Charles says he understands protesters’ despair over climate change

The Prince of Wales has said world leaders gathering at the COP26 summit should take ambitious action on climate change rather than “just talk”, and take notice of how “despairing” many young people are about the issue.

Charles said he understood why climate campaign groups such as Extinction Rebellion stage protests and block roads, but suggested they should take a less disruptive approach.

“I totally understand the frustration,” he said in an interview with the BBC.

“But it isn’t helpful, I don’t think, to do it in a way that alienates people. The difficulty is, how do you direct that frustration in a way that is more constructive rather than destructive?”

He added: “The point is, people should really notice how despairing so many young are.”

Charles, a long-standing environmental campaigner, said it had taken “far too long” for the world to take the climate crisis seriously.

He is concerned that leaders gathering at the Glasgow climate change conference in November would “just talk”.

“The problem is to get action on the ground,” he said.

Charles is due to attend a series of events at COP26, alongside the Queen, the Duchess of Cornwall, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

In the BBC interview, which took place in Prince George’s Wood, an arboretum Charles has created in the gardens of his house on the Balmoral estate in Aberdeen, he also discussed his own efforts to reduce his carbon footprint.

“I haven’t eaten meat and fish on two days a week and I don’t eat dairy products on one day a week,” he said.

“If more did that, you would reduce a lot of the pressure.”

He said he had converted his car, an Aston Martin he has owned for five decades, to run on what he described as “surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process”.