Prince Charles Warns The Global Climate Crunch Must Be Tackled With The Same Importance As The Credit Crunch

Britain's Prince Charles has warned the global "climate crunch" must be viewed with the same importance as the "credit crunch." The 60-year-old royal insisted he was not suggesting one problem was more important than another but rather that they should be dealt with in tandem during his speech at St James's Palace for the Prince's Accounting for Sustainability Forum.

View Photos [39]
View Profile
View All News

He said: "There are a number of parallels that can be drawn between the current financial crisis and the looming, and even more alarming, environmental crisis."

"Just as the world is hopefully coming together to tackle the credit crunch, so we need to work together even more powerfully, and with the same sense of urgency, to tackle climate change and the challenges of a resource constrained world."

The forum includes over 200 representatives from the business, investor, academic, accounting and public sectors. It hopes to develop ways for organizations to measure the effect they are having on the environment.

Charles added the key behaviors which caused the ongoing global financial crisis - over-consumption and indebtedness, over-confidence in market and regulatory systems and short-termism - are also to blame for the world's environmental problems.

He suggested there is a "growing chorus" of voices asking the world's leaders what is going to be done to fight climate change.

He said: "New industries, millions of new jobs and many new commercial opportunities can go hand-in-hand with transformation toward an ecologically durable economy."

"The ecosystems on which we all rely for our survival are more complex and less well-understood than the global financial system, and my great fear - a long-held one, for which I have been roundly abused and ridiculed - is that by the time these problems are understood and addressed it will be too late and, very importantly, that unlike financial capital our natural capital cannot be replenished."

The prince - who has long been a campaigner for environmental issues - argued there is an urgent need for companies to use "sustainability accounting" to prevent a "more painful, calamitous and, crucially, irretrievable climate crunch."