John Vidal makes some good points about the role that King Charles could take as a climate leader, including divesting from fossil fuels, selling the family silver to pay for climate action and rewilding his estates (Here’s a plan for green King Charles: sell the family silver and use the cash to save the planet, 6 October).
However, he neglects to mention a key way in which the King could lead by example. Charles is the only landowner in Scotland exempt from new carbon laws. As the Guardian revealed last year, the late Queen’s lawyers secretly lobbied the Scottish government to exempt her lands from a draft carbon bill. Charles’s first step should be to ask for this exemption to be revoked and agree to be bound by the same laws as all other landowners in Scotland.
