An annual accounting of Prince Charles’s households - printed on recycled paper in vegetable-based ink – finds that he has cut his annual carbon emissions by nine percent, to 3,775 tons, between April 1, 2006 and March 31 of this year. He achieved this historical feat by cutting back on helicopter jaunts and converting his Jag and Landie to run on used cooking oil, reports The Associated Press. The prince offset the other 91 percent of emissions created by his households - the Highgrove estate in western England, Clarence House in London and Birkhall in Scotland - by investing $60,000, in an agency that promotes tree planting and sustainable energy projects, meaning that his royal lifestyle is now “carbon-neutral.”

Meanwhile, an online poll suggests that most of the err-to-the-throne’s subjects think he’s rather daft on the subject of global warming. The survey of 4,000 people found that 71 percent believe global warming is a natural phenomenon and not caused by carbon emissions, and that 65 percent think that climate scientists’ doomsday scenarios are tommy-rot. The poll was conducted by Pocket Issue (a British firm that publishes three “Cliff’s Notes”-type briefs: “The Energy Crisis,” “Global Warming” and “Middle East Conflict”).

Alarmed that the Orwellian brainwashing techniques used by the BBC and other mass media are inexplicably ineffective, Pocket Issue publisher Emma Hardcastle says, “[T]he poll highlights the need for government and influential bodies to concentrate on getting the public to understand the facts about global warming and ‘why’ rather than ‘how’ they should reduce their carbon footprint.”

[Editorial Note: Not only trees spew methane into the atmosphere, but earthworms living in the soil surrounding their roots produce greenhouse gases 290 times more potent than carbon dioxide, according to a German study of commercial composting of organic waste (the “green” alternative to landfills). Further, the very concept of offsetting one’s carbon footprint is bogus. Buying carbon offsets has become the secular equivalent of buying indulgences – and neither purchase will turn a sinner into a saint.]

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