King Charles III, who assumed the throne of the United Kingdom in 2022 upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II, has a reputation as an environmental activist. What's more, some political commentators see his reign as an opportunity to enact the large-scale change needed to fight global warming.
When he first entered public life at age 20, the then-Prince of Wales used his celebrity to sound the alarm. “Conservation or problems about pollution should not be held up as separate concepts from housing or other social schemes,” he said in 1970. “The word ecology implies the relationship of an organism to its environment, and we are just as much an organism as any other animal that is often unfortunate enough to share this Earth with us.”
This rhetoric sounded radical in its day, and rings with urgency even now. Still, the politics of the U.K. — and the tensions of its current cultural moment — may hamstring Charles’s attempts at climate advocacy.
King Charles's History of Environmental Activism
In the ensuing decades, Charles continually pressed for environmental action in essays, public addresses, and meetings with political figures, famously urging delegates at a 1992 UN climate conference to show “vision and courage.” Aging into the role of elder statesman, he often wondered aloud about the world he’d leave for his grandchildren.
