Good job, again, Al...

Thanks!

Steve

Vanity Fair has an article in its latest issue on Prince Charles' environmental crusades.  His ideas are controversial, and may not work -- e.g., he wants to label each product on the shelves with its carbon emission cost -- but the article is worth reading just because it gives another look at the guy. 

More than a quarter-century has passed since the Prince of Wales began calling for wiser stewardship of the environment and doing what he could to set an example. The British press called him loony and eccentric: the prince who talked to plants. He doesn't look loony now. *** Passionate about organic farming and sustainable development, curious about ways to improve the "built environment" with holistic communities designed from scratch . . .

Yes, it's easy to make fun of some of his ideas -- but he's been trying to provide leadership:

Already, the Prince has converted the 18th-century Highgrove to "green electricity," generated by providers who use sustainable energy sources. The estate has solar panels for some heat and hot water, a carbon-neutral boiler heated by woodchips, double-glazed windows, and eco-efficient insulation. It has a walled kitchen garden to supply fruits and vegetables on a self-sustaining basis year-round. It even has a reedbed sewage system to process waste . . .

It's easy to lampoon rich royals, but this type of publicity is important to raise consciousness:

For a globe-traveling royal, transportation is the hardest part of the footprint to reduce. The Prince's Jaguar and Land Rover are being retrofitted to run 100 percent on biodiesel. Charles plans to take trains instead of cars whenever he can, and so, apparently, do other members of the royal family. (The Prince's mother, Queen Elizabeth II, recently took a scheduled train to her country home at Sandringham, in Norfolk. She liked it.) And again, when possible, Charles plans to fly commercial instead of chartering private jets. [He recently flew to NYC on a commercial jet]