The royal wedding taking place this week in England will follow in Prince Charles’s green footsteps.
All the paper used for the wedding is recycled or FSC-certified, as is the building’s scaffolding; renewable energy will partially power the event and the remaining carbon emissions will be offset. One of the beneficiaries will be the Earthwatch Institute.
The food will be locally grown and sustainably sourced and the flowers will be seasonal. The wedding cake will be made from locallly sourced, organic ingredients. It’s been rumored that Kate will wear a Fair Trade wedding ring.
And guests are being asked to donate to charity instead of buying wedding gifts.
For some time, the policy at Clarence House and St James Palace has been to minimize carbon emissions through energy efficiency and increasing use of renewables. They annually measure and price remaining emissions and purchase offsets that go toward preserving forests around the world.
Hopefully, the green aspects of William and Kate’s wedding will receive some publicity, inspiring others to make green choices in their lives.
In addition to being a public advocate for organic food and rainforest protection, Prince Charles has been increasingly vocal on the unsustainability of the world’s economy – which is based on relentless, persistent growth.
In a speech to the Low Carbon Prosperity Summit at the European Parliament in Brussels, he said, a "business as usual" response to rising demand and competition for energy, land and other resources was no longer an option for the global economy.
"I cannot see how we can possibly maintain the growth of Growth Domestic Product (GDP) in the long-term if we continue to consume our planet as voraciously as we are doing," he said. "We have to move away from our conventional economic model of growth, based, as it is, on the production and consumption of high carbon intensity goods.
"We have to see that there is a direct relationship between the resilience of nature’s ecosystems and the resilience of our national economies. If nature’s capital loses its innate resilience – then how long does it take for our economic capital and economic systems to lose their resilience too?"
Instead, we must put a financial value on ecosystems and develop models that offer an alternative to profit and loss.
"It would be an economy that would, on the one hand, put much more emphasis on planning sustainable urban developments and helping businesses to maintain biodiversity and safeguard ecosystems, while, on the other, placing less reliance on those government subsidies and mechanisms which, perversely, can end up eroding the vital, natural components that provide us with our essential capital resources," he added.
"Alice in Wonderland economics must end – we need a new approach which has the well-being of people and our planet at its very heart," he said. "We have the know-how to build a safe, prosperous and sustainable society – and with bold political leadership it can become a reality."
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