These two speeches, one at Liverpool yesterday and a speech about Al Gore's movie, the Inconvinient Truth made exactly a month ago, are among the best speeches of the Prince, in my opinion.
Every single word is thought trough and is full of meaning. And care. And of course, humour.
The speech by The Prince of Wales for the Roscoe Lecture, St George’s Hall, Liverpool
From the speech:
Ladies and Gentlemen, as you have been rash enough to invite me here to indulge in a spot of “meddling” in Liverpool, I can confess to knowing a little bit here and there about putting my head above the odd conventional parapet from time to time. In my case, it has been to suggest that in the last 50 or so years, perhaps with the best of intentions, we may have “thrown out the baby with the bath water,” and that, therefore, we need to consider anew the timeless principles which underpinned so much of civilization before industrialization took such a comprehensive hold on the world. These principles have always crossed all cultural boundaries. They have never belonged to one particular school of thought. Rather, they might be called “shared insights” that belong to humanity as a whole and I would suggest that they are key to the maintenance of Harmony, Balance and Unity in life.
It is these principles that I would like to explore in this lecture today, in relation to some of the main areas with which I happen to have long been concerned: architecture, medicine, agriculture, environment and education. These are all areas of our life which, it seems to me, have been adversely affected by the neglect of a particular kind of wisdom that guided our forebears for generations, and its almost complete replacement in the past century by an entirely different way of seeing ourselves in relation to others and, indeed, in expressing Mankind’s relationship with Nature.
The trouble, of course, in suggesting, as I have done, that the balance needs to be righted, is that I seem to have ended up being “pigeon-holed” as “anti progress” or “anti-science.” I am not “anti-science” – I am anti the kind of science that fails to see the whole picture; the kind of science that has for some reason eliminated what we might call commonsense. So I will now reiterate to those who actually listen that of course technology and progress have changed our lives for the better – certainly in the West and not least in terms of health, universal education, improved housing and greater mobility and prosperity. But I would argue that while we have undeniably made great gains we have also lost something very precious and that is an understanding of our interconnectedness with Nature and a world beyond the material...
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The second speech illuminates not only the enviromental issues but also reminds that at the time the politics and many of the scientists were laughing at the 'Global warming', the Prince was urging to make necessary steps.
A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales to introduce An Inconvenient Truth, a film by former Vice-President Al Gore, to a climate change seminar of business leaders in Woking
From the speech:
I really couldn’t be more delighted that you are all going to see Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. I saw it several months ago and found myself profoundly affected by it. I have known Al Gore for many years. I met him over 20 years ago in Washington and he and I are exactly the same age – a very good vintage 1948! – and I greatly admire his commitment to environmental issues, maintained through times when – as I know only too well myself - such issues were far from fashionable and a positive handicap for anyone in public life!
In fact, we both produced personal statements on the environment as long ago as 1990, with remarkably similar titles. Al very kindly took the risk of being associated with my film documentary for the BBC, called ‘Earth in Balance’. And he was equally articulate and thoughtful in his own book, ‘Earth in the Balance’ which appeared just a little later (as I keep reminding him!).
A hundred years ago, at a time when your predecessors were industriously developing Woking as a major town on the relatively new railway line, few people would have thought that, as well as contributing to this country’s vital economic engine, their activities might also be damaging our planet’s life support system. Indeed, anyone who said as much would have been laughed at.
But over the ensuing hundred years the evidence has emerged, bit by awful bit, to the point where no thinking person can be in any doubt whatsoever about the nature and scale of the damage that we – yes we – are causing. That does not make the message any more palatable, which is perhaps why the film you are going to see is called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.
The question is what are we going to do about it? I know this is a difficult question at the best of times and that many of you who run the small and medium sized enterprises that are the backbone of this country’s economy have quite enough on your plate already. But this really is a challenge for everyone, both in our private and professional lives. And there are many business opportunities to be had from taking action to tackle climate change. The Stern Report said that the potential global market for low-carbon technologies is an estimated £350 billion a year. And here in the United Kingdom, a recent Government report indicated that the Environmental Goods and Services sector, which comprises around 17,000 companies, has an estimated turnover of over £25 billion – and this is a figure predicted to increase to £46 billion by 2015...
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