Prince Charles points to the world’s failure to tackle climate change as a root cause of the civil war in Syria, terrorism and the consequent refugee crisis throughout Europe.
The heir to the British throne said in an interview with Sky News, to be aired on Monday and recorded before the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, that such symptoms were a “classic case of not dealing with the problem”.
During the interview Charles talks about his belief that there are links between climate change and terrorism.
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Where else have we heard similar nonsense? Hillary Clinton recently tied the refugee crisis to climate change, she was echoing a theory that had been floated by Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor.
The Huffington Post reports:
He also urged governments to adopt green measures despite austerity, saying there was “a real possibility of nature’s bank going bust”.
Charles told the broadcaster: “We’re seeing a classic case of not dealing with the problem, because, I mean, it sounds awful to say, but some of us were saying 20 something years ago that if we didn’t tackle these issues you would see ever greater conflict over scarce resources and ever greater difficulties over drought, and the accumulating effect of climate change, which means that people have to move.
“And, in fact, there’s very good evidence indeed that one of the major reasons for this horror in Syria, funnily enough was a drought that lasted for about five or six years, which meant that huge numbers of people in the end had to leave the land.”
Asked if there was a direct link between climate change, conflict and terrorism, he added: “It’s only in the last few years that the Pentagon have actually started to pay attention to this. I mean it has a huge impact on what is happening.
“I mean the difficulty is sometimes to get this point across – that if we just leave it and say, well there are obviously lots of, there are endless problems arising all over the place therefore we deal with them in a short term way, we never deal with the underlying root cause which regrettably is what we’re doing to our natural environment.”
This is not the first time the drought in Syria has been linked to the war. In March National Geographic research found a severe drought, worsened by a warming climate, drove Syrian farmers to abandon their crops and flock to cities, which helped trigger the civil war
The Sky interview came ahead of Charles travelling to Paris next week to deliver a keynote speech at the opening ceremony for Cop21, the United Nations conference on climate change which will attempt to reach a new international agreement to help limit global warming to no more than two degrees.
Niamh Harris
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