Prince Charles opens climate change festival days after The Crown
The Prince of Wales has hailed the 'unprecedented opportunity' presented by the crisis as he made the opening speech at an online festival. , 71, appeared in a video for climate positive platform, Ecologi, to open the online Festival of Climate Action, Its Time event. The free festival, which will take place online today and tomorrow, will host talks from over 100 individuals who are committed to the fight against climate change, including activists, artists, academics, brands and celebrities. Speaking at the launch of the festival, Prince Charles urged businesses to 'rethink and reset' the ways in which they work, saying: ' Prince Charles' appearance marks his first since season four of The Crown, which covers Charles's doomed marriage to Princess Diana, her eating disorders and his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, was released on Sunday. The Prince of Wales opened his speech by saying he was 'delighted' to join the virtual gathering', saying: 'The current pandemic has bought unimaginable devastation to people's lives, livelihoods and national economies. 'At the same time, the green recovery represents an unprecedented opportunity to rethink and reset the ways we live and do business.' Prince Charles went on to say championing green business 'isn't a fight for the faint hearted', adding: 'With consumers controlling an estimate 60 per cent of global GDP, people around the world have the power to drive sustainable markets.' He urged viewers to 'drive action and urge change', before introducing a short film about his Great Reset project. Prince Charles has long championed environmental causes and warned about the dangers of climate change. In 1970, he had warned about the problems of plastic waste, chemicals being discharged into rivers and air pollution caused by factories, cars and planes. Since his speech on February 19, 1970, to the Countryside Steering Committee for Wales, Charles has worked to develop solutions to climate change and highlighted issues like overfishing and the threat to the world's rainforests. Earlier this year, Prince Charles launched his Sustainable Markets Initiative at Davos, which calls on communities, businesses, investors and consumers to take the urgent and practical steps required to transition to more sustainable practices. The initiative aims to bring together leading individuals from the public and private sectors, charitable bodies and investors to identify ways to rapidly decarbonise the global economy. In his first keynote speech to the conference in 30 years, hailed by environmentalists as a landmark moment and branded royal meddling in global affairs by critics, he said: 'Global warning, climate change and the devastating loss of biodiversity are the greatest threats humanity has ever faced, and one largely of its own creation'. Notable speakers at the climate change festival range from TV presenter and childrens author Konnie Huq, criminal barrister and TV personality Judge Rinder, to Climate Strange comedian Matt Winning. With capacity for over a million attendees, festival-goers will be able to tune in to live debates, video premieres, art exhibits and more by environmentalists, TV personalities, scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians and performers who are all striving for change in environmental responsibility. Prince Charles appearance marks his first since the new series of The Crown was launched on Netflix on Sunday. Royal experts have widely panned the drama, which depicts Charles (played by Josh O'Connor) and Camilla (Emerald Fennell) as being in almost constant contact during the early years of his marriage to Diana and shows them sleeping together the night before his wedding Commentators have lined up to criticise the show, including Ingrid Seward who called it 'pretty inaccurate', Dickie Arbiter who said 'some of the actions are fiction' and Sally Beddell Smith who said 'the level of invention has been growing'. Tom Quinn said parts of the show were 'total nonsense', although Paul Burrell was full of praise, saying it was a 'fair and accurate dramatisation of what happened'. Inaccuracies in the drama have also been slammed, including that Charles saw Lord Mountbatten as more of a father-figure than Prince Philip, and that Margaret Thatcher told the Queen she thought women were incapable of holding high office. Friends of Prince Charles launched a blistering attack on the show over the weekend, accusing producers of the hit Netflix drama of 'trolling on a Hollywood budget'. Some of the Prince's closest confidantes have accused the streaming giant of exploiting the Royal Family's pain for financial gain and raged that 'fiction is presented as fact' in its twisted version of events.