Carry On Don't Lose Your Head

Prince Charles is an odd beast.  Occupying a half-world between power without responsibility and responsibility without power, his exact role is ill-defined.  Little wonder that he struggles to make sense of it.
But he has nailed his colours to the mast of environmental stewardship (even if his Duchy Originals products rack up so many diesel miles being transported around the country), among other things, such as inter-faith harmony.  And on Friday he made an intervention, making the very sensible point that we accept the supremacy of science in every other sphere of life, except in the matter of climate change and this is because of the intimidation of corporate-backed 'grassroots' organisation.  For him, climate change deniers are a bunch of headless chickens (though a better analogy would be ostriches with their heads in the sand and, as the late QC George Carman once quipped, their thinking parts exposed).
Like the BBC, the heir to the throne manages to infuriate both sides of the political spectrum, thus must be doing something correct.  The right (generally pro-big business) are irritated at the nature of his intervention and wish someone would do an intervention on him, the left are peeved that he should intervene at all.  For the latter, hereditary monarchs (or those who aspire to the throne) are outmoded and should be seen and not heard - that's it, smile and wave, we'll get rid of you eventually!  George Mombiot once argued (and still does for that matter) that Prince Charles says all the right things but he shouldn't be in the position to say it.  Well, he is in that position so we have to deal with the facts on the ground.  Would a civic president be any less controversial? They are meant to be merely Keepers of the Great Seal for sovereignty lies with the people.  But it already does so under a constitutional monarchy.  And the presidents of Germany and Italy have key statements affecting the destiny of their country and the international climate.  India elected their chief nuclear scientist as president and nuclear testing always causes ructions in the subcontinent - in 1999, it induced Pakistan to follow suit.  What Prince Charles says and who really pays attention is small beer.  A president in a parliamentary system doesn't have a policy platform or a manifesto.  It is the choice between an unelected monarch or an elected eunuch.  Getting rid of the hereditary principle would not speed up social change (just ask the the USA) and some of the most socially equal nations on earth are constitutional monarchies (traditional Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Japan).  France effectively has an elected king.  As the difference is so small, why feed the unwritten constitution through the threshing machine to see what comes out the other side?
The right, being conservative, tend to view continuity and stability as cherishable assets.  In countries like Britain, support of their royal figurehead is high.  Spain's prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, of the right-wing Partido Populaire, pronounced that he was convinced of the innocence of Princess Cristina, daughter of King Juan Carlos, in a fraud case involving the princess' husband.  This though is a side issue as the majority of the world's independent states are de jure republics, rather than merely de facto (unless you live in North Korea or Syria, which have dynasties while proclaiming themselves republics).  Conservatives are a mix of vested interests and libertarians.  In the case of the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, (forming a fifth of the top ten richest people in the world) they are both.  Always active beforehand, since Barack Obama came to office they have stepped up their financing of groups that challenge the science and intimidates the scientists.  Tragically, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson is victim of this and doesn't believe in climate change, hence his lacksadaisical approach to the flooding in England, where it was the wettest January in 250 years.  Paterson views the flooding as a one-off rather than a sign of things to come, despite extremes of weather for every winter since the turn of the millennium (following the 1990s unusually dry winters).  Why dredge rivers to make them deeper and restore them to their state decades ago - it is just unnecessary expenditure.  Again, the ostrich comes to mind.  Maybe it was coincidence that the head of the parliamentary environment committee was deselected by her local Tory constituency party.  Now an independent, her last act as a Conservative MP was to ask about the response to the flooding.
The sceptics are like Eurosceptics in that they aren't really sceptics at all.  But unlike 3% of the population that rates the EU (and leaving it) as their highest priority, they are rational and know they are involved in a war in which there are no rules of engagement.  They know it is a conflict that they cannot win but equally, if they keep up the attrition, they will not lose it either and their paymasters kick the can down the road, when the next board of directors can deal with it.  Prince Charles' irruption will occupy the blogosphere and not greatly trouble the truly powerful (do they deserve their position because they aren't kings or princes, if titans of industry?).  A friend in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told me that all roads of climate change denial, through various shell companies and foundations, lead back to either ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers.  With apologies to the oil giant, scratch a denier and find a Koch.