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.
Vidal also suggests that the King offset his emissions until electric planes become available. It’s disappointing to see offsetting being advocated in the Guardian. As the prominent climate scientist Prof Kevin Anderson wrote in the journal Nature in 2012: “Offsetting is worse than doing nothing.”
The logic of offsetting is deeply flawed. We are facing an unprecedented climate and ecological emergency, and need to do everything we can to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Offsetting schemes tell us that we can continue living high-carbon lifestyles by paying others (often on the other side of the world) to take responsibility for our emissions. In fact, offsetting often causes harm to ecosystems and communities, and distracts from meaningful changes that would reduce emissions.
We need climate leaders who are honest about the steps needed to mitigate climate breakdown and who are willing to undertake these actions. If King Charles wants to be taken seriously as a climate leader, he must lead by example.
Dr Rhian Barrance
Cardiff
• Reading John Vidal’s article prompted me to suggest that Norway should use its gigantic oil fund to fight the climate crisis. This is one of the world’s largest funds, and releasing the money for this cause would achieve its stated purpose – “that this wealth benefits both current and future generations”. As I write, the fund stands at almost 12tn Norwegian kroner (around £1tn), a sum that could make a huge difference in fighting climate change.
Jo Inge Svendsen
Ramnes, Norway
• As an architect, I have reservations about King Charles’s views on architecture, but as regards his climate advocacy, I believe that we are lucky to have him (UK risks ending Cop26 presidency in disarray over Truss climate policy, 7 October). He understands climate science and technology, and should be present at Cop27 to counterbalance Liz Truss’s stance against “the anti-growth coalition of environment groups”.
The King’s climate advocacy would mean economic growth of a different kind. One, for example, which recognises that we are in the midst of a growing wood revolution – a new age of wood in which everything that is made from fossil-based materials today will be made from a tree tomorrow, thereby weaning ourselves off concrete, steel and plastics.
Whereas architecture is largely a cultural matter, climate change science and technology is about civilisation, our habitat, society and economy being in homeostasis with nature.
Trevor Jones
Sheringham, Norfolk
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