The Prince  

With a title like that you may be excused for thinking I'm about to embark on a rant about the Neocons and Machiavelli, but instead, I'm going to quote wih approval (for the second time this week) the Prince of Wales.

While I'm a republican myself, I do quite like the idea of Charlie becoming King one day purely because of the annoyance it is likely to cause the shrinking band of monarchists who yet aren't willing to come to grips with the fact that we gained independence over a century ago and that the British Empire no longer exists.

Charlie has burnished his already good pro-reality credentials by delivering a keynote address at a conference in San Francisco recently on "Peak Oil, Climate Change, and Business Action" (he sounds like a Viridian kind of guy really). He was followed later on by Richard Heinberg (thereby neatly closing the circle to my original link).

"We simply can't go on as we are," Prince Charles said to the select audience, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. He cited statistics and stories about global warming and oil depletion, contending, "Somehow we have to find the courage to reassert the once commonplace belief that human beings have a duty to act as the stewards of creation."

Prince Charles later added, "We have to accept that globalization comes at an alarming price for the future. That price may be paid in terms of displaced rural communities and the destruction of social and cultural systems built up over many centuries." He concluded his talk by encouraging "the United States (to) use its power and influence to help create a sense of purpose around environmental stewardship."