It appears that Britain's new royal grandpa, Prince Charles, is already making preparations for his first grandchild, Prince George:
"more recently, he’s started expressing his long-standing concerns about climate change and environmental degradation in a new, grandpa-centric fashion. “I don’t want to be confronted by my future grandchild and (have) them say: ‘Why didn’t you do something?’ It makes it even more obvious to try and make sure we leave them something that isn’t a total poisoned chalice.”
Of course Prince Charles is ably aided by many of his fellow warmists, one of whom, the Guardian's Nafeez Ahmed, is forecasting that Prince George is destined to become a "radical ecowarrior":
Fast forward to Year 2050, and assuming Prince George takes after his environmentalist grandfather, he'll be grappling with the reality of an increasingly uninhabitable planet for over half of the global population. Based on the most conservative predictions for business as usual - even if we meet all our emissions reduction pledges - we are heading for about 3 degree Celsius rise in global average temperatures by that time. Let's not even bother thinking about the impact of amplifying feedbacks that most climate models ignore. ---
The higher costs of resource extraction not just for fossil fuels, but also for everything else, will act as an intensifying drag on the economy. Simultaneously, the devastating impacts of routine climate catastrophes in the form of extreme weather, heat stress, proliferation of diseases, and so on, will trigger ongoing costs slashing into world GDP to the tune of 3.2% annually at least.
This dual combination of deepening energy and environmental costs will basically kill growth.
The geopolitical implications of all this are incalculable, but it won't be good. Major oil exporters in the Middle East and North Africa will be collapsing as their oil revenues plummet and they fail to provide for the water and food needs of their populations - processes already at way in countries like Egypt and Syria. China and India will be grappling with domestic uprisings, too, as their unsustainable debt-saddled demographic dividends explode into nightmares.
The UK, following the US lead, may find itself increasingly embroiled in long, unpopular and costly military expeditions responding to myriad climate emergencies while simultaneously attempting to secure fast-diminishing resources. As their welfare systems collapse under the strain of dwindling GDP, as governments resort to knee-jerk police-state measures to quell domestic anger, we could see social polarisation and the resurgence of extremist nationalism on a scale that would make Greece's Golden Dawn look like a holiday agency. Government and corporate-backed land grabbing will accelerate as states and investors seek to maximise strained profits amidst rocketing land and commodity prices, displacing millions of poor and fueling local uprisings.
In short, looking through the lens of business as usual, Prince George is part of a generation of children who, if they survive to 2050, will confront a brave new world that is crowded, underfed, thirsty, poor, unemployed and fighting for survival. He of course would be shielded from much of these impacts - but if he is anything like his grandfather, it will haunt him. If that's not enough to turn a Prince into a radical ecowarrior, I don't what else would.
Still, one would hope that the Prince of Wales would rather heed the advice offered by a Welsh granny:
"During his annual summer tour of Wales, he even stopped in at a pub and asked a group of local grandmothers for their best advice. “Spoil them and enjoy it,” 74-year-old Eileen Joseph counselled."
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