excess of twenty per 
cent (by 2100).

It is perhaps worth noting that twenty-five per 
cent of the carbon dioxide we emit is absorbed by 
the oceans. But, it appears that the capacity of 
the oceans to continue this function is 
decreasing due to the loss of coastal habitat: 
for example 13.5 giga-tonnes of carbon dioxide 
will be released within the next fifty years as a 
result of mangrove clearance that occurred 
between 1980 and 2005 (much of this due to shrimp 
farming for the European market). This is 
equivalent to all transport-related emissions in 
twenty seven E.U. countries over a fifteen year 
period from 1997 to 2005.

In addition to these problems, the health and 
productivity of our oceans is also at threat from 
over-fishing, climate change, toxic pollution, 
invasive species and habitat degradation. These 
multiple threats make it imperative that a 
holistic and precautionary approach is adopted in 
order to manage marine ecosystems so as to ensure 
maximum food security benefit from fisheries and 
while understanding the carbon-related 
consequences of assuming that aquaculture will be 
able to fill the protein gap from the precipitous 
decline of wild fisheries.

I suspect I may not be alone in thinking it 
strange, to say the least, that, globally, 
despite subsidies in the region of sixteen 
billion dollars of public money every year, we 
appear to be close to bringing the fishing 
industry to its knees. It is worth recognizing 
that the fishing industry contributes over 200 
billion dollars a year to global G.D.P., but may 
not be able to do so for much longer. But here, 
in the midst of such a big problem, lies a 
potential solution which could be of use to the 
other sectoral challenges we face. Research into 
the state and future of the North East Atlantic 
Bluefin Tuna fishery estimates that subsidies of 
around 120 million dollars return an annual 
profit of only around 70 million dollars. The 
research found that a sustainable future for the 
fishery, even without subsidies, could produce 
annual profits of 310 million dollars per year, 
if tuna stocks could recover to a sustainable 
level. The World Bank's own estimates suggest 
that if we were to eradicate the perverse 
subsidies which currently exist, curb overfishing 
and improve ineffective management, then the 
global fishing industry could contribute 250 
billion dollars per year to global G.D.P., and on 
a sustainable basis.
This offers at least hope of a long-term cure, 
rather than a short-term form of relief and one 
from which the vast majority of stakeholders 
would benefit. I know it would require difficult 
decisions and even more difficult implementation 
measures. But, if we lift our eyes from the "here 
and now" and look to the future, I wonder if we 
really have any alternative?

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you can see my 
point. Essentially we have to do more today to 
avert the catastrophes of tomorrow, and we can 
only do that by changing the way we frame our 
approach to the economic problems that confront 
us. If we are to make our agricultural and marine 
systems resilient in the long-term, for instance, 
we have to design policies in every sector that 
bring the true costs of environmental destruction 
and the depletion of natural capital to the fore.

Having looked at these issues for very nearly 
thirty years and, being fortunate enough to have 
consulted some of the world's most eminent 
experts, I wonder if I might just share with you 
a couple of observations about how it seems to 
me, at least, it might be possible to do this?

I would certainly suggest that social and 
economic stability is built on valuing and 
supporting local communities and their 
traditions, recognising as does the Report from 
the International Assessment for Agriculture 
Knowledge, Science and Technology for 
Development, recognising the contribution which, 
for example, diverse farming systems make to 
economic and ecosystem resilience. Policies that 
encourage diverse landscapes, communities and 
products can generate all sorts of positive 
results, not just in agriculture, but in tourism, 
forestry and industry. So, there is a need for 
policies that focus funding on strengthening 
diversity. Might there be, perhaps, benefit in 
public finance being more specifically directed 
using "smart subsidies?" The aim would be to 
target a diversity of production in more specific 
ways while protecting public goods. This is vital 
if we are to strengthen the resilience of our 
agriculture, marine and energy systems so that 
they can ensure supply and thus withstand those 
sudden shocks on international markets which are 
bound to come our way, given the impact of 
climate change.

I would also suggest we need a different approach 
to profit and loss which would support Corporate 
Social Environmental and Economic Responsibility 
and give us the means to evaluate the impact of 
our actions properly. This was, incidentally, 
what drove me to set up my Accounting for 
Sustainability project six years ago. The aim was 
to develop a new approach to business reporting 
which reflects the interconnected impact of 
financial, environmental and social elements on 
an organization's long-term performance. And, I 
must say, I am delighted that an increasing 
number of organizations - including the British 
Government and international groups like E.D.F. 
Energy, H.S.B.C. and Aviva - are adopting this 
system of "Integrated Reporting." In fact, last 
year I expanded the project by launching an 
international group, supported by many of the 
world's accounting and standard-setting bodies, 
as well as many major international accounting 
firms, Stock Exchanges and the U.N. What has 
pleased me most is that this initiative 
pre-empted the findings of the U.N.'s study into 
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, or 
T.E.E.B., which reported last Summer to the 
gathering of 193 Environment Ministers in Nagoya.

Having conducted a global assessment of the 
multi-trillion dollar importance to the world's 
economy of the natural world, it called for the 
present system of national accounts to be 
upgraded rapidly so they include the health of 
natural capital, and thereby accurately reflect 
how the services offered by natural ecosystems 
are performing.

Underpinning any new framework, undoubtedly, is 
the need for an integrated set of long-term 
public policies and instruments to encourage a 
"green economy." Such an economy would rely on 
sustainable asset management, more productive 
processing of waste, the construction of new, 
zero-carbon buildings and the retro-fitting of 
existing stock and on achieving stringent energy 
efficiency targets for our buildings, cars and 
household goods. If only we could look at the 
world in this new way, we could create 
significant - and, crucially, sustainable - 
economic opportunities. It would be an economy 
that would, on the one hand, put much more 
emphasis on planning sustainable urban 
developments and helping businesses to maintain 
biodiversity and safeguard ecosystems, while, on 
the other, placing less reliance on those 
government subsidies and mechanisms which, 
perversely, can end up eroding the vital, natural 
components that provide us with our essential 
capital resources.

For these solutions to be implemented at scale we 
would have to see effective partnerships between 
the public and private sectors, as the President 
just mentioned, and they would also need to 
involve the knowledge of many highly expert, 
non-governmental organizations. We could not 
leave it to the market alone. Long-term public 
sector policies need to be coherent and 
consistent in order to create an environment 
which is conducive to private sector investment.

Only in this way will the private sector be 
prepared to commit investment capital.

The market certainly offers a means of 
accelerating changes in behaviour but, to be 
genuinely effective, these changes must be 
focussed and clearly directed by long-term 
policies, and that means robust legislation and, 
dare I say it, just as robust enforcement.

Now I would merely add to this list one very 
important acknowledgement, if I may, and that is 
the role of the consumer. It seems to me that 
until we all as consumers really begin to demand 
sustainable products and services from businesses 
and Governments, then policy-makers will struggle 
to see the importance of introducing real change.

Lately, I have been asking myself why the public 
has not eagerly embraced the many advantages in 
pursuing a sustainable future. My conclusion is 
that, for too long, environmentalists have tended 
to concentrate on what people need to stop doing. 
If we are constantly told that living 
environmentally-friendly lives means giving up 
all that makes life worthwhile, then it is no 
surprise that people refuse to change! That is 
why, last year, I launched a new initiative 
called START, which aims to show people what they 
could start doing - the simple steps that we can 
all take to make better use of our natural 
resources. By working with some of Europe's 
leading companies, such as Kingfisher and 
Eurostar, as well as celebrities and marketing 
professionals, we are unashamedly attempting to 
sell the benefits of sustainability.

As one advertising executive put it to me, we are 
"making it cool to use less stuff." Believe it or 
not, this smarter approach can actually be more 
profitable. As Marks and Spencer have found, an 
innovative approach to sustainability actually 
saves money.

I have to say, this process has not exactly been 
helped by the corrosive effect on public opinion 
of those climate change sceptics who deny the 
vast body of scientific evidence that shows 
beyond any reasonable doubt that global warming 
has been exacerbated by human industrialized 
activity. Their suggestion that hundreds of 
scientists around the world, and those who accept 
their dispassionate evidence - including 
presumably and gentlemen myself, rather 
ironically I am constantly accused of being 
anti-science - are somehow unconsciously biased 
creates the implication that many of us are, 
somehow, secretly conspiring to undermine and 
deliberately destroy the entire market-based 
capitalist system which now dominates the world! 
I would ask how these people are going to face 
their grandchildren and admit to them that they 
actually failed their future; that they ignored 
all the clear warning signs by passing them off 
as merely part of a "cyclical process" that had 
happened many times before and was beyond our 
control; that they had refused to heed the 
desperate cries of those last remaining 
traditional societies throughout the world who 
warned consistently of catastrophe because they 
could read the signs of impending disintegration 
in the ever-more violent, extreme aberrations in 
the normally, harmonious patterns of

Nature. I wonder, will such people be held 
accountable at the end of the day for the 
absolute refusal to countenance a precautionary 
approach, for this plays I would suggest a most 
reckless game of roulette with the future 
inheritance of those who come after us? An 
inheritance that will be shaped by what you 
decide to do here in this Parliament.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have been remarkably 
patient in listening to me. I promise you, what 
you decide here could induce the very necessary 
adjustments we so urgently need to make. So can I 
ask if you will be courageous enough to seize the 
moment, set Europe on a course for survival and 
economic prosperity and so earn the endless 
gratitude of our descendantsŠ?

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